We spent a month traveling from Saigon to Hanoi in 1995. We think that Vietnam has been over-hyped. In Saigon, we stayed in Cholon-where the movie The Lover was made (Dong Khanh Int'l Hotel, 2 Tran Hung Dao B Blvd. Dist. 5, HCM City Tel. (848)352-410, Fax:352-427). We ran with the Hash House Harriers. Saigon is not scenic or charming. City Hall and the PO, as well as a handful of villas, are architecturally interesting. Otherwise, not at all. It is noisy (with horns and old engines), very dirty and decrepit and poor. There were more churches than we expected, fewer cars and more bicycles and scooters. There is a miniature business every 10 feet (bike repair, etc.). The weather was hot and almost every day it rained. The restaurants were good. Sitting out is common but the exhaust fumes were choking. There were many new hotels but the prices were high. Click here to see our Saigon photos.
"The ingredients used at the restaurants in Vietnam weren't as good as the ingredients we had in our Vietnamese food in the US so while the food was good, it wasn't as tasty as our recollection of how good Vietnamese food should taste. We are kind of foodies (maybe we are food snobs) so you should take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. We found one old man in a laundry who spoke some French. Other than that man, we didn't hear any French. We did see lots of people with baguettes under their arms and that made us smile (along with La Vache Qui Rit cheese sold at roadside stands).
"We went north from Saigon to Dalat. We took an uncomfortable bus. The rather nice and modern Golf Hotel in Dalat, where we stayed, had a bordello in the back--little cubby holes with windows into the rooms so you could see the girls sitting on beds. We had a nice time in Dalat, however. Click here to see our Dalat and Nha Trang photos.
"We took another uncomfortable minibus to Nha Trang from Dalat. Our hotel in Nha Trang, Cau Da Villas, was a former palace that had just been renovated. Room 203 was great. We had two of the most wonderful and memorable experiences in Nha Trang. We were set up on the beach with a tent-like structure and beach chaise lounges (all for rent at a very reasonable price) like the ones below.
Generally, the beaches in Vietnam had vendors to rent comfortable chairs and tents
"At about 11 a.m. when a woman with a big (huge) cauldron on her head walked by, stopped, took the cauldron off of her head, and opened it. Inside were crabs being steamed. We told her to come back in an hour and she did. We ate crabs that she cracked open for us, presenting us with tasty, sweet morsels of crab meat (and no sand, we might add). This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and we didn't take a picture!
"Another day, we went riding on our rented motorcycle (then at about US$5 a day) along the coast. At lunchtime, we started looking for someplace to eat along the coast (wanting more shellfish). There was absolutely nothing. We started fantasizing amongst ourselves how we would come upon a restaurant on the sea with wonderful shellfish. But there was nothing. Just a beautiful coastline and a dirt road. We had decided to give up and turn back to town when Dimitri said: 'let's go around that one more curve ahead and then turn back.' We went around that one more curve and found the most wonderful place. There were soldiers eating lunch there. The owners were a man, his wife, and two children. The way he kept his seafood in the water in basket cages insured that it was fresh.
Seafood in baskets in the water at the fantastic restaurant
"The restaurateur's two little girls were fascinated by us.
The restaurant owner's little girls
"and took us up the hill where they (and their parents) showed us the artistic and touching photographs framed on the wall that their father had taken. The father was a talented photographer and was able to pursue that to some extent. We memorialized this once-in-a-lifetime experience, thankfully.
"From Nha Trang, we visited Hoi An and Danang and on to Hue before Hanoi. Click here to see more of our photos. We had been budgeting US$50 a day for hotels and it turned out for most of our trip we spent much less than that for very good and new accommodations (except in Hanoi which was exorbitantly expensive). Food and transport were also much less than we had budgeted at the time.
"We had originally planned to take a train from Hanoi to Yunnan Province in China (almost directly north) through some remote countryside that we understood would be beautiful. When we weren't able to extend our visas (oh yes, and we couldn't get a visa for China in Vietnam at that time either), we stopped thinking about that idea. Later other travelers told us that the train we were supposed to have taken was flooded out by torrential rains and was stopped for many days. The only way that those travelers got out was by walking with their backpacks or whatever for a very, very long way. (We were traveling with at 11 suitcases and that would not have been a possibility for us. Once again in our travels, we adopt Voltaire's quote as our philosophy: 'Whatever happens, is the best in this best of all possible worlds.'
"When we left Hanoi we flew to Hong Kong, got a long-term China visa in one afternoon (with no problem), and off we went to Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet."
So there you have our experiences in Vietnam. As for us, we aren't ready to settle down (and we hope that we never have to) so we have not considered where we would 'retire from our global meandering lifestyle'.
We would be glad to answer any other questions that you might have (and we promise to do so promptly!) With all of our best wishes, Audre Engleman and Dimitri Moursellas"
E-mail: aleanddm@gmail.com
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ReplyDeletehenry thomas