Travel Journal

The last city I visited in Vietnam is its capital, Hanoi. During my first visit to Vietnam, it was the starting point of my voyage through this country, and I instantly liked the city. If you forget about the mad traffic for a moment, the city is really charming with its old center with narrow streets, just north of Hoan Kiem lake. There, a number of streets are named after the products that virtually every shop in the street sells, like Hang Bo, with Hang meaning “merchandise” and Bo stands for “baskets". There is a Hang Manh for bamboo screens, and a Hang Muoi, for salt.

There are of course many family restaurants, with delicious food, served usually within a minute after ordering. And then the many coffeeshops, where you can sit down and relax, and watch life going by on the busy street in front of you. Many women, wearing the typically Vietnamese conical hat, carrying a bamboo pole on one shoulder with two baskets attached to it. They sell fruit or carry all kinds of goods. Across some streets, there are red banners with slogans in Vietnamese, reminding you that you’re in a socialist country: “Honesty, Nobility, Solidarity!", or “Long Live President Ho Chi Minh!". Every hundred meters or so people ask you if you want their motorbike taxi services, very cheap (after bargaining) and very fast.

Hanoi is also the city where you can see Ho Chi Minh, or Uncle Ho as he is fondly known, in the mausoleum built after his death. Next to the building, two large banners proclaiming “The Socialist Republic Of Vietnam Will Live On!", and “President Ho Chi Minh Will Walk With Us Forever!", facing the large square that is crowded with people and dignitaries on special occassions. Soldiers in khaki or bright white uniforms guard the mausoleum, and inside is the body of the late Ho Chi Minh, subtly lit in a glass sarcophagus, emphasising his thin white hair, goatee and his bony hands.

The mausoleum is surrounded by large botanical gardens with enormous trees and plants from all over the country, and they were well kept by a dozen female workers with those typical straw hats again. Further on, there is Unclo Ho’s presidential palace, his residential house, and his semi-residential bungalow, completely made out of teak wood, with a carp-filled pond in front of it.

Also on the mausoleum terrain is the famous One Pillar Pagoda, originally constructed by Emperor Ly Thai Tong, who ruled from 1028-1054, destroyed by the French upon leaving Hanoi in 1954, and rebuilt by the Vietnamese government. This small pagoda on an enormous stone pillar has a buddha statue in it, surrounded by flowers and other offerings, and incense.

There are a lot of Chinese influences everywhere in Hanoi, from the Temple of Literature, dedicated to Confucius, to the many Chinese gates, temples and pagodas in this city. The Chinese / Japanese style (fat) Buddha can be seen a lot here, and sometimes statues of Confucius, Vietnamese emperors, and occasionally the more slimmed down Thai version of Buddha. In the center of Hanoi is a Catholic church, a dark grey structure resembling the Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite in Paris.

By now, I spoke enough Vietnamese to have basic conversations, and it helps enormously with negotiating to get the right price for transportation, or for that nice t-shirt you want to buy. Usually, the asking price is about five times as high as the actual price, and if negotiating doesn’t get the price down enough, the tactic of walking away helps. The vendor shouts out the lowest price, in the hope you turn around. Some people confided in me, in Vietnamese, that the asking price would have been much higher, if I wouldn’t have spoken in Vietnamese to them.

Unfortunately, after several weeks revisiting wonderful Vietnam, it was time for me to leave. My next destination was going to be China, and I was very excited that my explorations of this huge and unfamiliar country were about to start.

Nha Trang, on Vietnam’s south-central coast, is very touristy, and like most places in Vietnam, it has changed drastically over the past decade. It now has hundreds of hotels for the large number of Vietnamese and foreign tourists who want to spend some time in this pleasant city, and it seems that every week, construction starts on a new hotel, even more luxurious than the others.

I was excited to be back in this city, to meet some of the friends I had made during previous visits, and to see all of the now very familiar places, coffeeshops and restaurants again. The long beach is wonderful, and Nha Trang could almost be mistaken for a Mediterranean town, were it not for the many pictures and paintings of Ho Chi Minh, and slogans in Vietnamese like “Nha Trang Is The City Of Heroes", referring to the resistance during the American War.

In the evenings, young couples drive on scooters or motorbikes on the main boulevard along the beach, to see and be seen, and a special section of the beach is crowded after dark with parked motorbikes, where couples are kissing, as this, or even holding hands, is unheard of during the day.

From Nha Trang, I made a short excursion to Dalat. It is a cool mountain resort in the central highlands, and is a famous honeymooning resort for Vietnamese couples because of its climate and idyllic location. There is indeed some beautiful scenery to explore around Dalat, which I did on a rented motorbike, as I drove on winding roads through mountains covered with lush forests, visiting some large waterfalls a dozen kilometers away from the town.

