scrubbedexpat141

Anyone been?

Going there in the summer (don't care about weather / monsoon etc) and want to travel around and see as much as I can.

Going to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels and would like to see more war stuff if anyone can recommend.

Also will plan in to go to Ha Long bay (aware they are at opposite ends of country).

Hanoi etc also on the target but can anyone recommend anything they did / saw that's worth me trying to build into a trip?

Meow

Vietnamese food *drools*

Ethos83

Vietnam wasn't my favourite country but I wouldn't discourage anyone from going there. I'd only say it's not as impressive as some people may make it out to be. The people are largely rude and pushy and everyone sees you solely as a walking ATM machine and the most of the sights weren't outstanding especially if you've already travelled around most of SE Asia. That said, there were some nice people and it's good value for the pound.

The only place in Vietnam I thought was genuinely worth the effort was Sapa in the mountains of North Vietnam. It's an old hill station but surrounded by villages of tribal Vietnamese people still living as their ancestors did 500 years ago. Absolutely fascinating.

Hanoi/Saigon are chaotic, polluted and crazy places. Good food. Cheap bad beer. Didn't like either cities.

HaLong Bay was a miss for us. It rained the entire time (apparently it rains more often than not). It's also polluted and parts of it have become a mass floating flotilla of tour boats.

Hue/Hoi An are historic towns with the most impressive Vietnamese cultural remains still extant.

Getting around Vietnam is simple enough but requires careful coordination. If you're mostly in the South it's best to fly to Hanoi then take the three hour bus ride to HaLong Bay.

If you really want to go someplace in SE Asia go to Thailand and chill or go to Burma and be intrepid.

busybee2

remember your malaria pills especially if going to far north and far south.

co durham boy

Don't forget protection as well , Hanoi hookers are clap infested !

scrubbedexpat141

Malaria and Hookers.

Miss Scamp will ****ing love it.

Miss Anne Thrope

Vietnam is a great destination with lots of variety. It is, as the map might suggest, where SE Asia meets China. So crowded, pushy and aggressive but vibrant, energetic and full of possibilities. Gracious, not so much. It is post-communist after all.

The American War (calling it the Vietnam war is a bit redundant for them) provides a distinct twist for tourism. The CuChi tunnels are a definitely worth it and make sure you allow enough time to fully explore the site (and pop off a few rounds on an ancient AK47 at the firing range). Beware that people do freak out in the tunnels because they are so small and claustrophobic. All the exhibits ae worth seeing, not just for the horrific war footage, but also to get a different presentation of the events than you may have seen before (though I guess you're not old enough to remember any of it in real time, so that might not have quite the same impact). For me it was a bit like the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg - intriguing to see events I clearly remember from the news presented in a purely historical context.

Saigon, a city I expected to hate but loved, is a monument to a century of conflict. Built by the French with wide boulevards, it has many sites relevant to the war. My favourite is the Reunification Palace (former South Vietnam presidential palace) which is great example of optimistic post-WWII modernism (think UN assembly building, Oscar Niemeyer, all that kind of stuff). It is preserved exactly as it was when the Viet Cong tank crashed into the gate to mark the end of the Civil war. All the relics of the South Vietnam government are there including the secure room in the basement complete with a bank of old rotary dial bakelite phones and other prehistoric-looking communications equipment that was supposed keep them constantly linked to the White House. It's a fantastic time capsule. If I recall, a guided tour is included in the entry price and worth joining.

You can get down to the Mekong delta in less than a day from Saigon and that is another world entirely. There aren't many places away from humans but even where the humans are is fascinating as they live on the waterways in fairly traditional fashion. If you did go, while en route try to visit a Cao Dai temple - a fantastically bizarre fusion religion, with a few million adherents in that region, whose prophets include Buddha, Lao Tze, Confucius, Mohammed, Jesus and Victor Hugo (naturellement). Their churches are as colourful and decorative as their beliefs. The services are a spectacle, not least because each section of the congregation wears a different colour uniform. Look it up - I'm not making it up...

Da Nang, right in the centre, is another base for visiting war sites including the former demilitarized zone that marked the border between North and South. There are plenty of sites with abandoned equipment strewn around and of course the city itself is just beside China Beach. You can almost smell the napalm in the morning. There are also some dramatic little mountains outside the city with great walks and surprises, natural and man-made: unusual rock formations and temples carved into caves and such. What is striking about the countryside around there is how familiar it will feel both in scenery and in place names that will ring a bell from countless war movies (though almost none could actually have been filmed there).

Da Nang is located in between the previously mentioned Hoi An and Hue and an hour or two drive from both. Both are definitely worth a day each and utterly different from each other and most else in Vietnam - Hoi An is a 17th century estuary port built by the Dutch and largely intact, Hue is the 19th century imperial capital full of formal palaces and temples. Just inland from Hoi An at Mai Son (say it out loud) are the 9th century remains of a huge complex built by the ancient Hindu Champa kingdom, still surrounded by the jungle in which they were relatively recently discovered. Quite Indiana Jones-ish and a less crowded but older (and much smaller) alternative to Angkor Wat.

Ha Long bay is actually very nice despite the commercialisation but if time or cash were tight it is missable in my view.

