Visiting Vietnam (and possible Angkor Wat)

In My Humble Opinion
1

An opportunity has arisen that I might be able to travel to Vietnam this autumn. My husband will be attending a conference there for work, and through the conference we would be able to sign on to a tour which would provide hotel accommodation, transport, meals, and an English-speaking guide. The tour would visit Hoi An, maybe Danang, Hue, Halong Bay, Ninh Binh, and Hanoi, and one of the options also includes a trip to see Angkor Wat.

It looks really beautiful on the website, of course. But I admit I am nervous. While I am a quite experienced traveller, this would be far out of my comfort zone.

I’ve never really been that interested in visiting SE Asia in particular, and I don’t know much about it. I’m normally not into “package tour” type travel, but given our unfamiliarity with the area and lack of language skills (I can fake some French, but even that’s shaky), I wouldn’t even think of going if not for the tour possibility. But it does seem like a fantastic opportunity.

If you’ve been to Vietnam or Cambodia, any advice or suggestions?
I assume as an American I’d need to get a tourist visa.
What’s the best route to fly out from Europe, if you happen to know? If I go, I’ll probably be flying out separately from my husband and am entertaining the idea of visiting Japan for a few days while he’s at the conference.
What’s the situation with crime or unrest, or other dangers?
What’s the cuisine really like? I can’t help but think that “Bizarre Foods” hasn’t given me the most accurate impression.
Anything major the tour seems to be leaving off?

Thanks in advance!

2

If you get the chance definitely go to SEAsia, it’s a trip!

And if you get a chance to see Angkor Wat definitely do that!

(I’ve visited SEAsia many times and spent last Christmas at Angkor Wat !)

Never visited Vietnam Nam though, sorry.

3

It’s a beautiful country, the people are very friendly , it’s not expensive , and the food is great. It helps to be with a tour guide . I went with Buffalo and received excellent service .

Ha Long bay is an unforgettable experience . I hope you’re taking at least an overnight cruise .

If you get tired of the local cuisine (unlikely ), there’s a lot of French stuff in the major cities , colonial influence etc. Communist influence brought Czech beer (bia ) brewed locally in Hanoi and Saigon (HCM City)

If you’re going all the way there , the Angkor Wat is just a step across. Should not be missed , though be prepared for some walking !

Have a good trip!

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The Halong bay part is an overnight cruise with a morning sunrise photocall, yes.

What is the cuisine like, really?

5

I spent a long weekend in Vietnam and another long weekend in Cambodia in the late 90s. They were both wonderful trips and I would strongly recommend visiting both countries (Phnom Penh was a bit scary then, but I think that’s changed and you don’t seem to have that on your agenda anyway).

You won’t need to worry about language at all - anyone who wants to cater to tourists will speak enough English that you’ll be able to get along just fine. I am not a foodie or an adventurous eater at all, but I loved the food in Vietnam. It’s an amazing combination of Asian and French food.

I also really enjoyed souvenir shopping in both countries. Vietnam has lovely linens and lacquerware. Cambodia has pretty fabrics and silver pieces.
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Your visa for Cambodia will be issued at the border, even if you cross a land border. I haven’t been to Vietnam in a long time, but I think US people need a visa in advance. Pay extra for a multiple entry, so you won’t have any problem returning if you go to Cambodia.

The greatest pleasure of Cambodia is the truly wonderful people, who you will remember after Angkor Wat is forgotten. Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor Wat, is a pleasant and manageable city, not too big. Nearly everyone goes out to AW before daylight, to see the sun rise over the monuments. Your $20 day-pass to AW is a wonderful souvenir, it will have your photo scanned on it. You can go in the morning, then back out later the same day for more sightseeing, the pass is good all day, and it’s a short cheap tuktuk ride from Seam Reap. I ws very lucky to have a driver who spoke good English and accompanied me through the ruins, he charged less than $10 for about 4 hours. You won’t even see any Cambodian money, everything is priced in USD, and rounded off to the nearest dollar.

Siem Reap is a little bit pricey by SEAsia standards, expect to pay at least $25 for a pleasant hotel room, but they are clean and comfortable… I was there last month.

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** Daphne **, I dislike overly spiced or rich food, so Vietnamese cuisine suited me perfectly . It’s lightly flavoured with a combination of sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Rice and noodles , pork, chicken ,and seafood. It’s helpful to know how to use chopsticks.

They have these pavement grills where you sit on these really low stools around a charcoal grill and they bring endless items to cook in front of you .

Plenty of French restaurants. We went to a Eurasian run family restaurant in Saigon with the chalkboard menu and the owner sending back dishes that didn’t meet his approval.

Try the green bean ice cream

8

You should definitely go on this trip.

