Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi (Part 1)

I’m always asked if I liked Vietnam so for the record, yes, I LOVED visiting Vietnam. Even though my trip coincided with the moment that Covid was silently enveloping the world in March of 2020, I was experiencing my first solo trip to Southeast Asia with a tour group whittled from its original twenty-four to just eight intrepid travelers, I loved the adventure. Is Vietnam safe for a solo, senior female traveler? Absolutely, with observance of the normal protocols you’d follow traveling in any country. Safe, welcoming and easy to travel using cabs and public transportation.Violent crime is rare and the most dangerous thing I encountered in larger cities was crossing busy intersections as traffic is an unsolved puzzle and motor scooters rule the roads.

Is it worth the trip? Yes! The food is incredible (this is NEVER a lead for me as I am always more interested in sightseeing type things but Vietnamese food has to be one of the first things on my list of reasons to visit. Fresh. Pho. Fish. Food Art. Everything Noodles. Organic Farming. And so Fresh!

As far as places to go and things to see and do. Again, absolutely amazing. Yes, there are the bitterly painful reminders of the Vietnam War Era but better that we know as much as we can about this period of our forever conjoined history and never forget the lessons we learned or continue to learn.

So what did I do and where did I go?

My adventure began on March 8th, more than 24 hours after initial departure when I landed at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. Traveling solo doesn’t have to mean traveling alone and I joined my group later that day which included two other very senior gents from Scotland along with two married couples and another single senior guy. We bonded uniquely over the next few days as we explored this country, a thick scar in our collective memory of war, protest and atrocities. And yet here was a different world of friendly, open-faced people all cloaked by an invisible wall of overarching government, it’s subtle voice more strident as we moved north to Hanoi.

We saw the Rex Hotel, a meeting place for war correspondents) Ho Chi Minh Square, The Central Post Office and the Cathedral of Notre Dame. A visit to the War Remnants Museum offered a sobering look at the experience this pivotal country of 90 million had weathered under various the dynastic rules of China, Japan and France, aided briefly by the US and now firmly knotted under Communism. We climbed through a section of the Cu Chi Tunnels, a system snaking 120 miles north to south, barely wide enough for me and impossible to imagine the silent, underground war which it had once housed.

After a short flight to Da Nang, we crossed the Dragon Bridge over the River Han where all traffic stops while the dragon breathes fire through its nose ( no kidding!) twice daily. Next stop was the charming city of Hoi An, an active trading and shopping center famous for silk goods. I ordered a custom ao dai, a silk tunic with pants, worn by both men and women and it was delivered to my hotel by the following afternoon, perfect in every detail. A marble factory offered a circus of marble and jade carvings in pink, green, ivory and a thousand shades of each color. A visit to the Cham Museum featured Hindu sandstone sculptures dating back as far as 192 AD when Vietnam’s indigenous Cham people lived an Indian way of life in both culture and language, mostly in coastal areas.

Each day, there was more evidence of the masking, temperature taking, routine sanitizing that would amplify ten-fold over the next week but here in central Vietnam, in mid March of 2020, we enjoyed thinning crowds of tourists and visited Hue, a lush vestige of the architectural beauty of French colonialism and one of VIetnam’s former capitals which remains a cultural and religious center of the country. The Imperial Citadel on the banks of the Perfume River is a magnificent spectacle and worthy of your travel bucket list of sights not to miss with its gated courtyards , pavilions and palaces, still impressive and largely restored after near destruction during the Tet Offensive in 1968. More in the next post on Vietnam.