Marc Moynot Takes Flight over the Dalat Plateau

To Vietnam With Love

View Photos (1) Image © 2008 To Vietnam With Love

Excerpted from To Vietnam With Love: A Travel Guide for the Connoisseur, available from ThingsAsian Press. 

I made my first paragliding flights in Vietnam on a splendid site near Mui Ne: over the clear seawaters of a large bay with a small island in the middle. My teacher was Mr. Long, a very good Vietnamese paraglider pilot, who is the founder of the first Vietnamese paraglider club, VietWings. It was a good spot, with no buildings and a new road that led to the Bau Trang Lakes. I say was, because there is now a power line, and it is no longer possible to fly there in safe conditions.

These days, local pilots have to go up the coast to soar on the sea breeze, but this too is often not possible because of strong winds blowing during the dry season. But heading even farther north, 300 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, you will find Dalat, at an altitude of 1,500 meters. Just outside Dalat, Langbian Mountain is a tourist site with a road going to the top. Vietnamese people like to go there to enjoy the cool altitude and landscape. They also appreciate watching paragliders taking off and flying over the site, since flying is a fairly new activity in Vietnam.

Four hundred meters below is Tuyen Lam Lake, banked with pine forests on one side, agriculture on the other, and meadows along the meanders of the river that feeds it. During the dry season, the wind comes from the right direction for taking off, and thermals start in the middle or end of the morning. There are some landing zones, though in the countryside these zones are not easy to find, since there are few meadows, many fences, and farms growing coffee and other crops.

Though new to the paragliding world, the site is gaining fame abroad. A few paraglider groups came from the USA and Japan to fly here recently. Some were lucky, flying thermals at twelve meters per second, soaring up to more than 3,000 meters. Others did not fare so well, with a storm off the Vietnamese coast making flight impossible.

Two years ago I brought a hang glider from France (a basic Tecma glider that I liked to use when I would hang glide in France years ago). I had a good flight over the Langbian site with this wing, under a big cumulus congestus which lifted me at four to five meters per second up to 2,600 meters. The most pleasant part of the flight was when I was circling at the center of the cloud, and a Peregrine Falcon was using the same thermal on the periphery of it. With the same angular speed, we were watching each other from under the dark bottom of the cloud. Encounters made with birds when flying are unforgettable.

If you would like to experience this region by air, you can contact Mr. Long of Vietwings, in Ho Chi Minh City, who will arrange a tandem flight for you in Dalat, or François Deslauriers, who also flies tandem and is immediately available since he lives in Dalat. If you bring your own wing, you can also get in touch with them for information about soaring from the site. Happy flights!

FACT FILE:

VietWings
090-382-5607 (Mr. Pham Duy Long/mobile phone in-country, or 84-90-382-5607 from abroad)
www.vietwings.com (This website is in Vietnamese. Click on thu viên anh to look at pictures.)

François Deslauriers
091-978-1696 (mobile phone for in-country, or 84-91-978-1696 from abroad)

Jibe’s Beach Club
While no longer ideal for hang gliding, Mui Ne is a very good spot for kite surfing. If you want to kite surf or windsurf, go to Jibe’s, near Full Moon Resort on the road from Phan Thiet to Mui Ne. Run by Pascal, a Frenchman, this was the first operation to set up windsurf and kite surf activities on the Vietnamese coast.
90 Nguyen Dinh Chieu St.
Mui Ne Beach
Phan Thiet
(84-62) 847-405
www.windsurf-vietnam.com

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Published on 4/14/08