Vietnam

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Hanoi
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Another interesting start - getting a budget airline flight full of Vietnamese people who all seemed to know each other.. Luckily it was a very short flight and we were in Hanoi in no time. We fortunately had a driver from our hotel there to pick us up so no faffing about with taxis/buses. I could have suffered about 10 heart attacks on the journey as it was like being in an episode of wacky racers. Anyone that has been to Vietnam knows what the streets are like. Roughly 1 - 2 mopeds to each person - that's a lot of mopeds. The driving is generally safe as everyone moves quite slowly to manoeuvre, however our driver was clearly in a bit of a rush.. We checked into the hotel and were greeted by some very friendly staff. We put our bags down before we sat down and booked nearly everything we needed with a girl working at the hotel. Ha long bay cruise and train tickets to Da Nang booked we set out to get some food. My first taste of pho (beef noodle soup) went down well before back to the room to watch some mr bean before bed.. The next day we planned to go to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (tomb) and the palace as this is only open until 11am. Unfortunately I was really not well so Dean set off by himself. Apparently a long queue to walk around the tomb then back out wasn't too impressive for him.. That afternoon we headed off to walk around the lake and to Hoa Lo prison which was used by the French to imprison the Vietnamese revolutionaries in the 50s before being used during the Vietnam war to imprison captured American pilots in the 60s/70s. Very interesting but obviously a very biased perspective. We had booked to have dinner at what is meant to be a very nice and popular restaurant that evening. Very popular it was, food was ok but we had a lovely waitress which made it better. An early night as we were starting early for our ha long bay cruise the next day.
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Ha Long Bay
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There seems to be 2 ways of doing ha long bay. Do a cruise for either 1, 2, or 3 nights or go and stay on cat ba island. We opted for the 1 night cruise where we sailed around Bai Tu Long Bay and Ha Long Bay, stopping to see a floating village and do a cave hike which was really beautiful! All meals are included with a lot of food and the cabins were nice. We also did a little cookery class learning how to make traditional Vietnamese spring rolls. You can get very budget cruises but these tend to not be so great so definitely worth spending a bit more for better quality. We were really lucky and had a great group of people on our cruise, one British couple who we got friendly with, Joe & Emma, and a lot of Europeans. After dinner we were able to try out some squid fishing which Dean and Joe failed miserably at, although accidentally killing some jellyfish along the way much to my distaste! Very unfortunately the weather was really not great, everything was very cloudy and misty so you couldn't see much. It was still very beautiful and gave the bay an eery feel but it would have been nice to see a bit of sun on it. The highlight though was our tour guide, Kim. A very charismatic Vietnamese chap who spoke really good English and clearly loved a good innuendo joke. He most definitely kept us all entertained and informed the whole trip. Would be good to go back one day when the weather is better. A 4 hour drive back to Hanoi then to stock up for our 16 hour night train to Da Nang
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Hoi An
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Arriving in Danang at midday we had survived our first night train experience. We got lucky with the people in our cabin who were relatively quiet and slept most of the time! In a taxi to our hotel we could see our first beach! The owner of our home stay, Van, greeted us with some Vietnamese coffee and gave us some help in getting around. They're obsessed with coffee here and their traditional version is very strong black coffee mixed with very sweet condensed milk. Nice! As we were the only people staying there we were upgraded to a better room with a balcony. We set down our stuff and headed to the beach just over the road to catch our first few rays of sunshine. After a drink at happy hour down the road we went for dinner round the corner at a place recommended by Van, number 9 on trip advisor, not bad! We tried some local dishes including fried wontons (not the kind of wontons you'd get back home) and I had some cau lau. Cau lau is a local dish of thick noodles, sliced pork, pork croutons and greens in a light broth. Very good! And only 40p for a beer, can't beat that.
The next day we had a fresh breakfast cooked for us by Van, very good, we then took advantage of the free bike hire and biked the 10/15 minutes into town. We had a look around and saw the Japanese covered bridge along the river. Hoi an is really picturesque, almost like a small Italian town. All the buildings are the same and it's all very well organised. We stopped at a baguette shop recommended to us by a friend from home, banh mi (the baguettes) are supposed to be the best in Vietnam and very popular! Baguette purchased we headed back up to the beach to maintain our tan before going out for dinner. We opted for a place just by the river and enjoyed some local seafood dishes.
