As we approached Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport we felt nervous excitement. Partly because it would be our first taste of a 100% Asian culture, where we couldn’t speak a word of the language, and partly because it was our first visit to a communist country. Just arranging our travel plans to go to Vietnam was interesting. First, we had to apply for visas. We had never had to do that before. All of the other countries we have ever visited simply approved a visa upon arrival as part of going through immigration. Second, when I purchased the tickets for our flights from Singapore to Hanoi, it cost almost 2 million Vietnamese Dong!!
As we touched down in Hanoi, cold war images bounced around in my mind. I pictured serious looking military/security officers with smart, freshly pressed uniforms and automatic weapons looking us over at immigration. I imagined immigration being more of an interrogation than a welcome: “Why have you come to Vietnam? - Where are you staying? - Who are you meeting? - What are you going to do?” etc., etc. Then I wondered if, after we got into Vietnam and got on-line, what websites would we be prohibited from accessing and what other censorship might we encounter?
Well, our initial arrival in Vietnam was quite uneventful. First, we never had to fill out any paperwork on the plane prior to our arrival. I don’t think we’ve ever visited a country where we didn’t have to fill out some type of immigration form before entry. Then, after we reached the gate and were waiting to get off the plane, there was mellow English pop music playing through the plane’s intercom system. And it wasn’t because we were on an English speaking Singaporean or American airline - we flew in on VietJet, a Vietnamese airline. Immigration was completely non-eventful. We both went through immigration and customs separately without the inspection officers uttering a single word to either of us. No one even checked if we had proof of an outbound flight to leave the country. In a way, it was quite disappointing. Granted, we did have to apply for a visa before we arrived, but the process was quite simple and not very many questions were asked. Honestly, I think their visa requirement is more of a revenue generator than it is a security precaution. Visa applications are $25 USD each. Vietnam had 18 million visitors in 2019. I’m not certain if all of those visitors from all different countries had to pay $25USD but, if they did, that adds up to nearly a half billion US dollars.
But once we got out of the airport, it didn’t take long for Vietnam to deliver on a wealth of new experiences. We had arranged for a driver to pick us up and drive us to our Airbnb. First thing I noticed was that we were back to driving on the right side of the road. For the past 6-months+ we had been in countries where cars drove on the left side of the road. We arrived in the dark. Best I could tell, the freeway seemed nice and modern. We could see downtown high-rises that were beautifully lit up with different displays. At one point there were two identical towers that somehow created images of flower petals gently falling from the sky. We crossed a rather long bridge that was also beautifully lit up. Then we started getting into some pretty busy traffic with less maintained roads and tons of people on scooters. We would be staying in the Old Quarter and the deeper we got into the city the worse the roads got and the more traffic increased. Soon, we were in a maze of cars, bicycles, scooters and pedestrians all seemingly traveling in their own directions without much regard for each other – but, somehow, there were never any collisions.
We made it to our Airbnb, dropped off our stuff and headed out to find an ATM and get some dinner. By this time, it was around 8:00PM on a Saturday night and there were several lively street markets going on. The street markets were extra colorful in anticipation of the upcoming lunar new year at the end of January. In Vietnam, the lunar new year is known as “Tet”. Red and yellow Tet decorations were everywhere to be seen, along with a few left-over Christmas decorations ( almost 10% of Vietnamese are Christian – a legacy from their time under French colonial rule).
We strolled through the street markets. Cars were prohibited on most of the streets but you had to keep alert and dodge all of the scooters that would come riding through honking their horns. All types of products and food were being sold on the street. All different types of smells were wafting through the air – good and bad – but mostly good. We hit an ATM and then found a Korean BBQ place that turned out to be quite good.
The next morning, we headed out into perfect weather – well, I thought it was perfect after the stifling heat in Singapore – Janne thought it was cold. It was around 62f (17c) and overcast. We walked over to check out the Dong Xuan Market where you can buy just about anything you can imagine. It is a pretty big place (3 stories tall) and absolutely packed. The aisles between the stands are only about 3-4ft (1m) wide.
