16 days in Vietnam
 

We recently returned from a 16 day trip to Vietnam. By way of background, my DH and I are both retired, have travelled extensively, both independently and with tour groups, and have enjoyed every trip we have been on. I do extensive research before deciding whether to go with a tour group or on our own. As we get older, we like the idea that on a tour, all of the luggage and logistical concerns are taken care of,. However, I would not consider a tour unless the itinerary matched the itinerary I would have planned had I been travelling independently.

As I was deciding whether to let Tonkin Travel make our trip arrangements, NeoPatrick posted a trip report of his Vietnam trip with OAT. It sounded like the kind of trip I would be happy on-16 people, some intersting off the beaten path experiences, as well as covering the major sites I wanted to see. I had travelled with OAT to Tunisia and was happy with that trip, so I decided to consider going to Vietnam with OAT. I check the hotels OAT used on TA, and found that they some were not the quality of the hotels I would book on my own. However, other things trumped the hoitels so we signed on with OAT to leave on Feb. 26 and return on March 15.

We flew BOS-ORD-HK-SGN on United, a truly awful airline. Fortunately, the middle seat between my DH and myself was unoccupied for most of the legs of the trip so we could spread out. We left our house at 5:30 am and arrived our Saigon hotel at 1am, making all of our connections despite some delays along the way. I decided to get a looseleaf visa from the Washington Embassy rather than chance the possible line for a VOA at SGN airport. As an aside, at 11:30 pm the VOA line at the airport was pretty short and could have been gotten through in about 30 minutes, I would guess.

Anyway, we were trasnsported to our first hotel, the Asian Ruby 1 hotel, got to our room at about 2am. This was an overnight stop only, before leaving for Hanoi the next morning. We had a very nice, spacious room on the 10th floor. After finally falling asleep at about 2;30am we were awakened at 4:30am by furniture being moved in the diningroom overhead, as the set up for breakfast. The screeching of wooden chairs against wooden floor ended any restful sleep. However, when checking out in the morning, I spoke in a semi nice way to the manager and strongly requested that when we return to this hotel for the last three nights of the trip that I be given a "quiet" room where I would not be bothered by either street noise or hotel noise.

After a decent buffet breakfast at the Asian Ruby 1 Hotel, we were transported to the airport to fly to Hanoi where the touring actually begins. Our hotel in Hanoi was the Star View Hotel, located a 15 minute walk between the Old Quarter and West Lake. Although listed as a 4 star hotel, it is really more like a 3 star hotel. The room was very large, but the bathroom needed updating. The room was spotlessly clean as was every room on this trip. In my travels,one thing I have never accepted and will never accept, is a room that is less than very clean. After checking in to the hotel, we had a short orientation walk around the hotel area. There is not much to see in this area, but it was a good introduction to the noise and motorcycle traffic in Hanoi. For dinner we were taken to the Banana Flower Restaurant where we had the first of many excellent lunches and dinners. The food and service were top notch. We had spring rolls, salad, three dishes-one fish, one pork and one chicken, rice,fruit for dessert and a glass of wine. I would recommend this restaurant. Then back to the hotel to get some rest before our first day of formal touring.

Good start!

Yes, very good.

Thanks for sharing - awaiting the next installment!

Hi Shelly, I'm looking forward to hearing about your adventures in VN.

i'm with you from italy--keep it coming..

We're leaving for Hanoi later this week. Looking forward to reading more!

ms_go, where are you staying in Hanoi?

shelley, we just left Vietnam for Siem Reap (actually our fourth and last day here, off to Hong Kong tomorrow). I'll do a "report" when I get home. Keep yours coming!

sf7307, we're staying at Elegance Ruby (fka #4). We'll be there for a week, with an overnight at Halong bay somewhere in the middle.

Thanks for the encouragement. It's nice to know that others are interested in reading this report.

We were up early for our first day of touring in Hanoi. After a limited and mediocre breakfast, we left for the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. When we arrived at 9am there was a long line, mostly of school children, waiting to view Uncle Ho's body. It was fine with me that we did not join the line. I took photos of the imposing mausoleum building, watched the changing of the guard, and moved on to Ho's stilt house complex, where I found the buildings to be infinately more interesting and photographic than the concrete Mausoleum.

