Well, At Least Food is Good…
If our eyes and stomachs weren’t so tantalised, our 3-week trip through Vietnam might’ve been a bit of a bust… You’ll see why once I get into the meat and bones of this blog where I’ll go through our itinerary from Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh, then on to Hanoi! We covered A LOT, maximised our time usage and overcame some quite challenging situations… I’ll say upfront that of all the countries we visited during our sabbatical, Vietnam is the one we feel most compelled to revisit!
Contents:
- From Phnom Penh to Vietnam (on a boat!)
- Getting There
- Into Vietnam
- The Mekong Delta
- Chau Doc
- Can Tho
- Ho Chi Min
- Cu Chi Tunnels
- Da Lat
- Hoi An
- The Golden Bridge
- My Son Sanctuary
- Hai Van Pass
- Hue
- The Imperial City
- Ha Long (Bai Tu Long)
- Overnight Cruise
- Hanoi
- Nimh Binh
- Train Street
Getting There
As always, we did things a bit differently…
Without taking a flight, getting from Cambodia into Vietnam usually means long, arduous bus rides to Ho Chi Minh City – or even Hanoi. By this point, we’d had a skinful of buses, so I made a point of hunting down other options!
Fortunately, I found a much wetter alternative! A boat from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc, just over the Vietnamese border. Imagine sitting in a comfy chair, drifting smoothly down the Mekong, with a cooler of £1 beers just a few feet away! Yeah – it was rather pleasant.
The price was reasonable, too, but we were the only two backpackers on board! The rest of the tourist gaggle was a large French over-fifties tour group. Honestly, I don’t know why more people don’t do this! If you’re interested, the company we used was called ‘Hang Chau’.
Into Vietnam
Chau Doc: A Fishy Start
It was quite odd, really. No sooner had we crossed the invisible borderline than the air changed flavour… Suddenly our noses were filled with the stench of fish. You know how an old fishing harbour smells? That smell was completely pervasive, even in Chau Doc itself!
What We Did
Tra Su Flooded Forest
Trying to escape the smell, we made a beeline straight out of the city on a rented moped. Tra Su is a bit gimmicky, but a very pleasant place to spend a couple of hours mooching around. The whole area is well put together (a far cry from what we’d gotten used to in Cambodia!) and packed with Instagram-worthy photo spots. You can even take a couple of delightful boat rides there: paddle or motorised. Just watch out for the mosquitoes… They’re truly tremendous in both size and ferocity!
Sam Mountain
As far as we could tell, this was basically a large hill topped with a kind of ‘family-friendly’ temple. There were fairground games and play apparatus alongside the temple, plus an incredible view across the surrounding lands. Quite beautiful to behold, but definitely a bit on the strange side!
But don’t worry, the good news is there are other truly incredible temples scattered on the mountain’s slopes such as ‘Hang Pagoda’, plus a great spot for lunch called ‘The Victoria Lodge’.
Can Tho: Frog Fans, Look Away Now
Although considerably bigger – the largest city in the Mekong Delta, actually – Can Tho didn’t offer a whole lot more than Chau Doc. There are a couple of nice temples and coffee spots in the centre, but the main draws are its markets, both on land and on the river!
What We Did
A Food Tour
During our one full day there, we opted for what would be our only official food tour of the entire trip. It took us through the most brutal collection of meat vendors we’ve ever encountered… Let’s just say a well-practiced Vietnamese woman can flay a frog quicker than you can say ‘ribbit’! Oh, and openly beheading rats at the roadside is totally normal there.
We also saw the floating market, which was fascinating, if a bit touristy. But it’s not like the floating markets you get in Thailand… This one’s a wholesale floating market – think big ol’ wooden barges piled high with watermelons, yams, and whatever else the local farms have produced that week. They were impressive, but to me, the most impressive sights were the mobile soup and coffee vendors! Usually it’s an older lady in a tiny motorised canoe, zipping between tour boats and barges alike, somehow managing to keep huge pots of boiling noodle soup and coffee from toppling overboard! Truly a spectacle, and overall one of the best tours we’d done on the trip so far.
