Cô Miên Du xin giới thiệu với mọi người 1 vài hình ảnh Đà Lạt của ngày xưa cũ ..... , thành phố trong sương mù của Miên Du Đà Lạt .... 
với mưa bay lất phất và những dòng thơ lãng mạn trữ tình cũng bắt đầu xuất phát từ nơi đó ... 
và cho đến ngày hôm nay !!! 
Ôi Đà Lạt đẹp làm sao đấy hỉ ???
TB: Tấm hình gần cuối là các cô nữ sinh trường BTX của MD đang đứng ... "hát lịch sự" (nguyên văn của Cô MD) đó nhen !!!
In the issue of August, 2005, the Smithsonian magazine ran an article about Vietnam with the cover subtitle: "VIETNAM'S SHANGRI-LA." Inside on page 68, Stanley Karnow, a veteran reporter wrote "Return to Da Lat," describing his experience in a recent trip to the resort city where he used to stay for a short respite during his Vietnam War coverage assignment. He found that "...Da Lat still remains much of its old-fashioned charm..."
I don't think the guy "lied," but unless for commercial advertisement to lure the tourists to this mountain resort (today, tourists tend to flock to the coastal resort areas), Stanley Karnow is just an ignorant. He doesn't know much about that resort city (rather than doing some researches and visiting a few invited spots). Perhaps this is one of the good examples that reveal the same kind of norm that most Western journalists taken when they wrote the reports about the Vietnam War in the past.
To be correct, The Smithsonian should name its article: "DALAT: THE LOST SHANGRI-LA."
How the hell I know and say so? It's a sad assesment of Dalat natural deterioration based on the observation and reports from many of my friends, who were the old-timers of that city and had a chance to return to it recently.
Indeed, the "Shangri-La" of Vietnam today has gone, not only its old people, but the places and its romantic atmosphere also! If any remains, it's the deception of the melancholy feeling of nostalgia. Dalat today is crowded and hassle, not tranquil and romantic as it's used to be any more. Its misty pine-forests have been chopped down for many kinds of commercial constructions and projects. Its pristine adjacent lakes have been dried up (the St. Benoit and Than Tho 'Sorrow' lakes) due to long time negligence and illegal irrigation. The Xuan Huong lake now became a pond of brownish muddy water (you can see it obvious from an airliner). The Cam Ly stream has turned out to be tacitly the city sewage channel, trickling down dirty water. The green hillsides had been being invaded for vegetable farmland. And once the forests are gone, the misty layers of fog gone too, so the cold weather! Just like the effect of greenhouse gases on earth. How about the tourist landmarks? They all look artificial, clumsy renovation, bearing no more the delicate touch of natural landscapes. Hey, and the cultural characteristics of that city have also died along with the landscape long ago. Guess what: The Old University of Dalat; Giao Hoang Hoc Vien Institution (kind of catholic academic institution); National Military Academy Of Vietnam (equivalent to US West Point); Political Warfare College Of Dalat; and the Lycee Yersin! All's gone!
So today, on this website, I am going to post some of the old photos of Dalat before 1975, when even at a wartime, it's still an enchanted Shangri-La. But don't get disappointed, if you have a chance to return to that old mountain resort, you still may catch the beauty and cool salubrious weather of the long gone Shangri-La by doing just a simple thing: Quake up real early (when the tourists, the merchants, the inhabitants, the pick-pockets, the beggars, the solicitors...all the hassles are still at sleep), walk out of the luxurious hotel, stroll along the misty streets, expose yourself to the Dalat surroundings. At that short moment of early dawn, you will "rencontrer" the old spirit of the "LOST SHANGRI-LA."
Kho Hình 
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