We joined the line to view the stilt house complex where there were many good photo ops , not only of the buildings, but also of the children waiting on line. Our guide told us that this is a mandatory visit for children who are members of the Youth Communist Party. We then boarded the bus to visit the Temple of Literature. It was a very interesting visit, viewing the different parts of the complex, seeing the ancient turtle stellae, and enjoying the Chinese style architecture.

By now it was about 12:30 and time for lunch at Dai Viet Restaurant, a seven course tasting menu of very good Vietnamese food. We then returned to the hotel briefly, before leaving for our 3:30 performance of the water puppet show. The show was sold out, so I suggest getting tickets in advance if you want a specific time and seat location. We sat in the 3rd row and could see very well. The puppet show, accompanied by traditional musical instruments, lasts about 45 minutes. This seemed to me to be the right amount of time to prevent bordom. It was nice to see, but certainly wasn't one of the highlights of my trip.

After the show, we were picked up by cyclos, one person per cyclo, and driven through the Old Quarter of Hanoi for about 45 minutes to one hour. The ride was fun, and gave me a good introduction to where things were located in the Old Quarter, as I would be doing a 4 mile walking tour on my own the next day while most of the rest of the group went on an optional tour to a rural village about 20 miles outside of Hanoi.

After the cyclo ride we were taken to Viet Kitchen Spring Restaurant for dinner. The food and service were very good. To give give you an idea of what a typical included lunch or dinner was like I am including the menu for this particular dinner since I found a copy of the menu in my notes-chicken soup, pomelo salad with prawns and pork, chicken in a clay pot, stir fried beef with lemongrass and capsicum, stir fried eggplant with pork sauce, stirfried mixed vegtables, stemed rice, and mango sticky rice for dessert. Every included lunch and dinner was this many courses, and almost every dish was a new preparation (hardly any repeated dishes except for spring rolls). I must say that the food on this trip was usually very good to outstanding, and it became one of the highlights of the trip for me. OAT did a great job of picking restaurants with nice ambience and service. And their choice of the menus was spot on as far as I am concerned. I would recommend ealmost every restaurant that they chose. Actually, their choice of restaurants and menu far surpassed some of my own choices as you will see in future installments.

Eagerly reading...

me too...

For our second full day in Hanoi I planned a walking tour of the Old Quarter which was a combination of the walking tours I found in Fodor's and Lonely Planet guide books. Since DH's back was giving him problems, we took a taxi to the first stop on the tour, the tube house museum , which was about a mile mile south of our hotel.. I asked the front desk of our hotel to call a Mai Linh Taxi. I used only this company and Vinason Taxi when needing cabs and therefore I feel I was not overcharged. All of the cabs we used used meters and the meters seemed to run at a normal and fair speed.The taxi to the tube house was $1.50 for a 10 minute ride-so reasonable that I do not know how they make any money at these rates

On request, we got a guided tour of the tube house which I found quite interesting. The house was a 2 story house with four furnished rooms on each floor. On display in the house were crafts from various rural villages around Hanoi-ie woven baskets, textiles, embroidered paintings, pottery,etc, some antique and some more modern. Also on view were old photos of what Hanoi looked like at the turn of the century. After spending about 45 minutes in the house, we walked to Bach Ma Temple (I am writing from memory as I have misplaced my notes for todays activities. so I hope I get most of the names correct). This is the oldest temple in Hanoi, and we spent time viewing the interior and watching the people come to pray, light incense and leave offerings.

From here we walked south down many narrow streets, watching the street vendors, poking our heads into some of the more interesting stores, and viewing the daily activities. When we got to Hoa Kiem Lake, we crossed over the red bridge to the island and entered the pagoda. After that we took a short walk in the French Quarter where the streets are much wider and more leafy than those in the Old Quarter.

We continued our walk north, back into the Old Quarter viewing silk street, bamboo street and other streets devoted to differing occupation or selling similar kind of goods. All of the streets were very busy, and I took many photos along the way. Our last stop of the day was the big covered market (I can't remember the name), but it sold all kinds of goods-produce, textiles, toys,ect. From there we walked back to the hotel arriving about 6:30.

