Now, while Asia’s economic situation offers some of the world’s best travel bargains on attentive airlines and first-class hotels that still boast the kind of friendly service you never knew existed.
Now, before industrialization finally takes hold and brings traffic jams and foul air to Ho Chi Minh City as it did Bangkok and gobbles up the verdant rice paddies that still line either side of the highway connecting Hanoi to its airport.
And yes, before the big hotel chains discover the splendid beaches south of Da Nang, the dramatic scenery of Hai Long Bay and the enchanting mountainsides around Dalat and Dien Bien Phu.
As a bonus, you’ll discover you can eat like a minor prince for US$20 a day and for a reasonable price find people willing to take you anywhere you want to go. You can also become the favorite relative in your family next holiday season with the inexpensive and fabulous silk robes; lacquer trays and embroidered tablecloths you carry back to Manila.
The first thing that any traveler notices is the poverty – no surprise, really, in a country where the average cash income still hovers at less than 3 dollars a day. The poverty assaults you visually as you ride in an air-conditioned comfort along the road from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) to the Mekong, looking at endless series of metal and wooden shacks where barefoot children play in the dirt and women haul around incredible loads balanced on bamboo poles and shirtless young men pass the morning playing billiards. And it confronts you more directly, in the form of persistent postcard and candy hawkers and begging children when you emerge from your hotel or arrive at the scenic lookout in the Marble Mountains and amble around in Hanoi and elsewhere.
Today’s Vietnam remains a physically beautiful country of friendly and energetic people who are in the midst of a transition from communism to democratic capitalism. From dawn until well past sunset, they seem always to be the move and open for business, even when it is not clear where they are going or what sustainable business they’re in. Modern and traditional, Eastern and Western, capitalist and communist… all are thrown together in a wonderfully entertaining daily drama.
Ho Chi Minh City is the best place to begin a Vietnam tour, not only because it is the largest city but also the least Vietnamese. Even in the midst of the Asian economic crisis, it remains a city bustling with capitalist possibility. The streets are full of serious young men and stylish young women going off on their new Honda motorbikes to shiny new office buildings by day, to Western discos and coffee bars or simply cruising around the city by night.
Everywhere in Ho Chi Minh City there are shops, overflowing with goods if not customers. Restaurants are abuzz with the beeping of cell phones and joint-venture deals being negotiated – or, more likely, renegotiated. And every sidewalk is an opportunity for someone to set up a badminton court, a barber’s chair, a vegetable stand, a taxi service or a small café. That said, there isn’t really that much to see to sustain a long visit in Ho Chi Minh City.
You’ll do well to spend an hour at the Palace of Reunification, the seat of government of the South Vietnamese government before the surrender in 1975. You’ll also want to take in a Buddhist temple or two, and the Ben Thanh Market in the center of the city, a lively covered bazaar.
Mostly, though, Ho Chi Minh City is about soaking up the atmosphere – and eating. What Ho Chi Minh City lacks in key attractions it makes up for in good restaurants. The national meal of Vietnam is a clear beef soup with egg noodles, meat and spices known as pho, most often eaten for breakfast and lunch at sidewalk cafes. A heaping bowl with a beer will set you back about US 3 dollars.
Don’t leave Ho Chi Minh City without a meal or drink at the rooftop of the Rex Hotel, where the American military command once lived – it’s kitschy and fun and the food is very good if a little overpriced. Among other favorites was the Marina, which knocked out my taste buds with its tamarind soup, its fried oyster cakes and “drunken shrimp” – just like the same live shrimp we have in the Philippines, brought to the table, doused with liquor and then flamed. For upscale service and live Vietnamese music, the Mandarin is now the hot restaurant among the expatriates in town. And no trip to Ho Chi Minh City would be complete without lunch at Madame Di’s, where the former speaker of the South Vietnamese legislature holds court in her home and antiques, wonderful spring rolls and her remembrances of Paris in the 20’s.
To get around Ho Chi Minh City, there are metered taxis and bicycle rickshaws, known as cyclos, but the best mode of transportation is the Honda motorbikes that station themselves at every street corner, ready for hire. These cost less than a dollar for a ten-minute ride – you negotiate the price before you get on. If you find a driver you like, he’ll be more than happy to become your private chauffeur. Ho Chi Minh has lots of good hotels and even willing to offer deep discounts if you walk in off the street. My own preference is for the three beautifully renovated hotels along Dong Khoi Street in the heart of the city that still retain the flavor of French colonial Saigon – The Majestic, The Grand and the Continental- all operated by Saigon Tourist, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the local People’s Committee. It also runs the largest fleet of taxis and private car hires.
Beyond Ho Chi Minh City, your top priority should be getting a car to take you west for a tour of the Mekong Delta. Insist on a tour by private car and boat of the most productive and beautiful rice paddies anywhere in Asia, where plows are still pulled by oxen, irrigation water is transferred from big canal to little by ingenious basket contraptions and harvesting is done by hand by armies of women in conical hats. This is work that is as inspiring to watch as it is hard to do. And if you are lucky, try to catch the performances of water puppets along the rice fields at night – truly a memorable sight.
Another day trip will take you north of Ho Chi Minh City to two must-see sites: the tunnels of Cu Chi and the Caodai Temple.
The tunnels are part of an elaborate, three story underground network that the Viet Cong used as home base and launching pad in their campaigns against French and American troops. Spend even a few minutes in the tunnels, which have been fortified and enlarged for tourists, and you’ll come away with an enhanced admiration for the determination and cleverness of the fighters.
