Valley of Love

Some place names need no explaining. Valley of Love, in Vietnamese Thung lũng Tình Yêu, is one of them. It is a provincial-level tourist area of Da Lat. It stands on Mai Anh Đào street, in Lâm Viên ward. The Lâm Đồng tourism portal places it about six kilometers northeast of the city center.

The heart of the landscape is Da Thiện Lake. Local records say that in 1972 a dam was built across a stream in the valley to hold water for production in the Da Thiện area. The dam made the lake, and the lake slowly became a place of natural beauty. Nobody planned a romantic destination, yet that is what came of it: water among pine hills, mist in the early morning, and golden afternoon light slanting through the trees.

Local records give two explanations for the name. They appear in a book called Điểm Hẹn 2000, which is on the Lâm Đồng government portal. In one telling, students of Da Lat University saw the valley by Dam III at Da Thiện as an ideal place to meet a sweetheart, and so they called it the Valley of Love. In the other, Scouts once camped in the Da Thiện valley and used the name to mean love of nature and love of country. So the name is not tied only to couples. It carries the feeling of young people who grew attached to this land decades ago.

In 1998, according to the same book, Da Thiện Lake and the Valley of Love were recognized as a national scenic site.

At the present stage, the company that runs the area has merged the Valley of Love with Đồi Mộng Mơ. Together they form a tourist complex of 137 and a half hectares. Walking through the area today, a visitor meets both the old lake landscape and the newer zones, such as the Đồi Mộng Mơ center, the glass bridge, the flower gardens and many added attractions.

The Ngàn Thông glass bridge is one of the places people mention most. According to the same company, it links the Đồi Mộng Mơ area with the Valley of Love, with pine forest, Da Thiện Lake and rolling hills below. Standing on the glass and looking down, the whole valley appears like one wide green painting.

The company describes the gardens as including a hydrangea garden of more than one hectare, a rose garden, a valley of a thousand flowers and a number of smaller landscaped scenes. For families with small children, or anyone who likes taking photographs, this is the gentlest and easiest stretch of the whole walk through the area.

The ethnic cultural village and the gong stage are also worth noticing. The company says the stage can hold up to a thousand guests, with two shows a day. The sound of gongs ringing out among the pine hills and over the surface of the lake is one of the most unforgettable sounds of the Central Highlands.

For a little more excitement, there are high rides such as the Highwire and the Zipline, nine meters off the ground, and an aerial walkway 20 meters up. Seen from up there, the valley and Da Thiện Lake offer a completely different point of view.

The group behind the area names forest protection, green space and biodiversity as a core part of its development strategy for the Valley of Love. More than half a century after the dam made the lake, the water is still clear, the pines are still green, and mist still settles each early morning, as if nothing had ever changed.

The Valley of Love is not only a beautiful name. It holds the memory of students and Scouts who loved this land decades ago. And it remains a place where people come to remember that Da Lat has open spaces where it is enough to stand still and watch the lake reflect the light of the afternoon.