Introduction

My wife and I had initially planned on a grand tour, taking in Laos and Cambodia as well, but finally decided to limit the trip to Vietnam for reasons of time constraint. Too bad, but, let’s take it from the bright side: we have some more time in Vietnam and keep now another project to look forward to, a trip to Laos and Cambodia. Coming up early 2007.

From Bangkok we made a triangle, flying to Hanoi, on to Saigon and back to Bangkok. Two weeks of traveling around and visiting gives us a chance to get a proper first impression of Vietnam. Enough to realize the complexity of the country, the richness of its culture, the depth of its history, the infiniteness of its natural beauty. Enough also to understand that we should come back for more.

A few things have struck me more in particular about the country.

Everyone is working, working and working. No wonder the country is making rapid economic progress, even if the population is growing as fast as it is. But on receiving international tourism they still have a couple of things to learn. It happened to us both in Hanoi and in HCMC/Saigon that the guide or the driver simply refused to add the little extra we wanted to the day’s programme, because ‘it was not in the written schedule’. There were no extra hours or expenses involved, it just wasn’t written in the programme. The inflexibility of a communist past? The lack of understanding that as a visitor you do not want to be rigidly cemented into a set programme, especially not if you have opted for individual and tailor-made travel? The confusion between punctuality and inflexibility? I don’t know, but it surely upset me at times. Let this however not overshadow the general fact that we have found Vietnamese very welcoming and nice people and that we have thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

As visitors we hardly noticed any resentment or animosity about the ‘American war’. I am not American, but I can imagine that the war past is very much on your mind when you visit Vietnam as an American. I may be wrong, but seen from the outside, and having talked to many fellow visitors, Americans seem to be quite comfortable while visiting the country and they feel very welcome, even surrounded with a bit of fascination on the side of their Vietnamese hosts. The war is going to where it belongs, to the records of the past, respectable and not to be forgotten, but gradually being stripped of the emotional charge, which can blur minds into obsessions of hate and distrust. I have developed enormous respect for the dignity and wisdom with which the Vietnamese seem to have handled the matter. It has also become much clearer to me that what was a war against communism for the Americans, was actually a pure civil war for the Vietnamese. Americans and Vietnamese were not fighting quite the same war, and this may explain a lot of what happened in that tragic period.

As punctual Vietnamese are in their arrangements and appointments, as unreliable Vietnam Airways seems to be. Their staff is nice and friendly, for sure, and the meals offered on board are not bad either, but we have not had one single flight leaving within an hour of the initially announced time of departure. No big deal in itself, of course, but it surely is something to take into account when you have to catch an onward flight within two or three hours after your Vietnam Airways flight is supposed to have landed.

The Vietnamese kitchen is excellent. I gladly shoved aside all menus with European dishes and went systematically for the Vietnamese food, which is very diverse, excellent of taste and certainly a lot healthier than what we are used to eat in the West.

Vietnam is a country of endless possibilities of discovery for curious and eager natures like me. I even caught myself indulging into some tourist greed, making up already an itinerary outline for a next trip to Vietnam while I was still there, on my first trip… I’ve later tossed these quick itinerary notes away, but I know we will be back to Vietnam one day, to explore Hue and the central part of the country, which we skipped this time.

great start....maybe it was just your guide who was not flexible....the guide we had was very flexible and encouraged us to make detours, etc...

vietnam air is like lots of 3rd world airlines....good in many ways but not all that punctual...

cram...best if you post all the report on one thread...much easier for us readers to follow things along....do it in short segments like you have done, but all on the same thread

Thanks for the tip. You're right, as threads do not stay clustered together, but move about according to the reactions that they draw. I've already sent out the full report in one go, and it worked. I thought it wouldn't.

If it doesn't go in one post, you could post the subsequent parts as replies. And it could be even more interesting to have discussions between the parts, so you don't have to post it all at once.