Vietnam

Table of contents

Introduction

Route

At Saturday morning we arrived in Hanoi after making a quick stop in Taipei, I hoped to see the 101 tower but no such luck. I thought Thailand was a culture shock with the traffic, but Hanoi was utter chaos, cars and scooters everywhere. The sidewalk was a parking space for scooters and sometimes even cars, so pedestrians also use the road. When manouvring the sidewalks you could end up in the middle of a terrace or even a dishwashing tray, the people live on the streets in front of their home. There is a lot ofhonkinggoing on during the day, usually this is quite annoying but with the sharp corners in the mountains you're glad that you can count on people honking before they pass by.

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Hanoi

After one night in Hanoi we took the plane to Ho Chi Minh and then travel up north and visit Hanoi once more at the end. The first food experience was a nightmare, I ordered fried beef and vegetables and got cows intestines, I guess you could also see that as fried beef. It's pretty hard to find a good meal here, they eat absolutely anything. Nothing like Thailand, where anything you could order would taste good. Next stop is Nhà Tráng, a city at the beach, an 8 hour train ride which is an attraction in itself.

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Ho Chi Minh

We stayed in Ho Chi Minh for 2 nights, got a hotel in District 1 which is more or less the old town. We didn't do too much there, walking around town for a bit.

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Nha Trang

After the second night in Ho Chi Minh we had to wake up early to take the train to Nhà Tráng at 6am. We enjoyed our first bowl ofpho there, we also walked around for a bit, got a speedboat ferry to the island at the island there was an amusement park and a swimming paradise. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but the sky wheel was very nice, it offered a nice view over the skyline of Nhà Tráng. The second day we rented a scooter for the first time, which was way too scary in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh, we climbed a mountain with the scooter and climbed the other half to the lookout point, where we enjoyed the view of the other side of town.

On the first day someone tried to sell us something on the streets, it was a tour of a couple of hours including a mountain and waterfalls, maybe some swimming, but also making our own rice paper and having a good meal with those. It's a custom to put dry rice paper on the tabel, so you could roll your own spring roll. When dipping in soy sauce or some other watery sauce, the rice paper became soft.

They sell a lot on the streets, often sunglasses. I got some sandals on a market and got a Vietnamese cap for free. Another guy on the beach tried to sell ussilk paintingswhich were beautiful, but unfortunately a bit of a drag to haul around for 3 weeks.

Unfortunately we didn't make it to the tour on the second day due to sickness and the plan was to leave to Da Nang on the third day, the evening after I went for a dive at the other side of that island.

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Da Nang & Hoi An

Da Nang was similar to Nhà Tráng (although much less like a resort) so we combined it with a scooter trip to Hoi An, which is an old town. Everything was preserved because of Unesco world heritage. We took a boat tour there and it was very nice to see. I felt the Vietnam vibe here more than before, I think it would have been even more beautiful at night with the many lanterns hanging everywhere. The next day we went to marble mountains. The five mountains are named after the five elements: Kim (metal), Thuy (water), Moc (wood), Hoa (fire) and Tho (earth). From above they would resemble a hand. All of the mountains have cave entrances and numerous tunnels. Several Buddhist sanctuaries can be found there.

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Hue

One thing we noticed throughout the journey is the outdoorsy lifestyle they have here, half of the living room is outside, they don't even bother putting in a front wall. Often the living room is used as a store, a restaurant, a massage salon, barbershop or even a garage for a scooter rental. Also a lot of people have a little shrine in the middle of their living room. Restaurants use the sidewalks to do the dishes in huge tubs. It needs some getting used to, but it just works here. Even in little alleys where a person could barely walk they have these stores. They manage to squeeze their scooters through. I don't think I will ever get used to the menu though.

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Dong Hoi

From Da Nang we took a sleeper train to Dong Hoi, it was during the day and took only 3 hours, but a sleeper is so much more comfortable and it barely costs more.

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Phong Nha

We didn't really had anything planned for Dong Hoi, but we needed to go there to be able to go on to Phòng Nhà. Phòng meaning wind and Nhà meaning teeth, referring to stalactites and stalagmites. There are kilometers of cave to be found there, though the biggest one would cost about 3000 USD to explore. But there were a lot of alternatives. We chose to explore Paradise Cave and Phòng Nhà cave. First one was by foot and the second one by boat. The day before that we rented a scooter to explore around the village. We slept at a home stay and it was very nice, they arranged everything for us. The brother of the hostess brought us back to Dong Hoi, where we could take the sleeper train to Ninh Binh.

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Ninh Binh

The sleeper train arrived at 3am, so we spent the rest of the night in a hotel. Ninh Binh was recommended for the scenery, but it couldn't compete with Phòng Nhà. Something that is worth mentioning however, is that we rented a scooter to explore and we ordered a coffee half way. We were given a Vietnamese coffee with atiny filter. She said she could have given us ready made coffee, but she gave us this so we could enjoy the scenery while waiting.

At the end of our road trip it started raining, at a certain point we were soaking wet and it wouldn't stop raining, so at the end of the day we took the bus to Ha Long Bay.

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Ha Long Bay

In Ha Long Bay we booked a 5-star hotel which was on a hilltop, it had a lot of facilities and offered a nice view over the city and the bay. Also there was an all you can eat breakfast so we made good use of that. It was also the busiest hotel so far, which was quite nice. Most of the hotels we booked were empty, still suffering from the consequences of COVID-19.

The second day we booked a cruise through the bay, which is more or less a must when you go to Ha Long. We were the only 2 on the boat, so it was more or less a private cruise. We walked through another cave and we also rented a canoe to be able to see yet another cave.

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Back in Hanoi

The first time we were in Hanoi we missed thetrain street, although in hindsight we noticed that our hotel was just one street away. This time around we booked a hotel in the same area, we wanted to be in the old town again and old town Hanoi isn't too big. When we went to our room and sat down on the balcony, we noticed a train passing by, so we booked a hotel next to train street by accident.

At first it was a happy accident, but every 30 minutes a train came passing by. Because people are living on train street and use the tracks as their terrace, the train always passes by with a lot of loud honking to notice the people that they have to move their stuff inside. This left us with not a lot of sleep.

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Ha Giang

We went to the far north of Vietnam to do the Ha Giang loop tour, it is a route of around 450 kilometers in total. Usually people do that on a bike or they choose to be driven by a guide (an easy rider). We also chose to be driven, but in our case we chose a car. I don't really like to be on the back of a bike, I'd rather drive myself, but I'm not really comfortable driving a non-automatic bike. This choice was quite fortunate, because the second day it was really foggy and rainy. With a view of around 5 meters it's quite scary drive alongside cliffs. We were in a group with 3 others, who chose to go by bike.

It was a really nice tour, in total it took 3 days, including meals and spending nights in home stays. In the home stays we met other people who also did the tour, we did a lot of karaoke, drank 'happy water' which is called rượu Vietnam, had great meals like we didn't have before and spent time between the locals. It was like being really submerged in the culture. I'm glad we started in the south and went up north, because everything became increasingly beautiful.

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Back in Hanoi again

We had to go back to Hanoi again, because our plane left from Hanoi airport. This time we decided to go to a hotel in a newer part of town, it was a 5-star hotel but it had absolutely no facilities and it was empty, I don't have a clue why this hotel ever got 5 stars. There wasn't anything going on in the neighbourhood either, so we decided to get up early and go back to the old town again to explore some more and to get some souvenirs on the market.