However… that night my stomach picked up the phone and got on the direct line to my brain: “Mayday, mayday, mayday! What have you done to me?!”…
Hello Shartness, My Old Friend
I knew immediately what I’d done. Along one of the many smelly rows of market stalls, sandwiched between a bucket of dead(ish) frogs and a man selling watermelons, stood a mysterious jelly lady. No, not a lady made of jelly, but a lady selling suspicious looking jelly, in drink form! You know those videos online with street food vendors (usually in India) surrounded by gross-looking pots of, well… stuff? This was similar, and the end product was a concoction of coconut, various jellies, red beans, something gritty, and some mystery green goop. The entire tour group knew not to touch it, and honestly, I did too.
But alas, the idiotic part of my brain won, and I drank it anyway.
Well, unsurprisingly, that decision led to two days of fever and four days of terrible stomach cramps and what felt like necrotising acid rain falling from my anus every few hours… Whoops.
An Binh: Spoilt by The Jelly Lady
I love fruit – especially weird fruit I’ve never seen before. So when I heard about this little river island and its incredibly fertile soil, home to countless orchards, I just had to go.
However, thanks to my aforementioned gastric grievance, our entire time there boiled down to a single short bike ride and a few Longan fruits. After that, I switched to a strict diet of ginger and herb tea, trying to disarm the army of jellified bacteria marching through my colon.
But, during our rather lovely two-wheeled tour, we did get to see the ridiculously bountiful surroundings. Parts of the ride felt more like an obstacle course, dodging fallen coconuts, ducking under drunken banana trees, and batting bunches of longans out of the way. Every street had at least one pensioner sitting behind a wonky trestle table, selling that morning’s yield. It still hurts me that all I managed were a few longans… I’m not sure I’ll ever get over it.
Ho Chi Minh: Enter, Elder Bald Bloke
It had always been the plan to rendezvous with my dad in Vietnam. He’d just retired and had never been to Southeast Asia – so why not, eh? The capital of South Vietnam was the chosen meeting point, from where we’d work our way north.
We arrived a day before he did, just to get a feel for the place and figure out what we were getting him into. Well, it turned out his introduction to this neck of the woods would be a real trial by fire…
Mary-Ann and I have been to many cities in developing countries (mostly in Asia), but none are quite like those in Vietnam.
They are a full-on assault on the senses. You’re bombarded with mopeds, blaring horns, blocked pavements, some serious olfactory offence, relentless street vendors, and a constant sense of impending danger.
I’d love to say none of us were injured or damaged by the street-life… but I’d be lying. I actually got driven into by a moped back in Can Tho!
What We Did
Cu Chi Tunnels
The poor bloke had no idea what he was in for. So, to keep our time dodging traffic and deafening horns to a minimum, we booked a tour (with pickup) to the Cu Chi tunnels – the underground network where the Viet Cong hid during the war. It was fascinating, if a little overrun with tourists. You can crawl through part of the tunnel system, which has been widened for foreigners; I just managed to squeeze through. Mary-Ann gave it a hard pass, and my dad wouldn’t have fit even if he’d wanted to. Proceed with caution if you’re on the broader side!
Exploring the City
We couldn’t spend all two days outside the city, so we explored various districts. District 5 was my personal favourite. It’s a little less hectic, and retains a good amount of local homes and shops instead of endless hostels, bars, and construction sites. It also had a lovely temple, and one of the most brilliantly dystopian back-alley Chinese markets I’ve ever seen… Even if we did get caught in a sudden, torrential downpour (the first of many).
We also wandered around District 1, checked out some of the newer, more touristy areas, and visited the War Museum, which was grim (unsurprisingly). But it also gave us the perfect opportunity to introduce the old man to undersized plastic chairs at grubby roadside eateries. He seemed to approve, and as far as I know, he didn’t suffer any gastric consequences!
Pro Tip: You can’t go wrong with hot Pho. Even if it’s made from second-hand noodles, shoe leather, and moss scraped from a drain, I’m convinced you’d still be fine. The broth is always served at about 3000°C! No parasite or bacteria stands a chance in the inferno of a crazed Pho chef.