After the Dong Xuan market, we found a little place to get breakfast. It was really good and really inexpensive. Janne got an iced peach tea and a coconut bun (a kind of role) and I got an egg coffee (a Vietnamese drink which is traditionally prepared with coffee, egg yolks, sugar and condensed milk) and a cream cheese bun. I was still hungry, so after I finished my cream cheese bun, I bought a coconut bun. Grand total for the 2 drinks and 3 buns was $110,000 VD (around $4.75 USD).
First morning in Hanoi. Yummy breakfast. Grab "bike" drivers.
Vietnam is about the size of Florida. It has a population of nearly 100 million, with about 10% of them living in Hanoi. Traffic is crazy and pollution is terrible. People get around on scooters. I would say scooters outnumber cars on the streets of Hanoi by around 10:1. There is no Uber in Vietnam. Everyone uses a rideshare company called Grab. When you use Grab, you have a choice of calling a “car” or a “bike”, which is a scooter. There are TONS of Grab scooter drivers around Hanoi. They are easy to spot with green jackets and green helmets. When we ate our breakfast, we had a good vantage spot to watch a group of Grab scooter drivers waiting for a fare. A few of them would often walk away from the group to a tree to sit down, or rather squat, as they do here, and take a hit off a water pipe (aka: bong). I walked by them later and confirmed they were not smoking pot. We saw this happen several times in the days following and I asked a local about it and was told that it is just a very, very strong type of tobacco they were smoking.
After breakfast, we decided to walk back to our AirBnB apartment to get settled and do some laundry before going back out in the afternoon for a walking food tour that we had signed up for. On the way we passed many shops and street stands. We passed two stands next to each other that were selling cooked dogs. No, not hotdogs – dogs. They had about 7-10 dogs piled up on a table. I asked the lady to confirm that they were really dogs. I approached her and said “Chó?”, which is “dog” in Vietnamese. She looked at me and said “dog”. I asked how much and she said it was $200,000 VD per/kilo (about $4 USD per/lb.). She asked me if I wanted to try a sample. I politely declined. I asked if I could take a picture but she immediately said “no”. I said “cảm ơn bạn” (thank you) and moved on. I asked the lady at the next stand over if I could take a picture, but she also said “no”. We found out later that, effective 2021, the government will ban the selling of dog meat.
Later that day we did a walking food tour. It was awesome! We paid to join a group tour, but we were the only ones that signed up for that day so we got a private tour for the price of a group tour. Our guide was a young Vietnamese man that went by the name of Oliver. He was a great guide with a happy attitude and the ability to weave Vietnamese culture and history into the food tour. We went to 7 different places and, along the way, we took in several tourist sights including a street market, Hoan Kiem Lake and St. Joseph’s Cathedral.
Our first stop on the food tour was at a place to get bún cá (fish soup). After that we stopped at a place for “dry chicken noodle” and “sticky rice & chicken”. After that we headed to a place where we tried several different finger foods and a beer. Next place we got some kind of pancake stuffed with mushrooms and I don’t know what else. Then we went to another place for bún chả (a kind of pork and noodle soup) that was really good. We were totally stuffed by now, but we continued on to the next stop for desert (fresh fruit with coconut milk) and then finished off with egg coffees at one of the original places it was created back in the 1940’s. It was in a total hole in the wall that you would never, ever find on your own but, once you made it all the way into the back and then upstairs, it was packed.
The money in Vietnam is all paper bills – there are no coins. The reason for this is because their money has a relatively low value. $1 US equates to 23,000 Vietnamese Dong. When I went to the ATM, I would pull out $130USD and it equated to 3 million VD! It takes a while to get the math straight in your head. I thought US dollars might be widely accepted here but they are not. The bills are colorful and of different sizes based on value, but they are not as interesting as they could be. This is because every single denomination includes a portrait of Ho Chi Minh on the front.