Back in Nha Trang, I bought a ticket for a night bus to the small town of Hoi An. It is just south of the central Vietnamese city of Danang, and it is one of my favourite places in Vietnam. A Unesco World Heritage site, it is a very picturesque riverside town with narrow streets and old houses, many beautiful pagodas and Chinese temples with nice gardens. Some of the many wooden buildings date back to early 19th century. It is very touristy, but this doesn’t diminish the feeling you get, of being in an open-air museum of historical Vietnam, when you walk through Hoi An. The town is also famous for manufacturing clothes, and the hundreds of tailors can produce basically anything you want in 24 hours, including copies of your favourite shirts or trousers, in the material of your choosing.

After a couple of days, I travelled further north to Hue, located on either side of the wide Perfume River. Around Hue, there are a number of interesting pagodas and tombs of emperors to be explored. Close to the city, the Thien Mu pagoda is where monk Thich Quang Duc used to live. Although not famous by name, photographs of him were printed on the front pages of newspapers and magazines all around the world, as he burned himself to death in Saigon on 11 June 1963, in protest of the policies of the brutal South-Vietnamese Diem regime.

The old part of the city, on the north side of the river, is situated inside a moated citadel. It is here where the Imperial Enclosure and the Forbidden Purple City are located, home to the emperors of the Nguyen dynasty, until the end of World War II, when Emperor Bao Dai abdicated to Ho Chi Minh’s Provisional Revolutionary Government. Although much of the historical buildings and temples were destroyed during the American War, some of the residences, halls, palaces and gates have been restored, and are well worth a visit.

After visiting the Imperial Enclosure, I cycled around on a rented bicycle through the old city, and stopped near Tinh Tam Lake, where I enjoyed an absolutely delicious bun bo Hue, a local specialty, consisting of rice vermicelli and vegetables with beef soup. Another of my favourite dishes, sold everywhere in Vietnam, is pho bo, or beef noodle soup, to which you add some extra flavour by using the nuoc mam, or fish sauce, and of course chillies. What you’ll probably want to give a miss is the absolutely foul smelling mam nem, a different kind of fermented fish sauce and uniquely Vietnamese, it has the strongest stench I’ve ever encountered, worse than the already very unpleasant odour of the durian fruit. Both are, not unlike those British and Australian concoctions of condiments called Marmite and Vegemite, an acquired taste (to say the least).

After a couple of days in Hue, a long busride brought me to Hanoi, my last stop before I would go to China.

After spending some time in the south of Cambodia, on the deserted beaches of Sihanoukville, or Kampong Som, with seawater with a temperature approaching that of a hot bath, I returned to Phnom Penh.

From there, I took a bus that brought me to the border with Vietnam, and after the customs formalities, I was on my way to Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, also known as Saigon.

From 1859, most of Vietnam was under French rule. During World War II, Japanese forces occupied Vietnam, frequently attacked by the largely communist Viet Minh resistance forces, led by Nguyen Tat Thanh (1890-1969), more widely known as Ho Chi Minh, or Bringer of Light. After the end of World War II, French troops tried in vain to regain control of their former colony, until their catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

The Geneva Accords that followed allowed for a temporary division of the country along the 17th Parallel, until a possible reunification. The north of Vietnam, known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was led by Ho Chi Minh, and the south, or Republic of Vietnam, had Ngo Dinh Diem as head of state. Diem, who used nepotism and a near-tyrannical rule to remain in power, refused to implement the Geneva Accords to reunify Vietnam. What followed was a war between the north and south, during which American support to the south increased from a handful of “military advisers” to hundreds of thousands of troops. What is known everywhere else as the “Vietnam War", is referred to as the “American War” here, and its outcome is now famous.

When the war was over, Saigon was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City, and Vietnam was once again united, with Hanoi being its present day capital.

I have visited Vietnam twice before, and it is nice to be in a familiar country again. Also, the fact that the Vietnamese language uses the Roman script makes things a lot easier, although its pronunciation is very difficult.

After arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, I was again reminded of how bad the Vietnamese traffic is. Of all the countries I have visited in Asia, nowhere is the traffic as bad and seemingly suicidal as here. As usual, there are more motorbikes than cars on the streets, and none of the drivers wear helmets. Motorbikes coming from side streets hardly slow down and never look, putting their faith in their God and the drivers behind them. On the roads connecting the towns and cities, it seems that overtaking is a necessity when there is absolutely no way to know if there is any oncoming traffic. Therefor, it’s not a question if you see any accidents or their aftermath, but how many.

Ho Chi Minh City is huge, with wide boulevards connecting the different quarters. I visited the Reunification Palace, formerly the seat of the South Vietnamese government before tanks from the North Vietnamese army crushed the gates in front of the palace on 30 April 1975, signaling the liberation of Saigon. The elaborately decorated rooms are now occasionally used for government meetings, and the Palace took centre stage on 30 April of this year, during the celebrations to mark 30 years since the end of the American War.

Vietnam is the number two coffee producing country in the world, and I frequently enjoyed this delicious coffee (usually served with condensed milk) in some of the many coffeeshops in the city. Some are stunningly beautiful, with elaborate gardens, ponds filled with enormous fish, caged singing birds, and sitting here is a nice change from being in the busy, polluted streets.

After several days of exploring the city, with its striking mix of French and socialist architecture, I made my way further north, to the city of Nha Trang, with its beautiful beach, looking out over the South China Sea.