Sneaky Shoe Snatchers
“Whoa!” was all I managed to say when a stooped man suddenly scurried across the road and grabbed my ankle. He must have used some kind of shoe-vision to detect that the sole of my flip-flop was starting to peel away. Before I knew it, he’d whipped it off, pulled a few tools from his utility belt, and was busily gluing my flip back to its flop.
I asked him to stop multiple times, and I even tried to grab my shoe back! But he was persistent… and I’m not great with awkward confrontation.
Before I knew it, he had my other shoe too… and his partner in crime had pounced on my dad’s feet. My dad’s sandals were brand new with absolutely nothing wrong, but they gave them a thorough inspection anyway, picking at threads and flexing the soles. When they couldn’t find anything to ‘fix,’ they resorted cleaning them instead.
So there we were, looking at each other dumbfounded, barefoot in the street, fully aware we’d been caught in a particularly dumb tourist scam… Or was it dumb? Because, without footwear, escape wasn’t exactly an option! Quite cunning when you think about it.
After five minutes or so, they showed us their handiwork. My dad’s sandals were cleaner (if a bit sudsy), and mine had been reinforced with strips of rubber and glue. Naturally, they demanded 400,000 dong each – about 10 quid. An utter rip-off, but amidst the madness and bamboozlement, we paid.
Sigh, what a pair of suckers.
Da Lat: Who Needs Sleep, Anyway?
Before this part of the trip began, when I proposed the itinerary to the team, I did warn them it was going to be pretty intense, with several overnight journeys necessary (in case you didn’t know already, Vietnam is deceptively massive!) But, everyone agreed, so as per the plan, we boarded a night bus from Ho Chi Minh to Da Lat.
Now, it’s common knowledge that sleep on a Southeast Asian sleeper bus is never guaranteed. The roads are rough, the driving is jerky, the beds are too small, or they smell… or both. But once again, Vietnam went above and beyond. Remember those blaring horns I mentioned earlier? Turns out the buses join in too, regardless of whether their cargo is trying to sleep or not.
What We Did
Full-Day Tour
We signed up for another pre-organised tour, figuring that not having to think for an entire day was the perfect antidote to a night of vehicular torture. The tour included temples, a coffee plantation, a cricket farm (yep, those crunchy protein-rich jiminies), a rice paper workshop, and a bloody incredible selection of waterfalls. But the best part was that we could doze off on the tour bus between stops – absolute bliss.
Vietnamese Coffee is Weird…
If you’re into coffee, you’ve probably heard about the stuff in Vietnam. I’d compare it to Marmite—you either love it or hate it.
Aside from the questionable “weasel coffee” (aka Luwak or civet cat coffee), even the non-pre-digested stuff was a bit of a challenge for me. First off, it’s extremely strong! The kind of strong that leaves your mouth coated in a bitter glaze, and your teeth tasting of coffee for half an hour after.
Then there’s the bizarre sweetness… Even without adding sugar, it somehow ends up thick and syrupy. For the first few sips, it’s delightful, and you can really feel it putting hairs on your chest and jump-starting your brain. But by the halfway mark, it becomes so cloying it’s borderline nauseating.
I always finished them of course, because I’m a stubborn idiot. But I’d leave the table reeling slightly and gasping for water. In my opinion, it should only ever be served in espresso-sized shots – that’d be ideal.
Exploring Da Lat
The second day was all about exploring the city and its surroundings. We took the gondola up Robin Hill, hired a pedalo, and generally waltzed around town like a proper trio of tourists. We had to cram it all in because, unlike in Ho Chi Minh, the weather was actually decent!
That evening though, we faced our second night bus… This time to Hoi An. No one was happy about it, given how the first one went, but it turned out to be marginally better (still not good. just… less bad!)
