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Useful tips Ho Chi Minh City
65 Reviews Dont go during TET, many places are closed and everyone goes home to their home town to be with family. Its a great happy time if you are vietnamese and are back home with your family but for tourist,...
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Arround the City Hanoi
36 Reviews The kids here are gorgeous . Always ready to say hello to us westerners. They have the most beautiful little faces. But before I took a photo I always asked the adult they were with if it was ok to do...
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Street life Ho Chi Minh City
22 Reviews Christmans in Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica The Christmans day all the people walk around the streets in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). But most of them are around the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica to...
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Out of Hanoi Hanoi
11 Reviews Dear friend, Kenh Ga is a 10km canal in Ninh Binh province - the South from Hanoi. It take about 2 and a half hours drive from Hanoi. There are not much atraction there, you just sit on a concreat...
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Sights Ho Chi Minh City
24 Reviews This tip goes for any city in Vietnam, try and go for a tour out in the countryside as this is where you see villages and people getting on with their daily lives......the further out....the...
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Cultural Tips Hanoi
12 Reviews Tet is the most important and popular holiday and festival in Vietnam. It is the Vietnamese New Year marking the arrival of spring based on the Lunar calendar. It takes place from the first day of the...
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Local Life Ho Chi Minh City
29 Reviews If you really want to soak up local life and culture the best way to do this is walk! Most of the museums, tourist sights and markets are walking distance from one another and I really recommend...
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Architecture Hanoi
10 Reviews Hanoi, being the capitol of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is bedecked with scultptures from the school of socialist realism. For those, like me, who missed the heyday of communism in Europe, this...
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Transportation Ho Chi Minh City
10 Reviews Be careful if u are travelling to Ho Chi Minh... they will just simply rip off, snatch your money... especially transportation..... The cyclos especially....... Will never forget they threaten us.......
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Architecture Ho Chi Minh City
7 Reviews High Rise Buildings in Saigon District 7 and district 2 are the new construction and most rich places in Saigon. They are a lot of new High Rise Buildings there. Information Name: High Rise...
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-- After three days in Hanoi I took an overnight train, the S3, from Hanoi to Hué. Again I could only reserve an uncomfortable "soft seat", but I slept much better this time because a member of the train crew offered me the use of his bunk for a small fee.Evidently this was something the train crews did routinely to earn a bit of extra money.http://www.vr.com.vn/
--Besides the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, I also went to the history museum, the Lenin Park and the Temple of Literature, and rode my bicycle out to the Long Bien Bridge on the outskirts of Hanoi. On the Long Bien Bridge there was a metal sign reading: "1899_1902 DAYDÉ PILLÉ PARIS".Also I went to see a water puppet show at the Hong Ha Theater at 51 Duong Thanh, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi. The Hong Ha is an older theater which in 1995 was still the main venue for the popular water puppetry shows. Since then a modern new theater for the water puppet shows has been built, and the Hong Ha Theater is now the home of the Vietnam National Tuong Theatre, which is devoted to preserving and performing classical Vietnamese "Tuong" dramas.Also the Hong Ha Theater is now used for plays in English, put on by the Hanoi International Theatre Society (HITS), which was founded in 2001 by expatriates living in...
--Officially this train was called the S4, but everybody referred to it as the Ho Chi Minh Express or the Reunification Express. This is one of several trains that run daily from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, by way of Biên Hòa, Xuan Loc, Nha Trang and lots of other places along the coast or just a short ways inland.The distance from Da Nang to Hanoi is 791 kilometers (about 491 miles). When I took this train in 1995 it took all night and all day, arriving in Hanoi several hours behind schedule at 16:00, that is four o'clock in the afternoon.This was my least comfortable train trip in Vietnam, because the bunks were all sold out so I booked a "soft seat", which turned out to be sort of a garden chair with a canvas back stretched across a metal frame. Unfortunately the metal frame was just big enough for the average Vietnamese traveler but much too small for a Westerner, so I had parts of...
--I took an overnight train up the coast from Nha Trang to Da Nang, a journey which took about nine and a half hours. In Da Nang I stayed at the Hotel Minh Tam II at 63 Haung Dieu Street, but again I won't write a hotel tip about it since this was fifteen years ago and I don't remember much about it.What I do remember about Da Nang is that I went to the Cham Museum, which was interesting since I had just seen the Cham architecture site at Pô Klaung Gerai the day before. In Da Nang there is also a museum devoted to the Vietnamese revolutionary leader and president Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969). They offered daily guided tours through the Ho Chi Minh Museum; one morning in 1995 it happened that I was the only person who showed up for the tour. The guide was a lovely young Vietnamese woman who spoke several languages and was obviously very knowledgeable about Vietnamese history in general and Ho...
