If you need to add some spices in your relaxed holiday in Dalat, Hang Nga guesthouse (Widely known as Crazy house or Nhà Khùng by local people) is a wise choice. This place may offer some visions that go beyond your widest dream. “Crazy House,” is a piece of artwork designed by Vietnamese architect and impressionist Dang Viet Nga, this extraordinary building of non-rectilinear shapes has appeared in many international architectural journals and finally made its way to the list of the world’s ten most creative (or bizarre) buildings
The house is located at 3 Huynh Thuc Khang St., Ward 3, Dalat City, covering an area approximately 1,600m2. At first, the house was intentionally built as personal house but after 18 continuous years and 6 times filing, it has been recognized as a piece of art.
The “crazy house” resembles a tree with uneven windows, tunnel-shaped stairways. The base of the building is a tree, which can be seen especially from the outside. Huge tree trunks and branches try to make you believe that this is a tree-house. Both the exterior and the interior of the guesthouse are created and decorated with twisting organic forms and very few right angles. Walking along the cave-shape hallways inside the house is not simply a visit but an exhilarating experience, a departure from the norm; wild mushrooms and spider webs popping up on your way is not unusual.
The guesthouse is really a spectacular construction with ten themed guest rooms such as the tiger room, the eagle room, the ant room and the kangaroo room… The walls of the tiger room, for instance, feature a large tiger with glowing red eyes; the kangaroo room incorporates a sculpted kangaroo with a fireplace in its belly, the fireplace in the eagle room is in the form of a giant eagle’s egg. Many of the rooms incorporate an added level of symbolism, with the animal theme connected to a particular nationality. For instance, Ms Nga describes the tiger room as representing “the strengths of the Chinese”, the eagle room as being “Big and Strong” like Americans and the ant room as representing the “Hard working Vietnamese”.
Furniture inside the rooms is handcrafted and sometimes even built into the rooms themselves to match the rooms’ nonlinear, organic shape. Stone decorations throughout the house depict animals such as bears, giraffes, frogs, spiders, and ants, along with natural elements such as mushrooms and spider webs. Stairways and hallways inside the building are designed to resemble tunnels and caves.
Far from the main purpose of a guest house, Hang Nga guest house is a great combination of art gallery, museum, church in fairy tales and cozy guest rooms. With a reasonable prices, it is worth for trying to experience strange feeling in this house when you arrive Dalat for one night. That will be something outstanding.
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