Pro Tip: If you’re backpacking Vietnam top-to-bottom (or vice versa) and want to avoid sleeper buses altogether, consider skipping Da Lat. It’s not on a train line, and sticking to the train network means you can use sleeper trains, and makes for a far more restful journey
Hoi An: Mary-Ann’s Breaking Point
We got off the night bus and headed straight to our accommodation to drop our bags off pre–check-in (most places are fine with that.) I’d already done some research and knew you don’t need loads of time to explore the old town. In fact, some travellers prefer to day-trip in from nearby Da Nang, where accommodation prices are a bit lower and the options are broader.
However, to my eyes, Da Nang looked suspiciously like an over-developed seaside resort packed with clubs, bars, and a fire-breathing bridge. OK, the bridge sounded cool, just not quite cool enough to make me plan it in.
What We Did
The Golden Bridge
No sooner had we dropped our bags, we were wearily climbing into a pre-booked taxi bound for our first destination. No rest for the wicked!
About an hour from Hoi An lies Ba Na Hills – Vietnam’s version of a mountain-top Disneyland. To get there, you hop on what the internet claims is the longest cable car in the world. The 20-minute gondola ride floats you over lush mountains and, on a clear day, offers sweeping views of the ancient-city-style theme park below and even Da Nang in the distance.
But for us… that’s where the views ended.
Rain rolled in, dragging dense cloud and chilly winds along with it. By the time we reached the summit, it was properly raining and visibility was low. We could just about see the famous Golden Bridge (you know, the one held up by giant stone hands), but only once we were literally stood on it. The castles, temples, and statues up there were all shrouded in a gloomy mist, giving the place a strange, post-apocalyptic vibe, which was cool, but not quite like the pictures on Instagram…
Exploring Hoi An Old Town
Back in Hoi An, the plan was to check in properly and then head straight into town. Unfortunately, this was the precise moment Mary-Ann reached her breaking point. She took one look at the bed and became magnetised to it.
So it was just my dad and I who ventured into the old town that evening. We focused on the night market and riverside – delightful, even with the endless drizzle.
My Son Sanctuary
For a bit of variety, we visited My Son Sanctuary – an ancient temple complex about an hour’s drive from Hoi An, and older than even Angkor Wat!
Sadly, centuries of looting, American bombing, and minimal preservation efforts have left much of it in ruins. Still, a few structures remain, and we wandered among them for a couple of hours (in the rain, of course).
Once back in town, the rest of that day was spent sightseeing, beer tasting, Pho slurping, and lantern hunting, this time with Mary-Ann in tow. We ticked them all off one by one, but it wasn’t exactly easy… One thing you’ve got to accept about Hoi An, is that it’s rammed with tourists. It’s incredibly beautiful, especially by lantern light, but it draws crowds like moths to a flame! Or should I say, moths to a lantern…
Hai Van Pass
On our final day in Hoi An, we piled into our last pre-booked taxi and hit the road to Hue via the legendary Hai Van Pass.
It’s meant to offer some of the best views in all of Vietnam, although ours were… limited. The clouds rolled in, and you guessed it, brought even more rain! Still, the ride was scenic enough to feel worthwhile.
Pro Tip: If travelling as a trio or without a motorbike licence, you can still experience the Hai Van Pass on two wheels! Although we didn’t do it, it’s easy to book motorbike taxis from either Da Nang or Hoi An for the full experience, plus there is no risk of crashing yourself!
Hue: An Unexpected Gem!
I’d only planned for two sleeper buses. I’m mad, but mad enough to go for the hat-trick! But with half the country still to cover, and plenty left to see, night travel was still a must. Just… not by bus. Enter the sleeper train!
You can catch one all the way from Da Nang to Hanoi, but we decided to break it up with a stop in Hue. It’s not the most famous destination in Vietnam, and definitely not a regular on the ‘usual’ bucket list, but I absolutely loved it! It was less touristy, and hand plenty of things to keep us entertained.
Are We Sleeping in a Shop?
When our taxi pulled up in front of a glass-doored shopfront, we figured this must be the landlord’s office. Or maybe the apartment was upstairs?
Nope. The host popped up from his roadside plastic chair, handed us a chunky ring of keys, and began explaining which one to use for the glass door, the deadlock, and for the metal roller shutters.