I loved Vietnam and it’s possible I’ve never eaten better in another country. It didn’t hurt that I was travelling with a Vietnamese speaker so we could eat anywhere and not have trouble understanding the menu or ordering. I loved the Phở (mild beef noodle soup), Bún bò Huế (spicy beef noodle soup), Bánh xèo (savory meat and seafood stuffed pancakes ), Bánh bao (steamed pork buns), Cơm tấm (pork and rice), Bò bía (though I had even better in Malaysia), and a crispy fish dish the name of which escapes me.

Other people love the Bánh mì (sub sandwiches with crusty french bread – too many pickles for me) and Pâté chaud (pate-filled pastries–I don’t like pate), and Cá kho tộ (caremelized fish – too sour for me with too much fermented fish sauce).

As for cities, I loved Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) the most. The air is clean, the colonial architecture is beautiful, there are good museums and the food was the best. Ha Long Bay was beautiful but, for me, a one-night overnight cruise was enough. Ha Long Bay is also close to Hanoi, so if you’re doing a Ha Long Bay cruise, you’ll probably see Hanoi too. Hanoi is dirty, has generally oppressive architecture and not as many great cultural attractions as Saigon. The food was still excellent though. Hoi An was also beautiful although I heard there was a fire in the historic old part of the city that was the real attraction. I literally don’t know what kind of shape it is in now but if it wasn’t too heavily damaged, I would not want to miss that. I also took a really fun Vietnamese cooking class/river tour combination in Hoi An. It was one of the highlights of the trip.

I loved Angkor Wat. The people were very nice. Everyone uses U.S. dollars but they will give you Cambodian money in change so carry small bills and try to collect as little change as you can. I went a few years ago and we hired a driver with a car who was with us for 10-12 hours each day. We had air conditioning and a guaranteed instant ride. We paid $25 per day though after four days with the same nice man, we tipped very well so it cost us closer to $140 total, plus we gave him all of our Cambodian change. We paid less than some people who just hired slow, dangerous, uncomfortable tuk-tuks to take them around. I will say I found the food in Cambodia terrible. It was generally bland, lacked variety, and the vegetables lacked texture. It was probably also a let down after the tour-de-force that was Vietnam.

I don’t speak Vietnamese or Cambodian and my French isn’t good enough to be very useful but I could communicate in English with enough people when I needed to that I would go to either country by myself without a real concern.

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Thanks for all the info!

The tour we’re considering is very much a guided tour, so I’m not too worried about being able to communicate – we’ll have a driver and an English-speaking guide at all times. It also seems that food (at least two meals a day) and transport will be included in the price of the tour.

The French-Vietnamese cuisine sounds especially interesting.

It sounds like it’d be worth it to go for the Angkor Wat-including trip, although I’d like to hear more about how they will get us from point A to point B.

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Definitely have lots of Pho.

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Vietnam is an amazing country with a remarkably friendly tourist infrastructure. Even as an American, there is no hostility towards Americans, although I was robbed in Saigon, but that was mostly because of stupidity on my part.

As others have said, Ha Long Bay is amazing, but a two night cruise is the bare minimum I would take. Angkor Wat is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been.

12

Absolutely. Never turn down a chance to travel.

Never mind how they get you there. Just go. The worst things that can happen are the things the best memories are made of.

13

I just did nine days in Vietnam last fall. Wonderful country, with the friendliest, most outgoing people. I never learned a word of Vietnamese (not particularly proud of that, but I was doing seven countries in six weeks). English was everywhere, and people were anxious to speak English with me—even some fairly deep conversations that got into cultural differences, family dynamics, economics, and even reflections on the war. I did overnight train trips from Saigon to Hue, and then Hue to Hanoi. The train was the only place I encountered a notable lack of English, but I always knew when they wanted to see my ticket.

You can do an enjoyable daytrip to Ha Long Bay, as I did, but if you have a companion opt for the overnight stay. Hotels are cheap, and food was wonderful—though there was a notable lack of restaurants in some places. The hotels had dining rooms, there was some fast food around, and of course the natives had places where they could sit on the little plastic stools and some grandmotherly type would bring them food. But especially in Saigon I sometimes had trouble finding a place where I could point to a picture (or another diner’s food) and get brought a plate of it. I kept ending up at the same Tout Le Jours (a chain bakery like Au Bon Pain), which had terrific croissants, but wasn’t particularly an experience in Vietnamese culture.

The other notable thing was that Saigon was not a very pleasant place for pedestrian strolling: it’s not part of the culture and the motorbikes insist on wanting to take you someplace (but it’s Saigon, there’s not any place to be taken). Hanoi was much more pleasant and urbane, with tree-lined boulevards, big gracious parks, and even fancy shopping malls.

