Vietnam: The Chic Hippie Tour
So I returned last week from my 2 weeks trip to Vietnam.
I had a choice between Singapore and Malaysia for a visa run but decided to do something different and tried Vietnam. I had a number of ill-conceived ideas about Vietmam and it turned out that many were wrong, and that was good. I was expecting some shitholes like in Northern China, Burma, Cambodia or even Laos 10 years ago. Even though some aspects of the country are still very backward, overall my idea of Vietnam has changed a lot for the better. I see a lot of good potential for that country now, and it seems that the Vietnamese are getting with the program after ripping-off tourists and expat businessmen for years.
I started with HoChiMin City (SAIGON) and this was by far an exciting and very busy city. It's changing fast. They are building 5 stars hotels and shopping malls everywhere, nice little "Parisian" sidewalk cafes, colonial house restaurants etc... the city is moving fast and is quite nice. A lot to visit there, and a lot to eat. The reason I also chose Vietnam was because I love Vietnamese food so much. In Paris where I used to live, we have a huge community of Vietnamese refugees, and we get to have the best Vietnamese food. Luckily I was able to find those same dishes in the streets and restaurants and they tasted the same, even though some tasted better in France, probably because of the lack of quality ingredients locally.
Then because I was meeting someone in Hanoi for a night out 1 week later, I decided to go up to Hanoi by train with a few stops in between. But looking at the train schedule and my budget, I decided to change options and went with the VIP bus route with a lot of stops in between. Because I wanted to travel on budget to be closer to the "real" thing, I went in some kind of a hippie Khao San trip and decided to spend no more than 20 USD per night in hotels (ok Chic Hippie, not really cheap hippie hotels), and no more than a few more USD per day for the rest. With the VIP bus option, this was perfect as I could spend the night sleeping in the bus, and visit the different cities during the day where I stopped. Overall the trip was difficult and a bit tiring, but I had a great time. I made just in time in Hanoi to have a night out with a friend. No whoring though, surprisingly, as I didn't find anything tempting or worth it. The only georgous looking girls were those sweet girls on their bycicle in the country side, but they were kind of young and innocent so no point really, unless you are into kidnapping young country girls, which I wasn't, so I passed the whole whoring trip altogether.
My trip to Hanoi happened in less than 7 days:
HoChiMin City -> Dang Nan
Dang Nan -> Hoi Han
Hoi Han -> Hue
Hue -> Hanoi
Hanoi -> Halong Bay
Halong Bay -> Hanoi
The distance between Hanoi and HoChiMin is 1800km and the average speed of the bus was 50km/h not because it couldn't go faster but because speed limit in Vietnam is 50km/h for buses and the police is everywhere to enforce the speed limit (corruption)
I didn't take my camera as I was expecting some dangerous shithole, which proved to be wrong. Luckily I had my mobile camera so I did manage taking a few pics.
Next I will post about each city I stopped by and what I liked about them.
(to be continued...)