Day two in Hanoi was a blast. We got a late breakfast at a small hole in the wall for $4 USD. Janne says we had Pho, but I’m not so sure. All I can tell you is it was some kind of soup with some kind of meat, greens and rice noodles. Oh, and it was good. From breakfast we headed to Hoan Kiem Lake. We crossed the Huc Bridge to Jade Island in the center of the lake where we visited the Ngoc Son Temple (also known as “The Temple of Jade Mountain”). The Temple was built in the 18th century to honor a Vietnamese military leader. It was a peaceful temple with bronze busts and statues of deities. The sweet smell of incense permeated the air. Then we got overrun by a grade school field trip – ha ha!
Breakfast Huc Bridge Ngoc Son Temple
From the temple, we decided to visit the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. This is a museum composed of the remnants of the infamous Maison Centrale prison, also known as the “Hanoi Hilton”, where John McCain and Pete Peterson, among others, were held as POWs during The Vietnam War or, as they refer to it here, The American War. We decided to give our legs and feet a rest and take a “bike rikshaw” to the museum. The rikshaws are also knows as “cyclos” which is a fitting name. The name doesn’t fit because they are fast, it fits because they take you through a veritable cyclone of traffic. Cars and an uncountable number of scooters come whizzing by from all directions. Even though you are just sitting in the seat, it will get your heart rate up! Our trip was a little extra exciting due to a miscommunication. I asked the driver to take us to the "Hoa Lo Prison Museum" but he didn't understand me so I said "Hanoi Hilton". Well, about 10 minutes later we arrived at .... you guessed it ... the Hilton Hotel in Hanoi and not the prison formerly known as the “Hanoi Hilton”. No worries though, he pedaled on to the prison and we settled up when we got there. I didn’t mind paying him extra because the error was half my fault and I have to admit a pang of guilt going to a museum in the middle of his city to see where they kept American pilots that literally bombed the shit out of Hanoi and killed a lot of civilians.
The Hoa Lo Prison Museum was quite interesting. The history of the American POWs during the Vietnam War was actually a minor piece of the prison’s history. Most of the displays and historical pieces revolved around the fight for Vietnam independence from the French. The info that they did have relative to the U.S. was both interesting and, at times, inaccurate. They had information on Pete Peterson, who was held in the prison for over six years and then later became America’s first Ambassador to Vietnam in 1997. They also had information on John McCain who spent well over five years as a POW there. He was a prize captive as his father was an Admiral in the US Navy.
The museum painted an inaccurate and rosy picture of how the American POW’s were treated. They had pictures of them socializing outside and playing basketball. The displays stressed how well the American prisoners were treated. There was no mention of torture, food/sleep/medicine deprivation or the “Hanoi March” when, on July 6, 1966, the North Vietnamese Army paraded 52 American POWs through the streets of Hanoi. The prisoners had to pass by tens of thousands of angry North Vietnamese civilians. The march soon deteriorated into near riot conditions, with civilians beating the POWs as they made their way along the 2 mile (3.2 km) route, while the prison guards were largely unable, or unwilling, to restrain the attacks. That being said, it is important to remember that the Vietnamese didn’t necessarily think of their American captives as POW’s (Prisoners Of War) because America never made a formal declaration of War. Some of the Vietnamese thought of their American captives as criminals and, well, murderers.
While the American captives certainly suffered, the Vietnamese likely treated their American captives more humanely than the French treated the Vietnamese “revolutionary fighters” trying to get their country back. The French used some nasty, nasty torture techniques that I won’t go into here. Thousands were killed by formal execution (many of them by that most efficient killing machine: the guillotine) and thousands more died due to the inhumane treatment they received.
