Vietnam

This country was a recent addition to my trip. I had heard different views about coming here, that the people were concerned only with removing your U.S. dollars from you in any way they could, and I wasn’t real sure I wanted to see the country I only knew of because of eight or nine years of negative television news reports when I was a kid. Eventually my curiosity, and a fellow traveler’s insight that Vietnam was perhaps the fastest-changing country in Asia, persuaded me to go.

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Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

The former capital of South Vietnam before it fell to the communists in 1975, Saigon is still the financial center of the re-unified country. First impressions consist of two things: the city is organized, tree lined, and the buildings still show traces of French influence, giving the place a nice comfortable feel. Next, you are overwhelmed by the vehicular traffic, consisting of mostly motorbikes. In a city of 7.5 million people there are over 2 million scooters. This makes crossing any street, especially the large thoroughfares, a life-threatening experience demanding a steely nerve and quick feet.

Finally, visitors are struck by the hugely commercial nature of the city. Billboards crowd the streets and buildings. Every roadside is crowded with shops selling items of all possible description. Though the major fast food enterprises haven’t made it here yet, all the western consumer-brands have. Marlboro, Sony, Coca-cola, Pepsi, Honda, Hard Rock Cafe. This is the town that the Communists defeated?

Visits

Mekong Delta

This is where wealth is built in South Vietnam. Rice is the biggest cash crop and the seasons allow two crops a year, as opposed to only one in the North. The rice makes people prosperous, but still it’s an agrarian culture. Clusters of small wood and thatch houses dot the countryside, and simple brick structures in the more populated areas. There are tens of thousands of tributaries and canals off the Mekong river here, and where the land is not cultivated jungle grows thick and tangled. I was impressed at how simple the lifestyles are of the farmers here. Rarely did I see any mechanazied farm tools with the exception of air-cooled fantail boat motors. The rest of the place is quiet and covered with crops.

Dalat

A welcome respite from the tropical heat of Saigon, Dalat is a five hour bus ride into the mountains northeast of Saigon. This is a big tourist town for the Vietnamese, and especially for lovers and newlyweds, but aside from a few scenic waterfalls and temples, Dalat left me a little flat, being rather a ramshackle cement town with nothing very special. Maybe it’s because the main tourist attraction, the lake, had been drained for dam repairs.

Ca Na

With the exception of a few passing tourist busses this town is empty, despite it’s pristine long beach. It is home, however, to nearly two thousand fishing boats that you can see plodding out to sea each evening at sunset, their neon fish-attracting lights bobbing along throughout the night. Tourism is coming though. In the hotel where I stayed they were knocking down 25 year old reinforced machine gun turrets and replacing them with beach bungalows. On the way to Ca Na I ventured into the real world and took the local bus. For the first three hours I was crammed into an impossibly small seat with two others. Asian busses are not made for people of my dimension. On the second ride I sat up front on a bench. When a 75 year-old lady got on and sat next to me she leaned right over on me and used my leg as an armrest for three hours, just like I was her own grandchild. It made an interesting sight, but considering my traveling partner had already started a fight with the bus conductor I decided not to break out the cameras for the photo opportunity.

Nha Trang

This is what might be the future of the Vietnam seaside, and it would be a real shame. Nha Trang is a city filled with new hotels crowding the shoreline, mediocre food, and not much else. Granted it has a wonderful beach, nearly 6 kilometers long, but sitting there one is constantly harassed by people selling everything from chewing gum to live fish, making this place a little light in the interesting culture area.

Nha Trang is, however, home to the underground wonder, Mama Hahn’s Boat trip, one of the single, and most compelling reasons to visit the city for a night.

Hoi An

Lovely Hoi An, home to the most tailors per square inch outside of Bangkok. Nestled on the Thu Bon river, the port is busy with local vendors for consumer and export of all sorts of fish delicasies. Most tourists, though, are here for the very cheap and reasonable quality custom clothes for sale in every nook and cranny of the city center, where some of the structures date back to the 19th century.

Just a few kilometers outside Hoi An the land reverts to thousands of acres of rice fields, corn fields, and tiny villages. The most rewarding days I spent in Vietnam were atop a rented motorbike far out in the farms, trying to communicate with the locals who were mostly interested in my extreme (for Vietnam) height and fancy watch. The portraits are great documents, if not good photographs.

Hue and the DMZ

Site of one of the fiercest battles in the American war Hue was captured by the North Vietnamese Army for 75 days where they focused on disposing of everyone they could find that was helping the South. Nearly 3000 people were captured and killed in those two and a half months. Hue is close to the 17th parallel Demilitarized Zone, the demarcation point between the Communist North and Democratic South before the fall in 1975.

Hanoi

The capital of Vietnam reflects years of occupation through it’s surviving French architecture. The pace is slower than Saigon in the South, and a little less commercial, though the big brand names can always be found.

The primary Tourist attraction is Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum and home. Ho looks remarkably good after 15 years or so. And the attraction is certainly the most organized process in the entire country, ushered along by armed honor guards at every step. Sadly, photographs are not allowed.

I spent a lot of time cruising the local markets, still amazed at the activity, and lack of hygiene. You have to love a place though, where the live produce is only a foot from the ready to cook produce, and the ready to eat ones too.

Ha Long Bay

Seven Hours north of hanoi by bus is the vacation destination of Ha Long Bay known for it’s seafood and picturesque limestone mountains jutting from the sea. For me, it was two long bus journeys interrupted only by intense fear of bodily harm and rainy boat rides.

Read Ha Long Bay of Pigs for some insight on a bad tourist trip. 

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