Once inside, we found a sofa, TV, kitchenette, and bed – all fully visible from the street. It was nice enough and pretty comfortable, but it felt like we were living inside a tiny IKEA showroom. I suspect it was once an actual shop, which had been half-heartedly converted into an Airbnb. So, with the glass doors uncovered, it was awkwardly exposed, but once you pulled down the roller shutters, it transformed into something that felt a bit like a prison.
Showroom or cell block… I’m not sure which was worse!
What We Did
The Ancient City
Hue’s main draw is its ancient Imperial City, and it did not disappoint. The moats, walls, and waterways alone are impressive! Like in Siem Reap, I just couldn’t stop wondering how long it must have taken to dig them all out in the days before JCBs!
We spent half a day wandering the site. It’s pretty sprawling, but absolutely worth the time.
Mausoleums and Pagodas
The city is also dotted with royal mausoleums – mini kingdoms built for emperors long gone. If we’d had the time, we’d have gone to see them all. As it was, we only managed to visit the Thien Mu Pagoda and the Mausoleum of Tu Duc.
The pagoda is lovely, but the mausoleum stole the show. It’s basically a scaled-down version of the Imperial City… all built for one dead bloke. Imagine commissioning an entire fortified complex just to have somewhere to keep a pile of bones. That’s commitment!
Pro Tip: Rent bicycles or mopeds in Hue. We chose bikes because we don’t mind a bit of sweat, and it added to the adventure. Hue is pretty spread out, and most sights aren’t close together. Taxis can be few and far between, so having your own wheels is a must!
Ha Long Bay: It Has UK Weather… Yay
The train ride wasn’t exactly luxurious (and it certainly wasn’t cheap), but compared to the night buses, it felt like heaven. I mean, we actually slept! I almost felt spritely as we yomped across Hanoi to our pick-up point for our Ha Long Bay cruise. Well… technically we didn’t go to Ha Long Bay. Our boat took us through some of it, it and into its lesser-known neighbour, Bai Tu Long Bay. Which has about 95% of the visual immenseness, with only 5% of the tourists!
Now, I don’t know if it’s just me, but every single time I’ve spoken to someone who’s been to Ha Long and looked at their photos, it ALWAYS seems to be overcast. Which, sadly was also the case for us… we boarded in glorious ten degree weather, garnished with a fine grey drizzle – it felt just like home! Still, we had jumpers and raincoats, and soldiered on, and it didn’t stop a few maniacs from getting up for the 6am tai-chi session on the upper deck! Absolute nutters.
We did get a few clear-ish spells where the mist thinned enough to reveal the epic limestone karsts. But, photos really can’t do it justice – the scale and intricacy of the place is mind-blowing.
However, the real highlight of the cruise was the food! We were aboard a boat called The Swan, and the onboard chef was not there to play games! We ate like royalty for two full days, waddling from course to course, our stomachs reaching Christmas dinner levels of strain at every meal.
Honestly, even if you get terrible weather or you’re not particularly into geology, the food alone makes it worth it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that, along with Malaysia, Vietnam has the best food in Southeast Asia.
Hanoi: More Rain, More Crowds, and a Lot of Pho
Having already survived Ho Chi Minh City, the visceral onslaught of Hanoi’s streets didn’t exactly catch us off guard. Same mopeds on the pavements, same bin-lined sidewalks, same relentless car horns and chaos. But somehow, it all felt slightly more charming. The Old Quarter is genuinely pretty, there’s a scenic little lake, and of course, the infamous Train Street.
What We Did
Escaped Hanoi
The very first thing we did was get on a bus and leave. After the calm, damp serenity of our boat cruise, we weren’t quite ready to throw ourselves into the city madness again. So, off we went to Ninh Binh, an ancient capital also known as “Ha Long Bay on land.”
As you might guess, it’s another extravagant sweep of limestone karsts riddled with caves, rivers and temples, but this time on land. Unfortunately, the rain followed us (again), and while the views were super impressive, they were also rather obscured by mist. That said, if you can’t make it to Ha Long Bay for any reason, Ninh Binh is a worthy alternative. We cycled around, climbed a mountain, and cursed the weather gods for being a bunch of d*cks. We were running out of dry clothes at this point!
