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Published: March 24th 2010
When I told people at home that I was planning to travel to Vietnam, most people responded with "Why?", or "They hate Americans". With a little bit of personal experience on the matter now under my belt, I would like to respond in 3 words...Vietnam is Awesome!
Vietnam is incredible. It is tiny thatch roof hut villages. It is modern, thriving cities bustling with money making business men and women. It is elderly women hunched over hot boiling pho soup along the sidewalks of Ho Chi Minh City. It is lazy beach towns with mountainous views off the coast. It is a remarkable pulse of history. It is the pride and determination on the faces of the Vietnamese people. And it is a must see on any SE Asian trip!!
I started my Vietnam tour in Ho Chi Minh City. We flew in late in the evening, I nervously awaited my visa approval, got my official stamp and we were good to go. As soon as our taxi got on the road I could feel the pull of the city in the chaotic traffic, neon lights, music blaring from streetside restaurants. We stayed at a great hotel called Tan
Hai Long 4, it is brand new and very clean and safe. Was very centrally located and the staff were helpful. The city is pretty easy to navigate (with a map of course)! Thursday was spent touring around the city, checking out the Saigon Riverfront, the Ben Than market, and walking through the citys many beautiful parks with huge towering trees and benches filled with couples and friends chatting the day away. The city is noisy, motorbikes racing in droves through the streets, taxis and buses blaring their horns. The sidewalks are crowded with parked motorbikes, women cooking up their famous street food, and the locals perched on child size stools and tiny tables drinking their iced coffee and slurping down their pho soup. When the noise and crowds get to be too much, I would just duck into one of the many cafes for a cold drink. There are options from the tiniest street side shops with authentic Vietnamese coffees, to pricey Starbucks style mega stores. (I must admit after one particularly hot day I chose the pricey Highlands Coffee, and loved every sip of my expensive caramel blend iced coffee!)
There arent so many hawkers as in
Indonesia. For the most part, other than a smile or a friendly "hello", people leave us alone. I feel comfortable here, and definately dont feel that Americans are at all unwelcome. When I tell those that ask where Im from, "America" is greeted with a smile. They loving trying out their English with Americans. At the same time, there is a sense of due respect, that I am a visitor here and they wont change their own culture to accomodate me (isnt that the way it should be in a foreign country!!). Shop signs are in Vietnamese, rarely in English...although most menus are in both languages. Most small shop owners and taxi drivers do not speak English. This is all in stark contrast to Indonesia, where everything was tourist and Western friendly. It makes travelling in Vietnam that much more strange and exciting, just as I wanted this trip to be!
Friday we went to the town of Cu Chi, where the local people built tunnels for the Viet Cong to hide in during the war. We got to walk through a part of the tunnel but I had to get out after 30 seconds. It was incredibly claustorphobic...hot,
dark, small. I cant wrap my head around how so many people lived down there for months and months. Those tunnels run more than 250 km, under US military bases and even into Cambodia. They were able to cook in the tunnels by capturing the smoke in a small hole near the surface, then slowly releasing the smoke at night so the enemy wouldnt be tipped off on their location. They took care of the sick and injured, cared for babies and elderly, and dug access holes to ditches where they could fight the US forces. They had to deal with rain, mud, bugs, rats, and snakes. But the people were determined to fight for their towns...they banded together, men and women side by side, to build this underground community and become one of the most remarkable military defences ever created. I read recently that the Vietnam War was the ultimate battle of modern technology versus human heart...and human heart won.
We also saw the traps they made, ordinary looking ground cover with a trap door to expose sharp bamboo poles in all sorts of frightening and painful arrangements. At times, seeing those traps in particular, I started to feel
a bit defensive as the tour guide proudly described how his countrymen used these to trap and capture American soldiers. I suppose its good to feel a certain amount of patriotism when hearing about American troops being captured and tortured. Yet the horror that our military inflicted on this country is impossible to ignore or forget...so I walked through those Cu Chi tunnels to get an education on how the other side fought.
During the 2 hour bus ride there and back, the tour guide spoke about the constant bombing on the land just outside the windows. The bombings were so frequent and devastating that the land was completely destroyed and they still cannot farm on it. As a result the people still living in Cu Chi and the surrounding towns and villages are very poor. You can see the wrecked countryside, pocked from bomb blasts so many years ago. There are also acres and acres of neatly planted trees, clearly in an effort to re-vegitate the area after the US military sprayed the land with chemicals.
