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When Norman Lewis, the veteran British travel writer, visited Dalat in 1950, he described it as “the playground of Indo-China.” Today, over fifty years later, as Vietnam’s premier resort, it still merits the description, though it presents something of a challenge to find traces of “le petit Paris”, as the French dubbed it in the Twenties and Thirties. But, when you look carefully, there they are.

Dalat, an old hill station 215 miles north of Saigon, is the capital of Lam Dong province, the first of the three provinces of Vietnam’s Central Highlands. It was first established as a resort in the late 1890s when a French doctor, Alexander Yersin, thought its temperate climate would benefit his European patients who were being driven slowly mad by the tropical heat of Saigon and the plains. By 1922, Dalat was already so popular that the French had built the Palace Hotel there, at the time the grandest and most expensive hotel in all Vietnam (they also built a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower). And, by 1930, a golf course and a cinema had been added, the hotel offered jazz concerts and it had become the place to go in the hot summer months.

A large part of Dalat’s reputation as the playground of Indochina can be attributed to the activities of Vietnam's last emperor, Bao Dai (which means “Keeper of Greatness”), who died in a French military hospital in Paris in 1997. The 13th emperor of the Nguyen dynasty, Bao Dai was born in the imperial city of Hue in 1913 and educated as a child in Paris. In 1932, having succeeded to the throne in 1926 when he was just twelve years old, he returned home to Vietnam. In 1945, realising that he would forever be emperor in name only, he made the decision to abdicate. Before this, however, he had attempted to put an end to the more outdated trappings of Vietnamese royalty and he had ended the ancient mandarin custom that once required aides to touch their foreheads to the ground when addressing the emperor.

But Bao Dai rapidly became far better known for his leisure activities. Coaxed back to Vietnam in 1949 by the French, he established an early reputation as an adventurer and playboy, devoting weeks at a time to hunting expeditions in the Vietnamese rain forests He is believed to have single-handedly bagged a large percentage of Vietnam's tigers, which he preferred to track into their dens, a lamp attached to his head and a rifle at his side. His other passion was women.

His first wife was a South Vietnamese beauty queen, the Empress Nam Phuong, by whom he had six children, and whose image you can find on old stamps. In the heart of Dalat, at the dreary XQ Arts and Crafts centre, there is a brightly-coloured silk-embroidered portrait of the Empress and a selection of linens embroidered by her own fair hands. But Bao Dai also always had many mistresses and, after Queen Nam Phuong left him to go into exile in France, according to a notice in his former summer palace in Dalat, he lived there with the “Imperial Concubine Mong Diep.”

Bao Dai’s summer palace is one of the many pleasures of Dalat. A pleasant, creamy, Thirties villa, it is open to the public who swarm through it in their dozens, seizing photo-opportunities left, right and centre. Various parts of the house - Bao Dai’s throne room, his office, Queen Nam Phuong’s bedroom with ensuite bathroom, the bedrooms of the little princes and princesses - are roped off, but this has absolutely no effect. Swarms of smiling Vietnamese tourists brush aside the ropes intended to keep them out, fling off the clumsy, mandatory protective shoe coverings to reveal elegant footwear, and happily plonk themselves down on Bao Dai’s bed, on Bao Dai’s throne, at Bao Dai’s desk, to have their photo taken, either by one of the many professionals whose services are for hire or by their spouse or sweetheart.

Dalat is Vietnam’s most romantic destination and the acme of many couples’ ambitions is to spend their honeymoon there. The Dalat Palace Hotel (superbly renovated in 1995 and now part of the Sofitel group) is out of most honeymooners’ price range, but that doesn’t altogether stop them. On an almost daily basis, couples arrive to pose for photos around the hotel, both inside and out. One young couple, whose actual wedding was due to take place there in a five days’ time, came up that morning from Saigon and were going back the same afternoon. The groom, himself a professional photographer, was directing the shoot and they were accompanied by some five or six people, including a stylist. The bride, a fashion designer, in a white bridal gown with shoestring straps, and groom, in tuxedo, posed EVERYWHERE. In the restaurant, the library, the bar, the lobby, outside Larry’s Bar (named after Larry Hillblom, an American attorney and co-founder of DHL, who fell in love with Vietnam in the early 1990s; he invested $70 million in Dalat, including the restoration of the Palace Hotel and the Hotel du Parc, and the purchase of sixteen Twenties and Thirties villas on Tran Hung Dao Street, before being killed in a private plane crash off the coast of Saipan), on the front steps of the hotel, draped over the wonderful, old Citroen in the grounds.

When I first went to Dalat thirteen years ago, the place was filled with stuffed animals. Indeed, the first thing I saw, on entering Bao Dai’s palace, was a huge stuffed tiger, its fangs bared. A Vietnamese girl was draped across the beast, posing while her husband or lover took her picture. Then, almost every room contained a stuffed animal and someone posing on or against it. Taxidermy was a thriving industry. Not any longer. Possibly the supply of wild animals has dried up, probably the existing stuffed ones finally collapsed up the weight of so many people, possibly, even, conservationists have something to say about it. In any event, only a solitary pair of antlers and a stuffed iguana (or something like it) remain in the palace. All the tigers have disappeared.

What is new, however, is the making of wine. In 1998, vintners trained in Bordeaux began to make wine in Dalat. The grapes come from Bin Tonh province, about 125 kilometres away, and are mixed with berries from Dalat. The wine is so successful, particularly the red, that they now produce some 700,000 litres of wine a year, which, as well as being drunk throughout Vietnam, is exported to Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia and Korea. This year they expect to produce three times the amount they made in 2003. Of course, they are not great wines (and they are ridiculously cheap), but they are surprisingly drinkable, all except for the strawberry one, which I hated.

Dalat’s astonishing kitschness is a large part of its charm. In the Vallée d’Amour (where LOVE VALLEY has been written on the hillside in white-washed stones), there is a massive replica of the Venus de Milo; Dalat “cowboys” saunter around with ponies, offering further photo-opportunities, and pedalo boats in the shape of giant swans race each other lethargically round the lake. At the far end of the valley, in grass-roofed longhouse, one Vietnamese family had gathered for the first of their twice-yearly reunions. Thomas, who now lives in Orange Country, California, with his wife and son, where he has four souvenir stores, summons the rest of the family from the Mekong Delta and they spend a day eating and drinking and singing songs. In our honour, he performed a lively rendition of “Unchained Melody”.

And, in Dalat itself, three times a week Francophone Societé of Dalat meets. A notice in the window of the Long Hoa restaurant, where the proprietor speaks perfect French and the food is among the best in town, announces the dates and place of the meetings.

“Le Vietnam et La Francophonie Centre Francophone de Dalat Amis Francophones, Touristes ou Dalatois … Pour regarder un film français, écouter des chansons francophones …” I wonder how many people actually turn up.

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