-- Photos:1. Cham gate, 19952. Ruins of a Cham tower, 19953. A spirit watchdog in one of the Cham towers, 1995After two nights in Đà Lạt we left on a tourist bus bound for Nha Trang, and on the way we stopped at Pô Klaung Gerai, near Phan Rang, to look at some examples of 13th century architecture from the then-powerful Kingdom of Champa.The Cham people once controlled large areas of what is now central Vietnam, but they were gradually pushed out of these territories by the Vietnamese. Today the Chams are one of over fifty ethnic minority groups in Vietnam. We were told that there are now about 100,000 Chams living in Vietnam.Nha Trang is famous for its beaches, so Nick decided to stay there for a few days while I went further north. We agreed to meet a week later in Hué.
--Since I always like to document bicycle use in places I visit, Nick was kind enough to take this photo of some boys trying to transport some sort of plastic strips on a bicycle near Đà Lạt.A few days later I toured Hanoi by bicycle, and the following week both of us rented bikes to ride around Hué and vicinity.In the 1960's & 70's Vietnam's bicycles were famous for their use on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This treacherous 1000-kilometer jungle path was used to transport war goods from the north to National Liberation Front fighters in the south. To carry heavy loads, the North Vietnamese army developed a particularly indestructible tubeless bike with reinforced spokes that could carry up to 300 kilograms. (I assume they used to walk these bikes through the jungle when they were loaded so heavily.)http://www.theurbancountry.com/
--Photos:1. A water buffalo near Đà Lạt, 19952. Water buffalo pulling a cart near Đà Lạt, 1995Actually we wanted to get some photos of Vietnamese children riding on water buffalo, but they don't seem to do that as much as they used to, or we just weren't in the right place at the right time.Water buffalo are domesticated animals in Vietnam and are often used to pull plows and such. In general seem to be peaceful animals, but in the 1960s and 70s there were rumors among the American troops that Viet-Cong-sympathizing farmers were training their water buffalo to attack American soldiers.I never saw any such thing, but some Americans who were in Vietnam in the late 1960s claim to have been attacked by these animals. http://www.i-kirk.info/
-- The first "new" place we went to in 1995, after re-visiting Saigon, Tân Ba and Phước Vĩnh, was the city of Đà Lạt, a former French hill station or resort station in the southern part of the Central Highlands of Vietnam.My son Nick and I traveled by mini-bus from Biên Hòa to Tam Hiep, which is hardly more that a junction on highway 1, and changed there for what was billed as a "fast" Toyota mini-bus. We paid for four seats, for the two of us, and sat in front, just behind the driver. The vehicle had one flat tire along the way, which we later learned was not unusual.When we finally arrived in Đà Lạt we got a room at the Mimosa Hotel, 170 Phan Dihn Phung, but I'm not going to do a hotel tip about it because this was fifteen years ago and it might conceivably have improved since then, or not, but in any case I noted at the time that the Mimosa Hotel...
Keep copies of important documents with you while you travel. I previously followed this advice by carrying around paper copies and sometimes even in plastic bags to keep rain-proof. If you have an iPhone though, I'd suggest taking a look at some of the personal record keeper apps available on the App Store. I use one called Doc Keeper. That way my docs are always in my pocket and I can print or email them to myself when needed. It has a remote data wipe function too in case my phone gets lost. The hustle and bustle..and Pho.
Vietnam is currently running on 127V, but in process to change to 220V. Frequency is 50Hz.Most common will be the European 2-pin and USA/Japan 2-pin (type A).http://electricaloutlet.org/type-ahttp://electricaloutlet.org/type-cBest to bring an adapter for both the above since both may not be available at the same time.Nice hotels may have the British 3-pin rectangular blade plug:http://electricaloutlet.org/type-g
Park Hyatt Saigon Ho Chi Minh City
5 Reviews and 438 Opinions All rooms offer pool of City views with full luxury amenities. As true sense 5- Star hotel, it is...
Hanoi Elegance 2 Hanoi
5 Reviews and 712 Opinions I booked our family sized room for 2 adults and our teenage daughter direct with the hotel from...
Victoria Hoi An Resort Hoi An
4 Reviews and 444 Opinions It's worth the money to stay and enjoy the beach like in Victoria Hoi An. Price from 150$++ public...
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Q: could someone please help? where can i buy ao dai (preferably well made and silk) for my grand-daughters, they are only 2-3...
A: Loads of places in both cities to buy Ao Dai either already made or to measure. For the small extra cost, have them made to measure and take the mesurements before going...
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