Another hour’s drive to the northeast from Cu Chi, close to the Cambodian boarder, is the Vatican of the Caodai religion, which combines elements of Catholicism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism in a set of beliefs that proved particularly appealing to the Vietnamese middle class during the early 20th century. At noon every day, dozens of toga-clad monks file in – men on one side, women on the other – to chant their daily prayers inside a fantastically colorful temple.
When the heat and hubbub of Ho Chi Minh City finally get to you, it’s time to fly to Dalat, a delightfully cool and laid-back mountain retreat. You can skip the pretentious Palace hotel, which in its day, was indeed the mountain retreat of the Vietnamese emperor. Instead, check in next door at the beautifully restored Novotel. Have lunch by the lake in the center of town, then hire a car and explore the waterfalls and terraced farmlands where vegetables for much of the South are grown. In the late afternoons, catch the action at the Dalat Market, which is bursting with live chickens and fish jumping out of tubs and piles of vegetables that would put fresh fields to shame. Most notable are the women butchers – who prefer to cut their meat while sitting barefoot on their chopping blocks.
Sometime during your stay you should take in one of Vietnam’s beach resorts – Vung Tau an hour south of Ho Chi Minh City. Nha Trang on the south-central coast and China Beach near Da Nang. I found a wonderful respite at the new Furama Resort at China Beach, once favored by American Marines on rest and recreation. The water of the South China Sea here is as clear and warm, and the beach as long and white as the best places in the Caribbean. It is very much like Boracay 25 years ago.
Da Nang is a sleepy town with not much to recommend it for other than a nice museum devoted to artwork from the Cham civilization, dating back a thousand years. The three-hour drive from Da Nang to the Truong Son Mountains to Hue is one of the most scenic in Vietnam.
The old imperial capital of Hue might have been the country’s top tourist spot if its numerous historical sites had not been so thoroughly damaged in the French and American wars and neglected since by the communist government. In its day, the moated imperial citadel, modeled after the Forbidden City in Beijing, must have been quite a sight, complete with two lakes, an imperial palace, several temples, teahouses and accommodations for hundreds of court mandarins. Outside of town, the 19th century emperors constructed tombs for themselves that were so elaborate and extensive that public protest over their expense nearly brought down the Nguyen dynasty. Sadly, what remains can be surveyed easily in a day. A small Imperial Museum outside the gates is worth a quick visit to see items of the royal household. Then retire to the Son Huoan Floating Restaurant on the banks of the Perfume River for a drink at sunset.
Finally there is Hanoi, the pleasant and charming French-Asian city most travelers to this country fantasize about when they think of Vietnam. Just driving in from the airport along a smooth, divided highway, you realize how far you are from the chaos of Ho Chi Minh City. As you cross the Red River into the city proper, you proceed down broad, tree-lined avenues, past ochre, colonial-style government buildings, around the city’s peaceful lakes and spacious parks and through the old commercial district. As the capital of French Indochina and later the centrally planned economy of Vietnam, this is a city that clearly prides itself on history, decorum and control.
Every major city in Vietnam has a Ho Chi Minh museum, but the only one worth visiting is here, part of a complex that includes his modest stilt house and fruit orchard and a Lenin-like mausoleum where Ho’s body is preserved (similar to the Marcos mausoleum in Batac) in a glass coffin.
Hanoi is the kind of city that’s fun just to walk around, taking in the buildings and the flow of daily life, browsing through silk and lacquer ware shops in the old quarter or stopping for coffee or ice cream. Picture-postcard restorations have been done on the French governor’s mansion, which is now the government’s official guesthouse, and the Opera House, copied from the one in Paris. On the west side of the city is a charming diplomatic quarter and Thu Le Park, with a swimming pond and zoo.
You can put together a great sailing vacation from Ha Long Bay down the coast to Nha Tran (very much like the islands in Palawan although on a larger scale), taking in largely deserted sand-and-dune beaches and unvisited offshore islands.
The point is simply that now is the time to snatch this vacation diamond in the rough. There’s the opportunity to put together a private tour tailored to your own tastes and interests, at reasonable prices, in a country that offers most of the elements of a good vacation- but hasn’t quite figured out how to put them all together.
Getting There:
Philippine Airlines together with Vietnam Airlines has a joint service flights to the southern capital of Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) three times a week. From here you can have convenient connections to the many tourist destination in the country including the capital Hanoi.
Other airlines include Thai Airways International, Bangkok Airways that has daily flights out of Bangkok to both Ho Chi Min City and Hanoi.
Money
US currency is far and away the easiest to negotiate – it is taken everywhere and preferred to the Vietnamese dong. Major hotels take credit cards but some only with a 3 per cent charge.
Clothing
Dress casually for warm weather nearly everywhere in every season. Good walking sandals and a brimmed hat are highly advisable.
Where to stay
Hotel rates listed are for rooms with double occupancy and including breakfast.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Continental Hotel, 132 Dong Khoi Stre, phone 00 848 829 9201 US$85-100; In Dalat, Novotel, 7 Tran Phu St., phone 00 84 63 822 363, US$75; In Danang, Furama Resort, 68 Ho Xuan Huong, Bac May An, phone 00 84 511 847 888 US$80-120; In Hue, Saigon Morin Hotel, 30 Le Loi, phone 00 84 54 823 526 US$70 – 90; In Hanoi: Sofitel Metropole, 15 Ngo Quyen Street, phone 00 844 826 6919 US$150 – 175.
Information:
Vietnamtourism, is a government-run travel agency that can handle visas, in-country reservations and information requests. Vietnam online provides basic information at www.vietnamonline.com