Visiting the prison was a sobering experience. It did change my perspective of the Vietnam War. I didn’t buy all of the “sugar coating” of how U.S. prisoners were treated, but combining what I saw at the museum with what I had recently read about different parts of Vietnam’s history, I left with a different, more empathetic view of the Vietnamese people. After hundreds of years spent fighting the Chinese, European colonials, the Japanese and then the Americans, one has to appreciate the tenacity of the Vietnamese people to finally achieve their independence. That’s really the beauty of travel. It opens your eyes to different points of view. It lets you view history through a different prism. Mark Twain put it better than I ever could:
“travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
Visiting the prison was a bit of a “heavy experience”. Luckily, the rest of that afternoon and evening would be quite light hearted and enjoyable. We started off by diving into a café near St. Joseph’s Cathedral. We sat out on a second story terrace and watched people pass by while Janne enjoyed peach tea and I had a coconut coffee. After that, we went to a traditional water puppet show. The show was held at the Than Long Water Puppet Theatre which has been running water puppet shows continuously since 1969. It was a unique experience. The water puppetry was interesting on its own but it was greatly enhanced by being combined with a live orchestra of 7 musicians playing traditional Vietnamese instruments along with two dedicated singers. It was a great way to end our second full day in Hanoi.
We started our third, and final, day in Hanoi by visiting one of the icons of Communism, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. In the tradition of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum is a monumental edifice. “Uncle Ho”, as he is lovingly referred to, is the father of Vietnam. He is like Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Lincoln all wrapped up into one. His story is a very interesting one and I look forward to reading a biography someday. The mausoleum is a very revered place. There is a lot of security, symbolism and iconography around the mausoleum. Lines often stretch for hundreds of yards for an opportunity to solemnly enter the mausoleum and walk past “The Great Leader’s” embalmed body as it lays inside a dimly lit glass case surrounded by an honor guard. Interesting fact: for about 2-months each year, the mausoleum is closed and Ho Chi Minh’s body is sent to Moscow for “maintenance”.
I’m not sure what “Uncle Ho” would have thought of the mausoleum. In his will, he requested a simple cremation. Part of what endeared Ho Chi Minh to the people of Vietnam was his ability to connect to the everyday person as exemplified by Ho Chi Minh’s stilt house. Next to the mausoleum is the Presidential Palace. Ho Chi Minh refused to live in the Presidential Palace while his people suffered from poverty and war. He had a modest stilt house built in the palace gardens behind the Palace, and lived there from 1958 until his death in 1969. We were able to walk through the stilt house after we visited the mausoleum.
Visiting the mausoleum was a serious experience, but our mood was quickly lightened when, about a half hour later, we were visiting a temple and an orange robed monk walked past us and ripped a super loud fart! I wish I took a picture of the guy but I didn’t.
Later that afternoon we visited the Ho Chi Minh Museum. The museum was not at all what we expected. It was almost more an art museum than a historical museum. It was kind of neat in a way. I think it was trying to use art to express some of Ho Chi Minh’s teachings. For example, here is the explanation for the art installation pictured below, “The symbols of nature in its beauty contrasted with the image of industrial plants in this hall represent Uncle Ho’s expectation that young people shoulder the responsibility for the protection and preservation of peace and the environment, and prevention of aggressive and destructive wars.”
After touring the mausoleum, Presidential Palace, Stilt House and the HCM Museum. We were getting tired. We debated whether to walk on or catch a Grab (like Uber) home. We elected to walk on and we were glad we did. We were quickly rewarded by stumbling on to the “Hanoi Train Street”. This street has long been a tourist draw in Hanoi. It is a super narrow alley where, a couple of times a day, a freight train comes barreling through and just barely misses hitting people and shop awnings by mere inches. We were bummed to find out that the street had been closed to tourists in Oct 2019. But we happened upon it and took a picture or two of the alley and the guard blocking the entrance.
We had one more stop to make in the afternoon before heading back to our apartment. I wanted pictures of those cooked dogs that were for sale. I decided we would head back past the stands and I would complete a mission of stealth photography. It worked out pretty well. I got a few good shots and the shop keepers were none the wiser.