I figured I would make it an all out heavy and emotional day by wrapping up the afternoon at the War Remnants
Museum. Wow, I'm still not really sure what to say. We have all seen some of those awful pictures, the huge massacres, the burned villages, the young children running in fear, the people disabled and disfigured from Agent Orange. But that museum...all those pictures put together...and many gruesome, gut wrenching photos I had never seen before...it was a lot to take in. Almost impossible to wrap my head around those images and stories. I thought a lot about American Vets and wondered the intensity of emotion they must feel when walking through the museum. I wonder how many have even been able to make the visit.
I did notice in walking through the streets of HCMC, there are more blind and disabled people here than in any other city I have been. obviously a direct result of the war and the ongoing birth defects the chemicals caused. There are also notably more young people in the city, I read a statistic that 65% of the population of HCMC is under the age of 35.
After such an emotional day, we took it easy on Saturday by just walking through the rest of town. We walked through Pham Ngu
Lao, the main backpacker hub. We walked through the Reunification Palace, where the North Vietnamese Army crashed their tanks through the front gates to takeover Saigon and win the war. Walked by countless open parks, tiny street markets, and modern high end shops. Walked by the opera house near our hotel...a few nights later we met a couple from Michigan. He had served in the Vietnam War, and had driven a tank down the street past that very opera house. Had a great night at a pub drinking our Tiger Beer, playing pool and throwing darts.
Sunday we left for our 2 day Mekong Delta tour. This only cost 28 USD, included all transportation, one night hotel, and several meals and snacks. What a bargain...this country is very inexpensive for Western tourists. Of course, on some level you get what you pay for. For example, the bus was not what I would call "comfortable". Had a/c, but it didnt really work. Had soft seats, but the leg room was way too short for people over 5 feet tall. The horn that the driver insisted on blaring every 5 minutes was louder inside the bus than outside. But of course,
this is exactly what I had read to expect in SE Asia travel.
We first stopped in My Tho, the first main stop from HCMC into the Mekong Delta. We got off the bus and onto a boat, then stopped at a coconut candy factory. We then moved to another little island in the delta where we were given time to walk around. There wasn't much to see on the island, and sharing the small dirt path with motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, and horse-drawn carts didn't make for a very relaxing walk. We were then served lunch and then herded back to the bus. We stopped at another little island where they raise honey bees, we were served honey tea with lime juice. We were then herded back to the boat then the bus for the drive to Can Tho where we would spend the night
Now, as most of you know, my only reservation about this trip was my fear of snakes. I knew the day would come...turns out this would be that day. Snake wine is very popular at these markets, which is basically a dead snake coiled up in a jar to make wine. Ugh. When
we were seated for our honey tea, they sat us right next to the table filled with the snake wine. I just turned my head and held in the anxiety. But after finishing the wine, our guide walked in from the back with a huge one wrapped around his shoulders. I promptly said "oh my god, i'm out of here", stood up from the table and got the hell out of there. No tears or freak outs, I was pretty proud of myself. If any of you have witnessed my meltdowns in the past at the sight of a snake, you know this was a huge step for me!
Can Tho was a bigger town than I expected, with a great riverfront area lined with restaurants and a couple street markets. We grabbed dinner and went to bed, as we had an early wake up call to get to the floating markets first thing in the morning. The markets are pretty impressive. I would guess over 100 boats fill the river selling goods from pineapple to lettuce to baskets. There are big boats displaying a pole signifying they are "super stores" that carry just about everything. Then there are
small boat just carrying a few items. Men, women and children are tossing items from boat to boat, weighing things, and making their purchases. It seems to be such an old-world business, yet it still goes on every day.
We then took a canoe ride through the small river Delta, shaded by the jungle trees hanging down to the muddy Mekong river water. The absence of motor boats made it blissfully quiet, I loved floating down that river. They gave us each a conical hat to wear which was really comfortable and light weight! We stopped at a noodle making factory and a tropical fruit farm, enjoyed some live traditional music with the most adorable little girls singing and dancing. Then we were back on that bus from the 5-6 hour ride back to the Ho.
