First of all, sorry about the delayed post. Since it wasn’t quite finished before we left for our boat trip and we barely had any internet connectivity on the boat, I’m now posting it from our bus ride back home to Hanoi. There will be another post today though to make up for it.
After a month of traveling through Vietnam it is time to look back and reflect on it. This will be a bit of a longer post, so bear with me.
The good
Let me start by saying it now: This has been my best vacation yet. No questions about that. This part will list some of the reasons why this is and will hopefully make you want you to come here as well.
The landscape
From the jungle in the south to the rice fields in the center and north, from the coast region to the mountains, from the vast areas of nothingness to the packed cities, Vietnam is probably the most beautiful country I’ve traveled so far. People joke about men being bad with colors, but I honestly don’t think that there can be names for so many different shades of green. This is all accompanied by these huge limestone pillars which give an absolutely striking shape. The mountains - especially in the north - are just the icing on the cake.
The people
The Vietnamese people are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Nearly everyone smiles at you when you ride through the villages. Children always wave and yell a Hello when you drive past them, some nearly falling off their bicycles doing that.
In the more rural areas the restaurants are often combined with the living room of the owners, but you’re always welcomed in, even as a foreigner. The younger people ask you for your name and age and a lot of them try to chat a bit with you, even though the language barrier can be quite difficult. When you arrive at a restaurant they often invite you to their table, share a drink and their smoking pipes with you and sometimes try to help you with enjoying the dishes correctly.
When you travel Vietnam you should just forget everything you learned in other countries and embrace everything. If they offer anything, try it. They will not want anything in return, they do not try to sell you anything most of the time. The exception to this rule is in the very touristic places.
The food
Most dishes in Vietnam are simple, yet delicious. They use combinations of fresh herbs, lime and spices going together with meat or fish and rice or noodles. We never ate anything as elaborate as a standard Japanese dish, no fancy steaks or plates filled with gimmicky stuff like deconstructed hamburgers.
If you like street food however, Vietnam is an absolute paradise. The streets and markets are full of vendors just selling one dish, directly at the road side. You get to check out the food, watch the locals, see them preparing your dish and get to eat some of the best food directly there.
The only negative side to be mentioned here is that most people use scissors instead of cleaver and knife to butcher. You often get pieces of bones in your dishes, sometimes even in every single bite.
The bad
While our experience in Vietnam were mostly great, there are a few things worth mentioning which are not so great.
Cleanliness and hygiene
Vietnamese people have a very different definition of clean. While in the western world we sometimes complain about a hair they missed in a hotel bathroom, what you’ll see here will probably leave a lasting impression on you:
- Animals (mostly dogs but also mice and rats) roam restaurants
- Food is sometimes prepared on the floor
- Dishes and cutlery is washed on the floor with cold water
- Bed sheets may not have been washed between guests and they probably have stains on them
- Bathrooms in hotels are often just quickly rinsed between guests
- Toilets (especially in restaurants) might look like they have not been cleaned in over 5 years, which is especially bad when it’s the owner’s personal bathroom you’re using
You get used to all of this pretty quickly though. I’d recommend bringing a linen sleeping bag for the really bad hotels and let them show you the room before booking.
Prices and scams
Most of the time prices are not declared on the menus and in stores. If you get the English menu, it likely declares prices, but they are probably higher than whatever a local would pay. Prices are rarely fixed in Vietnam and can be bargained about all the time. It’s normal to get a price hike of 50 to 100% as a tourist, at least in the cities and more touristic places. If you know what the real worth of it is, it’s absolutely possible to get the price back down to nearly the same as the locals pay though.
Some people charge you about 4 times the normal price though. Whenever we asked for the price beforehand and they tried this, we just walked without even discussing it further. The problem just comes when you eat first and ask for the price later…
Another situation was the taxi driver whose meter ran about twice as fast. He put his license over the distance display, hoping most people would just see the price and pay it. Only after I told him directly that I’ll take pictures of the meter, his license and go directly to the police afterwards he wanted to discuss the price. Since then we just use the Grab app, which tells you the price in advance.
The ugly
And then there are some things which just absolutely need to change in the near future. I really hope that the Vietnamese people and government will be able to fix these issues, before it’s too late.
Trash. Everywhere…
This is my biggest complaint by far: There is trash lying around everywhere you go. In the jungle. In the villages. In the water. It’s just piling up. You see a bus stop somewhere and they open the windows and throw the trash out of it. You see people cross a heavy traffic road to put the trash in the middle of it so it’s not in front of their house.
The larger cities are actually surprisingly clean, since everyone seems to be doing some cleaning and they seem to have some kind of garbage collection. But as soon as you go anywhere else you have to start aligning your pictures to not include this part in your memories.
Traffic
Vietnam has a traffic problem. A huge one. The only reason there hasn’t been a complete collapse is because everyone is riding a motorbike. As the traffic moves more and more towards cars, this will need fixing fast though.
We haven’t written too much about how bad the traffic really is yet, but now that we returned our motorbikes safely, I do want to write a bit more about it. While driving here on the high traffic roads you get into an evasion or emergency braking maneuver about every three minutes because of one of the following reasons:
- People overtaking with absolutely no visibility, just before a turn
- Driving on the wrong side of the road
- Driving way over the speed limit (like 80km/h in cities)
- Merging into roads without looking at all (they actively refuse to look left when turning right)
In general, the only time they actually do check for anything which is not in front of them is when turning left. When you ride a motorbike in Vietnam, you will have to look for yourself and everyone else. The only way to tell them that what they are doing might be dangerous is by honking.
This is made worse by the fact that the worst offenders seem to be cars and buses. It’s not helping that some drivers are very bad and probably haven’t had a single minute of training.
You do get used to the traffic after a few days though and even start to enjoy the slow moving theater in a weird, slightly messed up way. That is, until you enter one of the larger cities again.
Conclusion
As mentioned in the first paragraph, this has been the best vacations I’ve ever had. The good side of Vietnam by far outweighs any of the other things and I’ve enjoyed nearly every single minute here. If you can stomach the weather and the issues with cleanliness and you enjoy traveling, I’d say Vietnam is an absolute must.
Will I go back here in the future? Probably not. It has been an experience which I can probably never surpass. If I’d come back I would probably do most things the same way again: travel by motorbike, stick to the country side as much as possible and just enjoy the ride. I would try to stay more in homestays instead of hotels though, to get in touch with more locals.