We decided to spend our last night in Hanoi at the Hanoi Opera House. It was built by the French in 1911 and modeled after the Palais Garnier, the older of Paris’s two opera houses. We took in a show called “Lang Toi” (My Village). The show was developed in Vietnam in the early 2000’s and has traveled throughout Europe and Asia. It is now the number one show for foreign travelers in Hanoi. It is a merge of tradition and innovation, where Vietnamese village life is presented in a cirque-type approach while blending traditional Vietnamese folk music played by an orchestra with over 20 exotic traditional musical instruments.
After the show, we walked a few blocks looking for somewhere to get dinner. We wanted a “real restaurant” where we could sit down indoors away from the constant traffic noise and pollution. We tucked into what appeared to be a higher-end fast food chain called “Pepper Lunch”. It ended up being a really fun experience. We learned the chain is based out of Japan and has locations throughout SE Asia. I ordered their take on beef sukiyaki (which is one of my favorites and not offered in very many places in the States) and Janne got some noodle dish. What we didn’t realize, until they brought us our food, was that it was served to us, while still cooking, on super-hot iron skillets, similar to what you would get when you order fajitas at a Mexican restaurant, except with higher edges – kind of like a frying pan without the handle. Anyway, the food was really good and, again, really inexpensive.
Vietnam is a country of around 96 million people. It is the easternmost country on the Southeast Asian Indochinese Peninsula. It shares its land borders with China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the east. It is a long country running north/south. We decided that we would start, in the north visiting Hanoi and Halong Bay. Then we would visit Hoi An, in the middle of the country, before heading south to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).
Now that we were done with our 3-days in Hanoi, it was time to head to Halong Bay. This was something we were really looking forward to. We liked Hanoi, but we were ready for a break from the intense noise and pollution. Halong Bay seemed like the perfect place to relax a bit. We “splurged” on a higher-end cruise and spent more for a 3-day cruise than our normal expenses would be over a 2-3 week time period. With the exception of our airfare from Copenhagen to Auckland, it was the largest single expense over the entire time we have been traveling.
It is about a 2-hour drive from Hanoi to Halong Bay. Like I said, we splurged on this cruise so it included round trip shuttle transport from Hanoi. The shuttle van picked us up at a hotel just around the corner from the AirBnB we were staying at. It looked like a normal van from the outside but it was pretty pimped out on the inside with wood paneling, leather bucket seats, individual A/C vents and light displays running along the roof. We hopped in the shuttle and moved to the back seats as there were already 3 other people in the van. We pretty much immediately made friends with the other people in the van. We met Mark from Boston, and Nerissa and Dan from Canada. We chatted pretty much the whole way to Halong Bay and shared stories of our recent travels as we were all hitting multiple countries in SE Asia. In Halong Bay, Mark was going on a 1-night cruise and Dan and Nerissa, like us, were going on a 2-night cruise. The cruise company we were using has several different vessels so we didn’t really think we would all be on the same ship – especially since Mark was doing a 1-night and the rest of us were doing a 2-night.
When we arrived at Halong Bay and checked in for our cruises, we were pleased to find out that we would all be on the same ship! After waiting about a half-hour and downing a round of beers, we were told it was time to board our vessel. As we boarded the ship, rose pedals were dropped down on us from an upper deck. The 5 of us hung out for the entire cruise, enjoying meals, excursions and good conversation.
Depending on what list you look at, Halong Bay is often listed as one of the “7 natural wonders of the world”. Halong Bay is filled with 1,969 granite isles or “karsts”. It is truly a sight to behold. As soon as we dumped our bags in our room, Janne and I headed to the top deck to take in some fresh ocean air and relative quiet – a welcome respite after the hustle and bustle of Hanoi and its population of 9 million people and probably 10 million honking scooters.