Hanoi is a wonderful city, much older and more charming than Saigon. The old quarter is composed of narrow streets dedicated to different guilds still pretty much as they always have been. There is a very pleasant airy quarter full of plantation-style houses built by the French (which reminded me a lot of New Orleans as did Hoi An, oddly). Plenty of war memorabilia there too, starting, of course with Uncle Ho's mausoleum followed closely by the Hanoi Hilton, now a museum with plenty of appropriately grisly exhibits. Hanoi has lots else as well including two thousand year-old temples and a street full of dog-meat restaurants.

Nothing beats the experience of Vietnamese street food, particularly in Hanoi. Our most memorable (though definitely not tastiest) was sitting on Wendy house chairs on the crowded pavement in front of a tiny paraffin stove with a pan (sawn off-drum) of hot cooking oil that also smelled like paraffin trying to render edible the plate of unidentifiable meat brought from the "kitchen", which was hardly the size of an outside bog. No menu, no English or French so only gestures and sounds (mooing, baaing, oinking) enabled us to ascertain from the little old lady what most of it was. There was one particularly chewy pliable opalescent white stuff which looked the same raw and cooked, tasted of nothing and whose provenance eluded us despite our sustained and ludicrous efforts to interrogate the proprietress. What noise does polypropylene make?

But most of the food was just superb. And try the beer with ice like the locals do. Seriously, just do. The barrage of scooters is intimidating when trying to cross the street but just step out and have faith; they will avoid you (though the latest I hear is that the increasing number of cars is harder to avoid). I'd go back in a heartbeat.

co durham boy

Mental place , you'll love it !

scrubbedexpat141

Thank you so very much, I'm going to print that and start making a list of places to go.

You are right, I haven't the age to remember the war but all wars fascinate me and it will be one of the things I focus on with this trip (probably to the annoyance of the mrs).

Plan so far is to fly to Singapore, spend 2-3 days then fly to Vietnam and travel around, back to Singapore and on home to Dubai....so will hopefully allow me a good 9 days in Vietnam to get around.

The only thing so far is travel between these locations, N-S seems easy with a flight but the 'attractions' or locations that are outside the main cities need to be researched for how to get there / back. Assume there are some tour companies that will provide direction but don't want to be shepherded about ina group of tourists if I can help it.

Again, thank you very much.

typical

Hello... from a place in Vietnam nobody from outside the country has heard of. I've basically been living here for 16 months.

My favourite place by far has been Hue. It's quiet and so fun to rent a moped and bomb about between the tombs. It's also a nice city in its own right.

Ha Long Bay is great if the weather is good. If it's misty you might not see anything.

Wifey said the Phong Nha Cave in Quang Binh is absolutely stunning. Sadly the flight service between Quang Binh and the major cities is pretty poor. It's quite a nice railway trip from Vinh though - the railway routes via the mountains in the province I live in, and there's some nice scenery on the way. I'd say to take the train at least once - it's quite an experience. Don't even think of taking it Hanoi-HCMC though.

The Mekong Delta river tours are ok but if you've done a similar one elsewhere (e.g. Cambodia), not worth bothering with.

Definitely see the war sights in Hanoi and HCMC - Hanoi Hilton, Reunification Palace, (the bonkers) Ho Chi Minh museum (in Hanoi), John McCain's shot down plane, the War Remnants museum, etc.

I recommend the sadly oft overlooked Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi too.

Hotels in Hanoi are significantly cheaper than those in HCMC.

It can take over an hour to get from Hanoi airport to downtown. My record from Sheraton to airport terminal in HCMC is 8 minutes, but I do not recommend that.

Outside the big cities, Phu Quoc is apparently interesting and my Vietnamese friends say Brits often like to go to Dien Bien Phu to make fun of the French.

typical

The food down south is better, I think - both street and restaurant

Yes, bia hoi is really something you just have to go with. I still prefer my beer cold, not iced though, especially if you're not sure where the ice has come from.

The cars aren't hard to avoid - there aren't enough of them - but you'd be crazy to step out in front of one. Wait until there's a gap (of cars - the bikes know how to keep out of your way).

scrubbedexpat141

Quality.

Thanks Typical, have printed your post as well. Going to get properly geeky and print a big map of Vietnam and start marking the places I want to go. Then work out how to do it....

kimilseung

The reward for travel is usually the people you meet; but I enjoyed Vietnam despite its people. Most places the bus conductor wants to charge you a crazy price, so you ask a fellow passenger and they tell you the real price, in Vietnam the practice when asking a fellow passenger was for them to shout to the conductor and ask what crazy price are you going to charge the foreigner?
One woman ask if she could practice her English with me, fine, so despite using me for free English lessons, when I found a motor bike and asked what the price was, he says fifty dollars, so I ask the woman, and she says, he said fifty dollars.

Anyway one place I would add that I do not think was mentioned, My Son Cham temples, it is a little bit out in the sticks and a nice trip to get to them, they are near Da Nang

scrubbedexpat141

You're not the first to say that you can have the piss taken. Was chatting to a friend who went and got ina cab from the airport, asked for Hotel XYZ.

Got taken to Hotel 123 instead and was told that she was going to stay there instead. In her words, it took "5 minutes of being the rudest person I've ever been" to get to the hotel she'd booked.

I might enjoy it.

Miss Anne Thrope

Ah yes - watch out for the rip-off taxis, especially in Hanoi but most places are walkable.

One thing you might not expect in east Asia: nice bread (legacy of the French).