Vietnam from end to end

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November 5, 2011 Category: Albino Bowler No Comments »

The first thing everyone always asks is “Why Vietnam?”. Well, aside from the fact that it’s astonishingly beautiful and contains 7 Unesco World Heritage sites, it is also a cultural wonderland. The people are some of the friendliest in the world and the cost of living is one of the lowest in the world for such a high quality of life. Kimberly and I love to visit places where we can really get to know the people and culture and this Vietnam really fit the bill.

We started our journey in Hanoi. Strange thing about Hanoi, they don’t believe in trash cans. Seriously, we couldn’t find one anywhere. Turns out they throw all their trash into the street and each night crews come thru and pick up everything and wash the street. It’s spotless each morning and a total wreck by the end of each day. It was the only city in Vietnam where we found this to be the case.

We visited many cities, villages and small towns between Hanoi in North Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh City in the south. Our favorite was definitely Sapa where we started our hike thru the mountains and villages of the ethnic people, primarily the Hmong tribe. We lugged a huge 40 pound duffel bag full of supplies from home just to take to these people and the children in the schools we passed along the way. It was so much fun for us as well as our guide to get to give all the that stuff away. The villagers, children and teachers were more excited and thankful than we could have imagined. Some of the women followed us for miles and miles holding Kimberly’s hand to ensure she didn’t fall off the mountain. One of them literally held her from falling on several occasions. After hiking all day we stopped in a village for a homestay and got up early the next morning for another full day of hiking. That night was spent in Sapa. The best way I can think of to explain Sapa, is like a Vietnamese Gatlinburg. It’s where all the local Vietnamese go for vacation, rest and relaxation.

Speaking of rest and relaxation, we were in Ha Long Bay for two days and enjoyed a great evening on one of the most beautiful boats I’ve ever seen. We were able to see caves, take a small row boat into a lagoon as well as swim in the bay.

Hue was another amazing city full of beautiful Temples, city ruins and ancient palaces. The most amazing thing we noticed about these sites was that we could never tell the difference between something that was 150 years old and something that was 1000 years old. Not only did they generally seem to make things the same way for over 1000 years, but the harsh climate makes anything new look ancient instantly.

While in Ho Chi Minh City, which by the way, they call Saigon and don’t like it when you call it Ho Chi Minh. The communist government renamed it after the war, but they don’t much care about that, except when writing because it would be illegal for them to refer to it by its previous name formally. We found out early on, it was called Saigon when you are in Saigon and Ho Chi Minh when anywhere else. While we were there we went to visit the Chu Chi Tunnels. These were the famous tunnels in Vietnam that housed thousands and thousands of Vietnamese and stretched over 70 miles. We were able to go down into the tunnels as far as we wanted, which wasn’t really that far. I was very excited to find out they had a firing range setup and I was able to squeeze off a few dozen rounds on an M60. We also looked at all the different forms of booby traps they had setup to snare Americans soldiers. They were gruesome.

We ended our trip with a couple of days to ourselves back in Hanoi. We had three domestic flights and two over night train rides in Vietnam during our 18 day excursion so we were ready for some time to ourselves in one city. We visited a few key points in Hanoi like Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake and spent a whole day in the Old Quarter shopping. That duffel bag full of supplies we brought was quickly filled with gifts and souvenirs to bring home. In the end, once again we have a new favorite vacation. I’ve told everyone that asked that I would move there in a hearbeat, maybe not forever but for a year or two would be wonderful.