Shortly after we boarded, the ship left the harbor and headed out into the bay. Lunch was served and then we took an excursion to Sung Sot Cave. This is a massive cave located inside one of the larger islands in the bay. Later that same afternoon, we took another excursion to the Tung Sau Pearl Farm. It was a pretty interesting tour of a floating pearl farm. I had naively thought that to make a pearl you just open up an oyster and insert a grain of sand and, viola, you’ll have a pearl after some period of time. It is actually much, much more complicated than that. Man-made, or cultured, pearls have only been around for a little over 100 years. Some of the pearls grown at this farm took up to eight years to fully develop. The 5 of us finished the day sharing dinner and trading stories about where we had traveled. It was great because we all had already been somewhere that the other person was on their way to. For example, Dan and Nerissa had just been in Siem Reap in Cambodia and Mark, Janne and I all had plans to go there within the next couple of weeks.
The cruise offered Tai Chi every morning at sunrise on the top deck. That sounded really cool to us and we had planned to participate but we just never quite made it. The cruise also offered squid fishing off the boat in the evening. Mark and I gave it a try but we didn’t even get a nibble. We didn’t see anyone else catching anything either, although the staff claimed that guests had caught a few the night before.
The second day of the cruise started off with us saying “au revoir” to Mark and then we
took an excursion to Ti Top Island. This island is considered one of the most beautiful islands in Halong Bay and it is one of only a few islands that has a beach. We hiked up to a pagoda on the very top of the island and earned ourselves a great view. The island has an interesting history. Formerly named Cat Nang Island, it is now named after Russian cosmonaut Gehrman Titov, who, in 1961 boarded the spaceship Vostok 2 and became the second man to orbit the earth (just a few months after Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight). Titov was the first human to orbit the earth several times (a total of 17) as well as the first person to sleep in space and the first person to suffer from space sickness (as well as the first person to vomit in space). A year later, in 1962, Titov visited Vietnam and toured Halong Bay with Ho Chi Minh. The two became friends and later, after consulting with the locals, Uncle Ho changed the name of the island to Titov Island in honor of the brave cosmonaut. The island is also known as Cemetery Island to the locals. This is because, in 1905, a French cargo ship failed to navigate through the many neighboring islands and sunk. The entire crew were lost and all were buried on the island.
After hiking Ti Top Island, we had a huge lunch and then explored Cua Van, one of only
two floating villages left in Halong Bay. The people here live on boats and most make their living fishing. These last two floating villages won't be around for much longer. The government is in the final stages of relocating them to the mainland where, among other things, there will be proper schools for the children. After visiting the floating fishing village, we explored the bay by kayak! We paddled to a specific island and paddled up into the mouth of a cave. We then hiked through the cave and popped out on the other side of the island to where we were greeted with a view of a beautiful small beach. So, to recap the day, we hiked to the summit of Ti Top Island, explored a floating fishing village, kayaked through the bay and hiked through an island via a cave in order to visit a secluded beach - a very full day, indeed!
We really enjoyed the company of our new friends, Dan and Nerissa from Canada. In a happy coincidence, Dan and Nerissa’s travel itinerary closely mirrored our own. It turned out that, after the cruise, all four of us were headed to Hoi An and then, 4 days later, we were all leaving Hoi An to go on to Ho Chi Minh City. So, we had some good traveling buddies to hang out with the for the next week or so.
The next morning, we took the shuttle from Halong Bay to the airport in Hanoi, flew to Danang, and then drove for about 40 minutes from Danang to Hoi An. I had pictured Hoi An as a quaint, smaller town with quiet walking streets. It didn’t quite meet that expectation. First of all, it was pretty much non-stop city from Danang to Hoi An. I had kind of expected that we would be driving through rural areas, overlooking rice fields, etc. – nope. The town was much larger than I expected. I had pictured the main “old town” area to be about 4 blocks square but it was much larger than that. I new it would be very touristy, but it was super touristy. We enjoyed walking around the town and through the streets but, after a few blocks, you saw 90% of what you were going to see on the next block. That being said, we did enjoy our first day there. We walked through the streets, often cutting through a side street that didn't look very promising to see if we could find a hidden gem. We found a shop with original artwork and bought a painting - the first real souvenir purchase after traveling for well over a year. Another place, Janne found a silk top that she really loved. We walked along the Thu Bon River and had a good lunch at a cafe. Later, that night, we visited a night market and had an assortment of street food for dinner. This first street stand we visited was run by a super high-energy woman who may have been 5 feet if she was wearing heels. She was offering barbecued skewers, frogs, octopus and pork belly. We opted for the pork belly and it was delicious. We visited other street stands and bought a banh mi sandwich, as well as banana pancakes with nutella for dessert. After our street food buffet, we walked back to our hotel along the river. The river was beautifully illuminated by boats with lights and floating candle lanterns.
