Vietnam has recently become a popular tourist destination among Southeast Asian countries. For a Russian traveler, this country is still terra incognita. These ten tips will help you figure out where to start exploring Vietnam:
1. Rent a scooter
In Vietnam there is no urban public transport in the form we are familiar with. There are no buses, trams or metro. Inside the city, most Vietnamese travel by scooter. Tourists follow suit. Gasoline is cheap here, distances are short, and renting a scooter costs about one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a month. Or about ten dollars a day. The final price, like everything in Vietnam, depends on your ability to bargain.
2. Visit Notre Dame de Saigo
The first thing travelers do when they arrive in the capital of southern Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly called Saigon), is take pictures in front of the Notre Dame de Saigon Cathedral. The building was left behind by French colonists who missed their homeland. Notre Dame de Saigon is an almost exact copy of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
3. Stay on Phu Quoc Island
Phu Quoc is the largest Vietnamese island, which is located in the Gulf of Thailand near the coast of Cambodia. The main tourist attraction of the island is its nature, almost untouched by industrial and tourist infrastructure. On the one hand, there are understandable inconveniences associated with this: you will not find museums or theaters on the island. On the other hand, sometimes you just want to lie on the white sand, occasionally dipping into the clear blue water. Of all Vietnam, the cleanest sea is in Phu Quoc.
4. Order clothes in Hoi An
Hoain is a small town in central Vietnam, which is unofficially called the “city of tailors”. There are several dozen shops where any traveler can order any item of clothing: choose fabric, thread color, button size and lace length. Thing
will be made the next day, even if it is a complex ankle boot
from Indian buffalo leather. True, the buffalo in reality is most likely
It will turn out to be an ordinary cow, but the shoes will last a long time.
5. Try Vietnamese coffee
Guess which country produces and sells the most coffee in the world? Okay, it’s Brazil, but Vietnam is second only to it because it’s 25 times smaller in size. Since Vietnam first entered the world’s top 10 coffee exporters in 1995, it has overtaken all major competitors, including Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia and Ethiopia. Coffee in Vietnam can be bought in any village. And this coffee will be better than in any coffee shop in the center of Moscow. The traditional way of making coffee in Vietnam is different from what you are used to: here the coffee is passed through a filter into a cup of condensed milk. The drink turns out rich and sweet, like thick syrup.
6. See the Sapa Valley
They say that the Sapa Valley is closer to the sky than to the earth. The valley is named after the small town of Sapa, which is located in the north-west of Vietnam, at an altitude of 1600 meters above sea level. If you want to see what Vietnamese clouds are made of, this is the place for you. The city is surrounded by several Vietnamese villages, whose population grows rice and corn, or raises livestock. To enter the village you need to pay a symbolic 2-3 dollars. But there you can see how Vietnam lives, which globalization has not reached.
7. Spend the night in a madhouse
The most famous attraction in Dalat city is the Crazy House. This is the name of the hotel, which has been built by Dan Viet Nga, an architect and daughter of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, for more than ten years. The building was nicknamed “crazy” for its bizarre architecture: its contours resemble a fairy-tale tree. An important condition for hotel guests is to vacate the room before nine o’clock in the morning, when the Madhouse opens to visitors. Every tourist should have the opportunity to inspect any living room.
8. Try Pho soup at a street stall
For the Vietnamese, Pho soup, like cabbage soup for the Russians, is the central dish of the national cuisine. The difference is that the Vietnamese eat Pho soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A typical picture that can be seen on the street of any Vietnamese city: a street cafe, where Vietnamese people sit under a canopy on small, almost child-sized plastic chairs and devour not at all child-sized portions of Pho. Main ingredients of the soup: crystal clear chicken (or beef) broth, rice noodles, wheat germ, herbs, lime. As you can see, the dish is quite light, so you can eat a lot of it.
9. Descend to Shondong Cave
Despite the fact that Vietnam is a relatively small country, the largest cave in the world is located here. In 1991, Vietnamese farmers accidentally came across a lost world in Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park (Central Vietnam, 500 kilometers south of Hanoi): a cave with an underground river, forest and meadows. And in 2009, British speleologists confirmed that Shondong Cave is the largest in the world. In some places it reaches 200 meters in height and 150 meters in width. The cave is so wide and spacious that you can fly a sports plane inside it.
10. Make friends with the Vietnamese
The best way to get to know a country is to meet its people. So that after your trip you don’t feel like you missed out on anything important, get to know some of the locals. The Vietnamese are a very friendly and open nation; they are interested in communicating with foreigners, especially with Europeans (and Russia, from the point of view of Vietnam, is part of Europe). Let us tell you a little secret: in Vietnam it is considered good luck to invite a stranger who has come from afar to your wedding. Therefore, if you happen to be near a Vietnamese wedding, don’t be shy, come closer and congratulate the newlyweds.
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See also:
Hoi An – a city of museums and tailors
5 cheapest and most beautiful countries in the world
