Eclectic influences give the former Vietnamese hill station of Dalat a unique flavour. Gemma Price meets the man set on preserving a small slice of colonial charm. Photos by Peter Stuckings.

Sitting at the open window, cradling a cup of hot black ca phe – Vietnamese coffee – with the crackling fire warming my back, I find it easy to see why Dalat, in Vietnam’s southern Central Highlands, instilled homesick French colons with a sense of comfort and familiarity.

Through the fat droplets of rain blurring the window, I can mentally shed the years, seeing past the modern developments to the hill station in its heyday – a sanatorium and sanctuary for prominent French colonials escaping the heat and noise of Hanoi and Saigon.

Like hill stations before it, the town was intended as a utopian enclave. It offered the culturally savant French the type of lifestyle and leisure options that were denied them in the bigger cities.

Today, the governor general’s residence and the opulent 1922 Lang Bian Palace – now the Sofitel Dalat Palace – are the town’s most impressive buildings. The latter provides the town’s most scenic backdrop, thanks to extensive restoration work. Abused during the Japanese occupation of World War II, abandoned by the French following the 1954 defeat at Dien Bien Phu and further damaged during the war with the US, the building was desperately in need of help before it crumbled into oblivion.

The story of its remarkable rehabilitation is immortalised on the back of the drinks menu at the hotel’s cozy, chalet-style Larry’s Bar – named in honour of American business tycoon Larry Hillblom who restored the palace to its former glory in the early 1990s.

It is the only place to be on a Friday night, and as the town’s more colourful characters gather to spin yarns over a “33” Export beer, I am regaled with tales of how Hillblom would travel covertly by vegetable truck, as foreigners were unable to move around without a permit at the time.

Despite the restrictions, Hillblom managed to negotiate a joint venture with a government-run company to renovate a number of properties – including the Dalat Palace hotel, the Hotel Du Parc (now the Novotel), and the palace of Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam – and to extend the small golf course to become one of the most celebrated 18 holes in Asia. To achieve this he invested over $40m of his own money.

It was a time when you could do anything if you had cash, says Antoine Sirot, the French former general manager at the Sofitel.

Upstairs in the hotel’s lavish Le Rabelais restaurant, where diners’ murmured conversations mix with Debussy’s Reverie emanating from the grand piano, a quick glance reveals where the money has been spent. Floor-to-ceiling curtains woven in and imported from France, relaid wooden floors, walls and high ceilings splendidly restored. Features such as the wobbly, handset windows and the porcelain claw-footed baths fed by rickety brass plumbing in the bedrooms convey the original luxurious elegance of the place.

Characteristically dapper in a check suit, Sirot now acts as a consultant for the renovation of Dalat’s colonial villas. Uncovering the remarkable history of the hill station has become something of a personal crusade, and he has amassed a huge collection of contemporary sources, from fading black and white photos and postcards and architectural blueprints to furled, yellowing letters and documents that trace the story of the hill station and the people who lived here.

Ihave some of the letters between Emperor Bao Dai’s wife, Nam Phuong, and the renowned architect Paul Veysseyre, asking him to change this and change that, at Palace III [Dinh Bao Dai III – the emperor’s summer palace],’ says Sirot. ‘At this time the architect was also responsible for the interior, and Bao Dai decided everything, from the furniture to the size of each room.’

Set on a hill overlooking the town, the art deco Dinh Bao Dai III is a popular tourist attraction, packed with snap-happy Vietnamese tourists. Signs direct me past a string of ice-cream fridges outside to the large, covered oval reception area and a bucket of oversized, smurf-like nylon booties inside. As Vietnamese women tend to dress up for family outings, the booties are an attempt by the management to protect the rich wooden flooring from the murderous metal points of their high heels. Pulling them on over my shoes, I slide elegantly from room to high-ceilinged room.

I had imagined the former emperor had lived in closely cloistered secrecy, but the only thing to denote the regal status of the inhabitants is the gold paint on every wall. One small antechamber off the office is dedicated to photos of Bao Dai in his sharp European suit, inspecting troops, disembarking from a plane, laying a wreath at a memorial in Paris. He looks every inch the enigmatic modern emissary and seems far removed from Vietnam’s ancient feudal tradition.

Dalat’s other palaces, imaginatively termed Palace I and Palace II, are now owned by the People’s Committee and number two is an exclusive residence for guests of the government. Many of the more interesting villas in town, meanwhile have become private residences or guest-houses; while others are barely visible beneath the corrugated iron huts, wooden shop fronts and Vietnamese brick houses that have been tacked onto outer walls or which have risen, mushroom-like, to fill the gaps between properties.

Until the mid 1940s, the predominant activity in Dalat was game hunting – such was the bounty of the area that the earlier ‘bungalow’ houses were raised on stilts with small windows and bright lights to discourage any encounters the local wildlife from coming too close unannounced. Later, Regionalism became popular, with houses throughout Dalat nostalgically evoking French and European countryside.

As I breeze along the wide streets on my bike, I mentally check off some of the styles Sirot had described. ‘You’ll see a mixture of stone and wood, Corsican style, houses like the ones on Lake Geneva,’ he said. ‘Chalets, but with round windows – this was trendy at the time, reminiscent of the cruise liners that sailed between Saigon and Marseilles. “Londres” style roofs, long on one side and short on the other…’

The street of Tran Hung Dao has the most interesting collections of properties. Commanding superlative views across the town and lake below, it is Dalat’s most coveted address and was home to some of the more high-profile colonial residents. Number 22 was the summer residence of the governor general, number 27 belonged to the director of the Michelin rubber plant, and architect Veysseyre himself lived at number 16.

A number of villas acquired by Hillblom and handed back to the provincial government in 2005 are currently undergoing development as another private hotel resort, but Sirot is critical about what he sees as cashing in on Dalat’s historic magic by poorly emulating the past.

‘People should be able to walk down the streets, go into the restaurants and shops and enjoy an authentic setting, instead of something that looks like a cream cake. A closed resort that you can only look at from the outside? That’s not the real Dalat.’

Where to stay

Sofitel Dalat Palace 12 Tran Phu Street Dalat Tel: (+84) 63 825 444 www.sofitel.com

Evason Ana Mandara Resort Le Lai Street Dalat Tel: (+84) 63 555 888 www.sixsenses.com

Getting there

Vietnam Airlines flies from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City [formerly Saigon] to Dalat www.vietnamairlines.com.vn