I had been sitting for a few minutes inside Black Scoop Café on Maginhawa Street when a towering morena lady walked through the door. I instantly recognized her as Marese Secades—a freediver whose spectacular underwater photographs had initially arrested my attention.

In this age of Filipino ‘hugot’ culture, one could easily assume the name of this mountain was coined as a reverence to such Filipino movies like “Camp Sawi” and “This Thing Called Tadhana.” The real story behind it, though, stemmed from a tragic suicide that happened a few years back right on top of the mountain. A woman—as the story went—after experiencing a heartbreak, hanged herself on one of the tree branches of the now-mowed-down Balete tree. Locals originally named the mountain Mt. Sawing Balete, as a reference to the sad fate shared by the fallen tree and the lovelorn soul.

We had been flying at above thirty thousand feet for about half an hour when a flight attendant on the AirAsia Davao-Manila flight started speaking over the public-address system. “Ladies and gentlemen, because we are celebrating a momentous occasion, we have prepared a short program for you.” The short program she talked about consisted of a dance performance by two pretty flight attendants who twirled to the tune of “Señorita” and a trivia contest that awarded six lucky winners with a round-trip domestic ticket.

At almost 5,000 feet above sea level, Da Lat dished a chill vibe—both literally and figuratively—that appealed to travelers. The cool weather coupled with an array of natural and man-made attractions made that city in Central Vietnam an ideal place for wanderers crisscrossing the land of Pho to make a pit stop for several days. To give you an idea of what to do in Da Lat, here are some of the things I did.