Visiting Lumiere in Da Lat, Vietnam

So we were kind of running out of stuff to do in this city and realize now that if anyone out there is thinking of coming to this part of the country I think that you should if you can find a good idea on a flight. However, I believe that coming here for 2 to 3 nights if you have a game plan is really the maximum amount of time that a person or couple should spend here. There just isn't that much to see once you have done the nature stuff that they talk about such as the waterfalls and of course the dubious claim on the "longest single-person roller coaster in the world."

Towards the end of our stay were kind of at a loss of what to do because the rather hardcore nature stuff like the long hikes would have been surely awesome, but because of the effect the altitude was having on my respiratory system, we couldn't do those. We found ourselves kind of searching for something to do on the later days of our visit and we stumbled upon something that is no doubt here just for tourists but actually ended up being really friggin cool.

We almost didn't go in because I was getting a feeling that this place was going to be like those Ripley's Believe it or not attractions that you see all over the place at beach areas in the States. These places are always overpriced tourist-traps and I've never met anyone that was glad they paid to get into them. The only thing that shifted me away from this steadfast opinion of mine was the the price for admission was a mere 100,000 VND which is about $4. So we threw caution to the wind and just went on in.

The idea behind this place is that each of the rooms is supposed to be an exploration of light and sound and there is also a kind of cartoonish and artistic side to things. The first room was this giant chandelier room of sorts with mirrors and flashing lights and my shite photo above was never going to do it justice. It was wicked cool.

src

This picture that features a very attractive professional model is quite a bit better than the one I took :P

One of the next room had giant projectors doing a 3D ish sort of thing on all the walls and it had a wonderful soothing soundtrack going on as well. It would have been nice to have sat in this room and just chilled and watched the entire thing but the only chairs they had are these massage chairs that if you sit on them without paying for them for more than 20 seconds it starts to make this high pitched alarm that was annoying to us an everyone else around.

Then there was a neon room which was a collection of crap mostly, but I did like that none of the displays were broken and this made me think of how Vietnam is a pretty respectful country. If we had something like this in the USA there would have needed to be armed attendants in the room at all times keeping the people in line else the patrons would intentionally break everything.

There was a "Hoth" cave of sorts and I was delighted to find out that the girl I was traveling with who is not a Star Wars nerd like me made the connection before I did. She didn't say the word "Hoth" but she did say "this is like those caves from Star Wars" and I was just delighted that she knew that on her own.

They also featured a bunch of characters that they almost certainly do NOT have permission to use by Pixar but that's another thing that is quite common in Vietnam: They just use whatever they want and if Disney or whoever is aware of the fact that they are using them they probably just figure that it isn't going to be worth the cost of the lawyers and the flights to make them stop using it.

By far the coolest thing in this building and something that I am extremely glad that we decided to do was the VR station. I haven't done much VR in my life so this was all new to me. Seeing as how I am in Vietnam I halfway expected it to be crap but man! It was one of the coolest things I have done in a while. If you look above you can see some markings on the floor but that is simply for the observers who do not have headsets on. When you have the headsets on, you and the other people that paid to be a part of it are in a castle or a room similar to that and you have weapons and are maneuvering around the walls trying to shoot your opponent who appears simply as a cartoon character. I was a scarecrow and she was a cutesy vampire. We ran around looking like loons dodging and jumping over things that anyone watching us wouldn't be able to see at all and we were just laughing and having a great ol' time. It was like being in a first-person shooting video game and I was extremely impressed.

Because of the altitude problems and the effect it was having on my respiration just 3 minutes of playing this game had me totally wiped so I am kind of glad that it was the last thing that we did while we were here. It cost just a couple of dollars and was an experience I will be talking about for quite some time. If you have a chance to do something like this I would imagine that it exists all over the world. It was a ton of fun and I want to do it again.

When we left we both had smiles on our faces and were really happy that we had decided to do that. Hell, later on that day we toyed with the idea of going back to have another round of VR shoot 'em up.

If you are in Da Lat and end up on the side of town that this place is in I highly recommend it. I am not one for tourist traps but given the price this ended up being one of the highlights of the entire stay. So if you are there, look it up. It'll only take a few hours of your day and I bet you find that it is worth the $4 entry fee as well.