Where we bought painting. Thu Bon River We opted for the pork belly
We were going to be in Hoi An for 3 days and seemed like 2-days would be sufficient, so we decided to take a day trip with our Canadian travel partners to the “Golden Bridge” in the Ba Na Hills. We had seen pictures of this bridge before and it looked pretty impressive. The pictures showed two immense hands holding a bridge. It seemed like it would be a really cool thing to check out. We also knew that you could take a cable car to it and that the weather would be cooler up in the hills. The bridge was relatively new, having just opened in June 2018. So, the 4 of us hired a driver and set off for a day trip to the Ba Na Hills. We really didn’t know what to expect other than some sort of cable car ride and what looked like a really cool bridge.
It turned out that our destination was a theme park of sorts. One of many owned by a company called Sun World. The park we went to, Sun World Ba Na, had as its main attraction a re-creation of a classical French village complete with a town square, church, shops and an inn. Along with the French village were many seemingly incongruous items such as pagodas, an enormous Buddha, a 4-story video game arcade and a network of cable cars that set some world records for length and the number of people they can move (nearly 7,000 passengers per hour). And of course, there was the attraction that drew us out there in the first place: The Golden Bridge…….
After 3 days in Hoi An, we headed further south to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly known as Saigon. We had a 9-day house sit in HCMC. We were looking after two 5-month old dachshunds (aka: wiener dogs). They were quite a handful but we did enjoy their company after not having any animals around since early January when we were in Melbourne. We didn’t really do a ton of stuff in HCMC. There are 3 main reasons for this. First, there just really aren’t that many things in HCMC that interested us. Second, it was really hot and humid, so we sought the shelter of air conditioning from late morning until dark. Third, we were there during Tet, the lunar new year, which is the biggest celebration of the year in Vietnam and many, many businesses were closed. For around 5 days it was like Christmas day back in the States – pretty much everything was closed.
Even though we didn’t do a ton of stuff in HCMC, we did manage to have a few interesting days out. One of our first nights in town, we went on a food tour with our new Canadian friends. This wasn’t just a normal walking food tour though; it was a scooter food tour where each of us hopped on the back of a scooter driven by a Vietnamese student and we headed out into the insanity that is Ho Chi Minh City traffic. The four of us met up about an hour before the tour was to start and got a drink in a hotel lobby bar. Janne ordered an Aperol Spritz to buck up her courage as she was feeling a little hesitant to take her life into her own hands, or actually put it into the hands of a young Vietnamese student, in the crazy traffic. After we completed our first venture out into the streaming current of 2 and 4-wheel vehicles, we parked the scooters and I walked over to Janne to see if she was doing OK. She was super excited and had a crazy look in her eyes. She was super-pumped up. I thought for sure she was going to tell us that we had to buy Harleys when we moved back home or something. The food tour really was a lot of fun. We ended up going to 6 or 7 different places and trying some more good food. Highlights of the food were actually the drinks. At one spot we got a drink made from sugar cane. They had a machine that crushed the sugar cane stock right in front of you. The other drink that we really liked was orange in color but I can’t remember what it was – maybe some kind of tea.
