A Taste of Vietnam
Travel over Thanksgiving seems to have become a yearly tradition with my sister (and whoever else we drag along with us, this trip was our dad:).
We flew into Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, and our travel guide, Long, from Friendly Planet Travel met us and the rest of our group at the airport. The first day we toured the city. We went to the Reunification Hall, where the fall of Saigon happened in 1975, the Saigon Post Office and visited various other landmarks. My dad and my sister are amazing at finding local, no touristy restaurants which became a fun part of this trip. Also from Saigon we traveled to the Mekong Delta for a boat ride and then got into sampans to travel up a small canal, then we took a tuktuk to lunch. After seeing the millions of scooters in the city and the crazy driving… we opted out of trying the Vespa tour!
The next day we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Viet Minh built the tunnels in the 1940s and they were used during the Vietnam war. This visit was overwhelming. This tour is set up from the perspective of North Vietnam during the war. We learned about how the tunnel system worked, parts of its geographical locations, the way they were lived in, and the horrifying traps that were set for American Soldiers. While walking around in the woods you can hear the gun fire from the artillery range where tourists can buy ammunition and fire some of the weapons used during the Vietnam war. Some of us in the tour crawled through some of the actual tunnels, something I did, but will never volunteer to do again.
From there we flew to Da Nang and drove to Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage site at the mouth of the Thu Bon River. Hoi An is an amazing old world town that was a trading port from the 15th to 19th centuries. The streets are lined with lanterns and the boats at night light up with them. In the morning the three of us walked around the town and took a lucky turn to find the local market. My favorite pictures from this trip are at the market where the locals buy fresh food and flowers.
From Hoi An we took a day trip to Ba Na Hills and the Golden Bridge. The weather was ok at the bottom before we got on the gondola to travel to the top, but it was torrential rain at the top of Ba Na Hill and on the Golden Bridge. You only live once and the entire group decided to brave the weather and to see the views from the top of the hill, boy were we soaked. After returning to Hoi An and drying off, we walked around town and had dinner at a restaurant on the river with a view of all the lanterns lit up.
From Hoi An we drove to My Khe Beach, where the television series China Beach took place. We then took a flight to Hanoi and transferred to Halong Bay another UNESCO World Heritage site . The boat cruise on Halong Bay was beautiful as expected and they served us lunch while we were on the water.
We then continued to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. A tour of the Hoa Lo Prison where John McCain and other American soldiers were imprisoned was another eye opening experience. The tour viewed the home and had tea with a Hanoi resident, had Vietnamese Egg Coffee at the Hidden Gem Cafe (a really neat cafe decorated with recycled items), and visited other historical sites in the city.
Also, if you have never heard of or watched youtube videos of the Hanoi train, you should look it up. We hiked across the city and met with a guide to take us back to a restaurant on the train tracks and wait for the train. It was completely worth it!