My intention was to go to Quan An Ngon for dinner that evening, but by the time we showered and rested a bit it was 8 o'clock. Since we were quite tired from our very long day on our feet, and since we had an early wake up call the next morning for our journey to Halong Bay, we decided to stay local rather than take the taxi to Quan An Ngon. Big mistake.

We walked for several blocks around our hotel looking for a restaurant,, but found only street food vendors. Finally we found a decent looking restaurant. Just as we were about to enter, 2 buses pulled up to the restaurant and out poured about 80 people. We knew who would get the good service and be served first, and it wasn't us.

So back we went to the hotel, and took a chance on the hotel restaurant. This was the biggest mistake we made on the whole trip. I won't go into what we ordered. Suffice to say, the food was inedible. I guess I should have expected it because the breakfast was so mediocre. But when you are really, really tired and still a little jet lagged, I guess your judgement isn't so good. At least mine wasn't. So back to the room we went and had some granola bars which we had brought from home, a memorable end to a very long and interesting day.

Obviously, between the bathroom needing updating, the mediocre breakfasts and the inedible dinner, I would definitely say to avoid the Star View Hotel.

Tomorrow it is on to Halong Bay.

if those are the worst mistakes you make, no problem..

is jim feeling any better?

Thanks for asking. Jim's going to physical therapy, so hopefully that will help. Those 30 hour plane rides sure don't help. How are you doing?

Until today the weather had been overcast and in the low 60s, perfect for walking and sightseeing. Today we woke up to a slight drizzle. As we headed toward Halong Bay the rain got heavier and steadier. The 4 hour ride felt very long and was pretty boring aside from seeing some rice paddies with workers planting rice and men tilling the fields with water buffalo..

Several days before we were to leave on our trip, a boat sank on Halong Bay and the authorities shut down overnight cruises for several days. I had decided that if our scheduled overnight cruise became a day cruise, I would just stay in Hanoi for the day rather than do Halong Bay as a day trip. Fortunately I did not have to make this decision as a few days prior to our scheduled cruise, the authorities began allowing overnight cruises. After experiencing the long and boring drive to Halong Bay I agree with most Fodorite's views that Halong Bay should not be done as a day trip.

We arrived about 12pm and were ferried to our newish (built in 2002), beautiful junk, the Hai Au junk. Only our group of 16 were accomodated on the junk. The rooms were smallish, but sparkling clean and modern. We were served a delicious lunch and we began cruising.

Unfortuately the rain had become so hard that we could not sit on the open deck, but I did go to the covered part of the deck to take photos. All of my color photos came out mostly in shades of gray, but it was still beautiful to me and I was glad to be there.

At about 3:30, some of our group went to Surprise Cave for a walk through a large, beautifully developed set of 3 caves. The cave system was probably about .3-.5 miles in length. The walk through the dry cave gave me some much needed excercise after the 4 hour bus ride to Halong Bay.

After the cave trip, we returned to the ship for a demonstration by the chef of how to cut vegtables into flowers. After that we had a very good dinner,, chatted a bit with some of our group, and retired for the night.

The next day I awoke early and went up to the deck to take more photos of the karst scenery which was still enveloped in mist. We cruised for a few more hours, were served a very, very minimal breakfast and left the boat for our long drive back to Hanoi.

When we arrived in Hanoi we were taken to Al Fresco Restaurant, in the French Quarter, for a 3 course lunch. As appetizers I chose the best fried calamari I have ever eaten (and I am from New England)and DH chose excellent barbequed ribs. We chose a grilled chicken breast and french fries as an entree which was just ok., and ice cream for dessert. This was what I needed as I was really hungry because of the limited breakfast.

After lunch we were taken to the Ethnology Musuem where we spent about 2.5 hours viewing crafts,ect on the inside of the museum and houses indicative of various regions of Vietnam on the outside. This was an extremely interesting museum and I suggest if you choose to go, you allow ample time to see all of the exhibits.

We were then taken to the airport for our 8:20 flight to Hue. We arrived at our hotel at about 10pm and as we were hungry again, we went to the rooftop restaurant at 11pm to have a light dinner of stir fried vegtables and a beer.

Enjoying your report. It is a long ride to Halong Bay...the one negative about going there, but worth it for the scenery.

keep it coming