Day 3 we started with another fresh cooked breakfast and decided to bike a bit further up the coast to the next beach which is supposed to be nicer. Much busier and a lot more bars and restaurants we weren't overly impressed. We got hassled into buying some pretty nasty food for a free sunbed, not worth it! We biked back and got ready to head into town to watch the sunset on the river. We were lucky enough to find a rooftop bar with a perfect view of the river. After watching the magnificent sunset which gets its own drumroll, we headed to another rooftop place for dinner. Our last dish of cau lau each eaten next to a Vietnamese couple having a full on photoshoot, not impressed! We decided to go over the bridge to see what the fuss was about and came across mr beans bar. That's right, the mr bean! Naturally we couldn't resist. Lucky for us it was happy hour, 2 for 1 drinks and a free shot. It was obvious how the night was going to go.. We saw free beer pong advertised at the back so of course had a go. I was actually in the lead before Dean beat me hands down. We got chatting to a couple of French Canadian girls, Caroline and Camille, and after a long night of drinking and beer pong, which me and Camille won, we headed back for our last night.
The last day was spent mainly on the beach and preparing for our 10 hour nightbus we were enduring that night. We were picked up at 5pm and were on the bus ready to go at 6. As there weren't that many people on the bus and mainly travellers the journey wasn't half bad. However we arrived in Nha Trang at 5.30am..
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Nha Trang
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After arriving in Nha Trang 2 hours earlier than planned we were convinced we wouldn't be able to check in yet. To our surprise we were able to so of course had a few hours kip before heading to the beach just over the road. Really beautiful views surrounded us on the beach, albeit fairly busy. Nha Trang is much more of a holiday resort sort of place so a lot of families and a hell of a lot of Russians! So many Russians in fact that all their signs, menus etc are written in Russian most of the time. We did some research about where to eat and found a Greek place that was meant to be amazing. Unfortunately they were closed on Wednesdays so booked to come back the next night. For the first time Dean chose where to eat and lazily picked a Vietnamese/Chinese place opposite us. Worst food we'd had so far! Needless to say the organising and decisions got handed back to me from then on.
The next day we decided to go over to vinpearl, an island just across from us which is meant to have an amazing water park. Unfortunately our taxi driver convinced us to buy our tickets in advance so we were not informed that the water park was in fact closed.. So 1 million dong later and after making our way over the biggest cable car in Asia to the island I was NOT impressed when we returned after about half an hour. Learning our lesson big time to only buy tickets at the official outlets we sulked back to the hotel. Well dinner certainly made up for the day. The Greek place was heaving, lucky we booked! Really good food and lovely people we were quite impressed.
On day 3 we opted for some culture and visited po nagar which is a sacred site and consists of 4 towers built between 7th and 12th centuries and are still used for worship by Buddhists. As its not very big we weren't there for long. Dean redeemed himself from the awful restaurant choice and suggested we go to a local resort for a mud bath. Better than it sounds! We had a hot mud bath for 20 mins after which we were able to make use of the mineral waterfalls and swimming pools at the resort. As the pools are all hot they weren't the most refreshing but the waterfalls were nice and cool! Detoxed and refreshed we headed back to town to book a local Swiss restaurant for dinner that seemed to be popular. Well although it was half empty the food was good and the owners were very friendly. Pork schnitzel for me and veal sausage for Dean. We then headed to a rooftop bar to meet our French Canadian friends from hoi an. A few drinks later we were having a beer pong rematch! Needless to say, me and Camille are still reigning champions! We said our goodbyes and headed back for our last night in Nha Trang.
I have to say, I was happy to be leaving the hotel we were at. The noisiest place I have ever stayed! I even did an impression of my father by going out and telling the people next door to SHUSH. Unfortunately although Vietnamese people are generally very nice, they have no awareness or respect for other people when it comes to noise. The women do not stop talking and the children do not stop screaming! We took a trip to the local post office and then down to the beach for a couple of hours before heading to get our night bus to Saigon that evening. Another 10 hours!