Another day we headed to District 1, which is the main tourist area of HCMC. First, we
walked through a park enjoying the old-growth trees and watching people doing tai-chi. Then we headed to the Independence Palace. This was the Presidential Palace before South Vietnam fell in 1975. It was an interesting place to visit from a historical perspective but it was not very “palatial”. Honestly, if you took down the Vietnamese flag in the front, it could have been an office building in Torrance, CA. The original palace was built by the French in 1878 and became known as Norodom Palace. In 1955, after the Vietnamese kicked out the French, the palace was renamed Independence Palace. In 1962, during the Vietnam War, the palace was bombed in a coup attempt by the South Vietnam Air Force. The palace was badly damaged and it was decided to completely scrape it and build a new one. The new palace was completed in 1966. In 1975, a tank from the North Vietnamese Army crashed through the front gates of the palace and effectively ended the Vietnam War. The palace’s official name is Independence Palace, but since the end of the war it has also been known as Reunification Palace.
From Independence Palace, we walked a couple blocks through a green belt with tall trees that provided shade from the morning sun. Our next destination was Notre Dame Cathedral. The cathedral was built by the French from 1863-1880. We didn’t go inside as it was under maintenance and it also had lunar new year decorations all over. We then crossed the street to the post office – known as the Central Office. It was constructed by the French from 1886-1891. Some books credit Gustave Eiffel as being the chief architect but then some other sources say that is not accurate.
On one of our last nights in HCMC we took a dinner cruise down the Saigon River. We started the evening off by going to the Hotel Majestic which is one of the more historic hotels in Saigon. It is a 5-star hotel that was originally constructed in 1925. We enjoyed happy hour at the roof-top bar and looked over the city and the Saigon River as the sun went down. Once it was dark, we headed to our ship for the cruise. On the way to the cruise, our driver pointed out a large statue of Thich Quảng Đức on the corner of a major intersection. Thich Quảng Đức was the Buddhist monk that set himself ablaze during the Vietnam war to protest, not the war, but the way that the corrupt (and Catholic) South Vietnamese government was treating the Buddhist population. He is now regarded as one of Vietnam’s heroes.
We had fun on the cruise, but it wasn’t great. The food was quite bland and the on-board entertainment was hit and miss. First, there were 3 young women that danced in traditional dress to what I guess was Vietnamese music but I wouldn’t call it “traditional” as it had a lot of electric guitar in it. The girls were terrible dancers. One of the three girls, instead of smiling toward the audience, spent most of her time watching the other two girls in order to know what to do. The entertainment that came on after the dancers was great though. It was a family of 3 and they played traditional music on traditional instruments - some made of bamboo or stone. We really liked their act. We also thought the ship itself was pretty nice.
All in all, we really liked Vietnam. We found the people to be very friendly and the culture to be beautiful. We felt safe pretty much everywhere we went. The food was great and prices were good.
One the down side, it was too hot for me in some areas (especially HCMC) but Janne likes it warmer than I do and she didn't seem to mind. The main drawbacks we found were traffic and pollution. Another downside that we learned about, but did not experience first hand, is corruption. One of the best things about doing a food tour is that you get to interact with a local. We did two food tours while in Vietnam. Oliver, our guide in Hanoi, shared with us that he wanted to be a teacher but confided he was unable to get hired because he did not have the proper connections. One of our guides in HCMC shared with us that he was held by the police for drunk driving and had to pay 7 million VD (close to $300USD) for them to let him go on his way as if nothing had ever happened.
While we did get to check out 4 different cities, and we traveled from north to south with a stop in the center, we wish we would have had time to see more of Vietnam. We wished we were able to visit Da Lat, which is a city in the southern highlands. It was founded by the French in the 1900’s as a place to escape the stifling heat and humidity in Saigon (current day HCMC). Da Lat sits at an elevation of 4,900ft (1,500m) and is known as “the city of eternal spring”. Should we ever return to Vietnam, we’ll have to be sure to hit Da Lat.
Below are a few more random pictures from our time in Vietnam. As always, you can find more pictures in the “Gallery” section of this website.
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