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I’ve lived in Vietnam a couple of times, but it’s changed so fast, I almost don’t know if my experiences are relevant anymore. The people are definitely friendly, and many speak decent English. You’ll probably be thronged with young people hoping to practice if you show any encouragement at all. Also, yes, the food is great!

I highly recommend Ha Long Bay. Try to go kayaking if you can. One time I was guided us through a tunnel in one of the rock formations there to reveal it was really a ring of mountains around a large pool of water. The tide has to be just right to get through the tunnel though. Conceivably, you could even get trapped inside!

Ninh Binh … probably you’d go to Tam Coc. It’s sort of like Ha Long Bay, with vertical rock structures, but on river and land, rather than in a bay. It’s nice. I also like some of the mountain areas, which are less touristy than the coasts. Sapa has gotten overcrowded, but still has its beauty. Also, Bac Ha, Buon Ma Thuat, Pleiku, Da Lat. I know you have to go where the tour goes though. The beach areas like Nha Trang, Da Nang, and Hoi An are great as well.

I think Tired and Cranky has Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City confused. HCM decidedly doesn’t have clean air. It’s where I lived, and is the most modern and livable, but not as inviting for tourists. If you’re a fan of The Quiet American, you’ll see some of the historic spots are still there, and more or less intact, but Ha Noi is where the trees, lakes, monuments, and museums are. In HCM though, try out some of the amazing coffee houses … coffee with condensed milk served over ice … cà phê sữa đá … is traditional. Some of the places have seating for hundreds of people, and include trees, waterfalls, and ponds. Coffee is just fantastically popular there.

Also, a final blatant plug. Try out California Dreamin’ Ice Cream if you see it there. That’s my shop. It’s only in Vung Tau right now, but a HCM branch is in the planning phase, and after that, who knows? Maybe everywhere!

15

We’ll be visiting Angkor Wat again in July. Well worth the effort.

I can’t add much to what has been written, but I can say the OP will be there during the wettest time of the year. Be prepared for the possibility of a typhoon. Really. (But don’t let that stop you.)

It’s been six years since we were in Vietnam, but Hoi An was definitely a highlight. Loved the old part of Hanoi, and Halong Bay is a must-see. Danang is no great shakes, but Hue is very interesting and worth a couple of days. I’d pick Hue over Danang any day.

Americans do need a visa in advance for Vietnam, but Cambodia is visa-on-arrival.

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I forgot to talk about visas for Vietnam. They have a visa-on-arrival program that’s quite simple, assuming you’re arriving at one of the three international airports. It won’t work for a land crossing. At least a week in advance, you visit the website of one of the many agencies that does this, and send a PayPal payment (or credit card at some) and they email you back an invitation letter. I used vietnamvisapro.com Take a printout of that letter, a form you’ll find on their website, and a passport-size photo (4x6 cm) with you, and at the HCMC or Hanoi airport, present them along with $45 (in USD or VND) at a window marked “LANDING VISA” before trying to go through Immigration. I understood the fee was to be reduced somewhat starting Dec 2015 to encourage visitors, but don’t immediately find the new price. Apparently they’ll actually take the photo for you at the same counter for only $2, but I wouldn’t want to risk that the camera was broken that day or something.

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I don’t have them confused. This is a real-time air quality map of Vietnam. Hanoi, Vietnam Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index Every time I check it, Hanoi has notably worse air quality than Saigon. My traveling companion had been to Vietnam several times over fifteen years. She said air quality was bad in both but I found Saigon fine. We came up with a theory. When she started traveling there, Hanoi was poorer and most people relied on pollution free bikes for transportation. In the south, the richer people depended on two-stroke motor scooters that burned oil and generated particulates that made the air filthy. So Hanoi had cleaner air than Saigon. 15 years later, Saigon was still richer but people switched to riding newer, cleaner four-stroke motor scooters and new pollution-contrlled cars. In Hanoi, people traded bicycles for older two-stroke motor-scooters (probably bought used from the south) and cars that weren’t as clean. So the air in Saigon improved a lot and the air in Hanoi got a lot worse.

For museums in Saigon, I loved the Reunification Palace (the former seat of the South Vietnam government), the Museum of Vietnamese History, and the Museum of Fina Art. There were also nice museums in Hanoi and the Temple of Literature should not be missed, but all in all, I liked Saigon better.

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I’m with Greg Charles. I found Hanoi quaint, the Old Quarter charming, but HCMC was mostly just another sweltering Southeast Asian metropolis. Glad to see HCMC once, but I wouldn’t go back, unlike Hanoi.

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I agree, Hanoi is one of my favorite cities in the world. I haven’t been to HCMC.