There were about 25 other people on our tour. We would also run into a few other tour groups throughout the 2 days. I was really impressed with how organized the whole trip was. Shuffling people from buses to boats, through cities and tiny villages, making sure everyone has what they need and stays together...The tour guide would yell "My group!!" and
"My family!!" to herd everyone together. Taking organized tours seems to be a point of contention for many travellers. Some think tours are too manufactured and leave no room to see things off the main tourist track. Others argue that it's a fairly hassle-free and inexpensive way to see main attractions. In my opinion, tours are a huge help for some attractions. We did a lot in the Mekong Delta that we probably would have missed if we had gone there on our own. That said, the constant herding of a huge group of white tourists through traditional Vietnamese villages feels pretty uncomfortable.
We got back to Ho Chi Minh early evening, so we settled in at a nice restaurant near our hotel and had a great dinner and several beers. We then got over to the train station for our overnight train to Nha Trang. The tickets cost about $22 for an a/c soft sleeper car, and after such a busy couple days I slept pretty well through the night.
The train pulled into Nha Trang around 6am Tuesday morning. We didn't have a hotel booked, so we went with the suggestion from a taxi driver. After
a little nap in a "real" bed, we walked down to the beach. It's gorgeous! There are tiny mountainous islands just off the coast, and a cable car that connects the mainland to the largest of the islands. The water is cool and calm, and there were just enough European sunbathers to make good people watching. One French girl even made it a topless beach, although I'm not sure that's really permitted in Vietnam. I had a great afternoon laying on the beach. It's not nearly as hot in Nha Trang as it was in HCMC, there's a great ocean breeze. The town was very laid-back, just as a beach town should be. There are several music-thumping dance bars offering cheap cocktails, and T-shirt shops line the streets. We liked Nha Trang so much we decided to stay an extra day, forgoing most of the area around Danang.
On Thursday 3/11 we took the Reunification Express train up the coast from Nha Trang to Danang. It's a 10 hour trip. Cost about $24 for a soft seat. The train is pretty old, the seats are torn and stained, many are broken. Fortunately our car was not full, so we
were able to move back a few rows away from families and kids reclining their seats all the way back onto our knee caps. Things just aren't built for us big, tall westerners!
My impression of Danang...There is really nothing to do there. As the guidebooks had said, it's really more of a stopover town to go on to Hui and Hoi An. I really wish we had time to see those towns, but our flight to Hanoi left less than 24 hours after our train pulled in. We walked around the town a bit after checking into our hotel, but it was after 11pm and there were no restaurants or bars open at all. There were a few locals eating vendor food and drinking beer on the street corners, but otherwise nothing was happening.
The Danang airport is tiny, with a bar right across the street where everyone hangs out until about 30 minutes before their plane takes off. Nate and I enjoyed several beers before strolling onto our own flight, and it was just over an hour into Hanoi.
My impressions of Hanoi are fantastic. It is such a unique city, completely different from Ho
Chi Minh. Feels less modern, more old-world, with a very distinct French influence in the architecture. As in HCMC, there are fresh baguettes served on every street corner, as well as coffee shops and cafes lining the sidewalks. The traffic and motorbikes never disappoint. The energy here is frenetic, less businessy than HCMC, more chaotic and colorful. At night the city comes alive with traffic, street vendors, night markets, and ladies holding enormous bundles of helium balloons in the middle of the busiest intersections. It's great to sit back on a park bench and watch the chaos unfold, and equally fun to just walk right into the thick of it. Walking across a street in Hanoi is like taking a leap of faith. There is never a break in the traffic, so you just have to start walking...and magically those motorbikes and cars and bicycle taxis swerve around you! This just doesn't happen in the US. When I try to cross a street away from a crosswalk in Chicago, I get a dozen horns, screeching brakes, middle fingers, and "F*** You!!" 's before I've made it half way across. Here, I could cross the street with my eyes closed...you just
walk slow and in a straight line, and they will move around you. In my month of travelling with all this chaotic motorbike traffic, I have not seen ONE accident.
We are staying in the Old Quarter, where most tourists choose to congregate. There are definately a lot of us roaming the streets. Hoan Kiem Lake is the center of this district with a beautiful park pathway around the perimeter. I also walked through the French Quarter, just south of the Old Quarter. Much fewer tourists, similar French architecture mixed in with crumbling wooden structures and basic shop fronts. Lenin Park, in the French Quarter, is a beautiful park with a few playgrounds and another lake.