Explored the Old Quarter
The best part of Hanoi for me, was Bia hoi. Otherwise known as, dirt-cheap beer served on child-sized plastic stools. It costs about 30p a glass, brewed fresh daily, and is surprisingly drinkable!
Our diet quickly became worryingly liquid in Hanoi – beer, coffee, and Pho made up the bulk of our intake – we needed the toilet constantly. But there were no complaints, Pho in Hanoi is excellent! Unlike the rest of Vietnam, you’ll find chicken Pho there just as commonly as beef. I couldn’t decide which I preferred, but having the variety was great.
Train Street
I’d read online that it was shut down due to safety concerns, so my expectations were low – but as we approached, the swarming crowds of people made clear that it was still very much open. Well, open-ish. There seemed to be some kind of half-baked construction work on the narrow paths beside the tracks, which were cracked and crumbling. It was broken up and uneven, we even saw locals jamming chunks of brick under tourists’ feet to make it marginally more stable underfoot. Really, you basically had to accept that you might sprain an ankle, and you would definitely be squirted with that nightmare pavement juice from under loose slabs after it’s rained… I shudder.
Pro Tip: Get there at least 20 minutes before the train’s scheduled arrival – it gets packed! We actually saw one close call that ended with a café owner getting extremely cross at a tourist must have really wanted some super close-up footage!
Temples and Pagodas
We didn’t hit every shrine we stumbled across, but we did manage to visit Ngoc Son Temple and Tran Quoc Pagoda. Both were small, pretty, and pleasantly uncrowded. We only ended up at the latter because we failed to get into the Ho Chi Minh Museum and his mausoleum…
We did, however, visit a slightly surreal war relic – a chunk of downed plane rusting in a pond, which was slightly random, but very cool!
Time For Some Stella
This could really be a pro-tip, but I think the situation deserves its own space.
We’d trekked all the way to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum – on foot, because traffic made buses and taxis almost useless. It took ages to even find the entrance (thanks to vague signage and security guards), only for me to be refused entry on arrival because my lower legs and soggy toes were on full display. Of course, my trousers and shoes were still soaked from the previous day’s downpour, but my flip-flops and shorts combo were not a part of the dress code! Take Note!
Rather than leave me behind, Elder Bald Bloke and Mary-Ann stood in solidarity, frantically searching for trousers shops nearby. Of course, there were none.
So, we did what any trio of damp, defeated Brits would do, and found the local boardgame café. A place called’ The Root’, where we played a silly but surprisingly entertaining game called ‘Stella’.
Moral of the story: unless you like boardgames a lot, remember to wear long trousers and shoes people!
Finally, Delivering the Old Man to the Airport
After what was quite literally twelve straight days of rain, cloud, and drizzle, it was time to wave off the other baldie and resume our travels as a duo.
Travelling as a trio definitely has its drawbacks – fewer accommodation options, no squeezing onto a single moped, and everything just that bit more expensive. Still, despite the added complications, we managed to cram in my entire itinerary (and then some), even if it felt like a bit of a push at times.
In hindsight, another two or three days would’ve made everything feel less rushed. And a lot more sunshine wouldn’t have gone amiss either.
Vietnam is somewhere we’ll absolutely have to revisit. We didn’t get to experience it at its best… Through all the persistent drizzle, grey skies and permanently wet clothes, we definitely didn’t see its full potential. But you can’t win them all, and despite the weather (and those sleepless buses), we managed to see a huge amount and had a pretty easy time, logistically speaking.
Next time we find ourselves there, we’ll give ourselves more time. We rushed some spots, completely missed others, such as everything north of Hanoi (Sapa, etc.), the incredible caves and even some of the islands! However, overall I think the route and itinerary we did was pretty good, especially considering the time frame! And, in truth, with the weather we had… any more days might’ve broken me!
Stay bald folks.
Toodles,
Jack