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Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City
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I'd heard some real horror stories about the night buses in Vietnam, so I don't know if we just got lucky but both ours were really quite ok! The only bad thing about the buses is how early they arrive.. After a night of no sleep on a 'sleeper bus' we arrived at 4.30am, probably the earliest I've been up in years. Luckily our hotel was right next to where the bus dropped us, unluckily we couldn't check in until midday. So just 7 hours to kill... We found a cafe and I had my first iced coffee. Not as good as grandmas but still really good. I had 3 in total that morning.. After a bit of planning we decided to head into town and find the war remnants museum. Dean took control of the directions and of course we ended up in the wrong place. A quick taxi ride and we finally made it. As it was Sunday and 8am, we thought it would be relatively quiet, how wrong we were! About 12 coaches full of school children poured out in front of us, not ideal. We slowly made our way around the very interesting museum detailing the war in Vietnam. Not as biased as I thought it would be but very interesting. It was however ruined by the amount of screaming school children who clearly had no idea how serious and important the place they were in was. There were also a lot of locals walking round taking selfies with the pictures/guns etc which really grinded my gears. So inappropriate! Another iced coffee down we went in search of something to eat before heading back to the hotel to see if we could check in. After another hour we could finally get into the room. A couple hours nap we were up and I was as always researching where we could have dinner. I found a Mexican place which was supposed to be amazing and amazing it was. Happy hour beer, nachos and the fish tacos I can't even talk about. I will dream of the fish tacos forever. Back for some much needed rest before heading out again tomorrow.
The second and our last full day in Vietnam we decided to go and see the notre dame cathedral. The cathedral wasn't open until 3pm so we had a quick look around the huge post office. You're only allowed in the front of the cathedral so we weren't in there long before we were getting another iced coffee and Dean was ambushed by men wanting to clean his shoes. We finally gave in and he tried to charge 950,000 dong! Ha! Long story short we agreed on 300,000 and headed back to the hotel to get ready for our last night. It sounds like we've been eating a lot of non-Asian food lately but it really isn't the case. Breakfast and lunch is all local food and so are most dinners. But it's nice to have a break when you can find somewhere good enough! With that said we went to a burger place opposite our hotel which again was said to be really good by my trusty trip advisor app! Very nice indeed. Running low on money we decided to turn in early so we could afford breakfast the next day. Up early to get a cheap breakfast and one last ice coffee before checking out and heading to the airport for our 3rd stop, Cambodia!
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Vietnam tips
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Transport: the buses were fine to use. The sinh tourist is a very popular company as they are organised and the buses are good. Night buses always turn up early so I would suggest contacting your hotel in advance to see if you can check in early.
Longer journeys I would suggest getting the train. It's a bit more expensive than the buses but much more comfortable and you don't rely on stops to be able to get up or go to the toilet. Make sure you book a soft berth with air con! The views along the way on the train can also be really beautiful.
Always use metered taxis.
Crossing the road is very interesting. There aren't really crossings for pedestrians other than in Saigon. You just have to go for it and the traffic will manoeuvre around you, it seems to work for everyone here!
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Money: we definitely ended up spending more money than we planned. Try to eat cheap and plan out what you will do each day so you can roughly see how much you should spend. Walk where you can, taxis can rack up the bill. Do your laundry at a local place, the hotels tend to over charge. Same with tours and transport, try and book outside the hotel as they charge commission.
We found it much harder to barter in Vietnam as opposed to Thailand, they don't give way as much as the Thais.
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Food: try as much local stuff as you can! Vietnamese food is good, cheap and generally fresh. Pho (noodle soup) is one of the best things I've ever had. Vietnamese coffee is also a must - iced and hot.
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Hotels: always always book in advance. We mainly use agoda or hotels.com as they're always doing deals on places and you can easily get some decent rates. We haven't paid more than £8 each for a night so far but try to keep it lower, average at £6 each a night. Always get an air con room! Take a screen shot of the name and address of your hotel to show taxi drivers in case they don't know or can't understand.
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People: the people here are generally very nice, especially the staff in the hotels who we found were the most lovely people! The locals can vary and the people who are selling on the streets can be persistent. Be polite but firm with them. If you say 'no thank you' they will either walk away or try again, it's ok to ignore them a second time. We have also felt very safe everywhere we have been but I have heard stories mainly about pick pockets. Keep your belongings close to you and safe.
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Do your research! Read the travel books, read people's blogs and look on trip advisor. It all helps so much and you won't waste your time or money finding out for yourself.

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