Sunday 3/14 we left for our 2 day/1 night Ha Long Bay tour. Cost $60, which was more expensive than we would typically go for, but the food, transport, and accomodation was well worth the money. Was a 3 1/2 hour bus ride to Ha Long City (in a very nice bus, big step up from the Mekong Delta bus!), then we boarded the boat that would serve as our restaurant and accomodation for the rest of the trip. There were only
about 20 people on our tour, and the boat was perfect for that size group. It's a junk boat, with cabins on the bottom level, a dining room/bar and a few more cabins on the main level, and a sun deck up top. The boat was very nice, and our cabin was perfectly cozy with a great view of the bay.
Ha Long Bay is just as beautiful as the pictures. It was overcast and foggy during our trip, which gave it a mysterious feeling as the karsts and islands unveiled themselves. The boat took us to Amazing Cave, which is...amazing! Really, it is quite a sight...Three chambers within the cave, the first one fits about 50 people, the second about 100 people, and the third more than 1000 people! They are lit up with colored lights so you can see the stalagmites formed over millions of years. You have to climb quite a few stairs to reach the cave on the edge of one of the karsts...when you exit the cave, the view out over the bay is incredible. We were then given time to kayak. This was one of my favorite parts, as it gave us time
to move away from all the tour boats and people who were clogging the waters, and enjoy the peace and quiet of this mysterious place. Nate and I found a little inlet where there were no other boats or kayakers, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the birds and the water quietly lapping on the rocks.
The biggest disappointment of the trip was the quality of the water. It is so polluted with gas and even trash. Our guide said the trash mostly comes from the mainland. Ha Long Bay was recently made a UNESCO world heritage site, so hopefully that will bring in more money to help clean up that water. The other disappointment, although I expected this one, was the huge number of tour boats all over the Bay. And they all seem to travel the same path, which is unfortunate when there is so much to see! But I definately enjoyed this tour, was a great couple days.
Monday through Thursday afternoon were spent back in Hanoi. Spent those days walking around the city, enjoying the famous pho soup, visiting a couple museums, saw a Water Puppet Show, and walked around the grounds of the
Ho Chi Minh masoleum. Really had a good time taking in the city. It's much cooler there than Ho Chi Minh and I was very happy to not sweat all day!
Generally I found the people in Hanoi to be less friendly than in Ho Chi Minh. The servers, bartenders, and salespeople in Hanoi were a less smiley and chatty. I had read in the guidebook that this is the reputation of the cities... the south is a little more laid back and more focused on modern business, the north is a little more uptight and traditional. This is similar to my observation.
Thursday night we took another overnight train to Sapa. Sapa is a cute little mountain town in NW Vietnam. That first morning we watched the mountain clouds slowly roll out, then that evening we watched them roll back in through the town streets. After we checked into our hotel Friday morning we decided to take a walk. The guidebook said it was 8km to Thac Bac (Silver Waterfall), so we started our walk. However the guidebook was wrong...it was actually 12km...took about 2 1/2 hours to walk there, mostly uphill through the mountains. Was a gorgeous
walk, gave us the chance to see some stunning countryside. There are several H'Muong tribes who leave near Sapa, they wear very traditional fabrics and headdresses, the women wear big jewelery. We got to see several homes and H'Muong people along our walk. I was definately tired after that 24 km round-trip walk!
The town itself is very cute, several great restaurants and handicraft shops. There is a huge market in the middle of town selling jewellery, fabric bags, and food. it's a major tourist town, so there are hawkers everywhere...H'Muong women and children pushing you to buy their little bracelets and bags. It's such an unfortunate side effect of a popular tourist town.
Saturday we walked down to Cat Cat Village....was very close to the main road in Sapa but it is straight down the side of a mountain....way way down many many steps. There are more H'Muong people selling their goods along the steps, and eventually we got to the bottom where there is a beautiful waterfall. So we enjoyed that for a few minutes...then it's back up all those stairs. Ugh...I definately got my workout in between Friday and Saturday! But of course the views out over
the village with the backdrop of the mountains and terraced rice paddies in the distance...it's pretty tough to complain!!
Sunday morning was on to Laos...and oh what an adventure we had those next 3 days!!! Will save that for the next blog... Hope everyone is doing well, I hear the weather in the midwest is improving, and the NCAA tournament is in full swing!! Go Bucks!! What about my Hoosiers??? Oh well...
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Amy
non-member comment
sounds like more good times
Hi! It sounds like your trip has been a complete success so far. Your descriptions and the pictures are wonderful - thank you so much for sharing. The floating markets are amazing - they look so cool. Did you buy anything from them that you had to catch? Seems kind of risky - what happens if you drop and it falls in? Too fun! Can't wait to hear more!! Love, Amy