Frankly, I’d been too busy to really consider a holiday, but when Michelle suggested a fortnight in Vietnam, I thought I’d give it a go. Armed with the latest Lonely Planet we came up with suggestions for ground content which I sent to Anne at Travel Indochina to develop a full itinerary. Three weeks later, following vaccinations and visa photographs, we touched down in Ho Chi Minh City after a 7 hour flight on a Vietnam Airlines 767.
Travel Indochina’s itinerary included all private transfers and private tours accompanied by English-speaking guides; those small indulgences proved to be very sensible and valuable additions to our plans. Our first experience of Vietnam was our cheerful driver Dûng, who steered us through the chaos of touts and taxis at HCMC airport to the air-conditioned sedan that would carry us safely and surely through the bedlam that is Saigon traffic. Dûng’s uncanny ability to manufacture a 7th lane from a congested 2 lane road left us breathless and full of admiration, and firmly committed to the belief that this is the only way to get around.
The first four nights of our adventure were in a Deluxe River View room at the Renaissance Riverside Hotel – a great place overlooking the primary ferry crossing of the Saigon River, smack in the middle of the Dong Khoi precinct – the very heart of Saigon’s central activities area. The River View room proved to be a great entertainment venue; we spent several cocktail hours watching the constant stream of chaotic traffic pouring from the ferries while sipping a nip or two of Wall Street whisky (a local rotgut, retailing for around $AUD7.00 bottle at the nearby government-owned supermarket).
Our itinerary included several escorted private tours – a half day city orientation, another half day trip to the Cu Chi tunnels and a full-day trip to experience the Mekong Delta. On these tours our guide Long and Driver Dûng were punctual and we quickly noted the benefits of such pre-arrangements. Although all the tours were part of the well-worn tourist trail, our driver would invariably deliver us to the closest access points and our personal guide would steer us past the queues of tourists and deliver a comprehensively informative personal service that I saw was envied by many other sweating, frustrated travellers in large group tours.
When not being chauffeured around by our Travel Indochina friends, we spent our time exploring on foot and soaking up the real Saigon. We quickly adapted to the traffic, and learned the art of crossing streets without being run down by a wall of motorbikes ridden by people with 100% respect for each other and zero respect for road rules. We ate and drank with the locals, kicked around in markets where we haggled like true amateurs, and generally had a wonderful time playing tourist.
Our four nights in Saigon quickly passed and we departed on a one-hour domestic flight to Cam Ranh Airport, 40 minutes drive south of the Gold Coast of Vietnam; Nha Trang. The middle phase of our Vietnam experience was spent in the decadent luxury of Ana Mandara Resort, on the southern end of the sweeping 7km stretch of beach on Nha Trang Bay. Ana Mandara is managed by Evason Resorts and Six Senses Spas, and the onsite spa was a pleasant distraction.
From our arrival to departure five days later, we had fantastic weather and nothing less than five star attention from the staff at Ana Mandara. Our Seaview villa had every necessary luxury and was absolute beachfront – the balcony a mere 20 metre stroll from the warm waters of theSouth China Sea. The resort has about 75 suites of varying size and configuration, 2 pools, 2 restaurants and bars and the adjoining six senses spa to pamper and reinvigorate. One feature of the resort that we appreciated was the site on the edge of town, so that we didn’t feel always ’resort bound’ and could get out and mingle with the locals for a change of pace. A $2 cyclo ride on the afternoon of our first day enabled us to locate a supermarket to purchase another bottle of Wall Street for evening “cocktails” on the balcony.
Our dedicated Guest Services officer arranged a site inspection of Ana Mandara’s sister resort; Evason Hideaway. Thirty minutes drive north, and 20 minutes east by motor boat we found the eco-friendly Evason Hideaway nestled at the foot of steep mountains backing onto Ninh Van Bay. This 6 star resort (Fred Flintstone meets Bladerunner) has 54 individual villas, each boasting their own private terrace, plunge pool, outdoor shower and wine cellar (indoors).
In true Six Senses style, the resort is sensitive to the environment, using natural resources wherever possible, and, naturally, the spa is sumptuous in the extreme. Due to it’s sheltered south-facing aspect, surrounded by steep hills, the time at Evason Hideaway is set one hour ahead of real-time so that guests experience daylight at more convenient time, and enjoy the spectacular sunsets at a respectably romantic cocktail hour.
We conned our way into inspecting Evason Hideaway’s stunning Presidential Suite, a secluded cluster of three buildings clinging to a rock face at one end of the resort grounds. The journey to the suite entailed a brutal 20 minute walk along a narrow path up and down very steep rocks in 36C and 80% humidity, which left me flushed and gasping for breath. Grumbling that nobody who could afford USD$2,000++ per night would ever do that walk; I learned guests are ferried to and from the Presidential Suite in their own allocated boat, driven by their own allocated butler. The rest of us would get to ride a bike around the resort (2 bikes allocated to each suite).
All too soon, our time in Nha Trang came to an end, and we enjoyed being back to Cam Ranh Airport to connect with our 90 minute domestic flight to Hanoi.
Like chalk and cheese the 36C at Nha Trang morphed into 18C at overcast Hanoi. As usual, the first smiling face we spotted in the arrivals lounge at Hanoi airport belonged to Tao, our Travel Indochina driver. A 35km drive through increasingly chaotic traffic and we arrived at our new digs, the Hanoi Opera Hilton, in the attractive French colonial heart of the city, a brief stroll from the beautiful Hoan Kiem Lake.
After settling in, and receiving the regular-as-clockwork phone call from Travel Indochina 30 minutes after check in, we set off on the now-traditional supermarket hunt. Ignoring the solicitations or cyclo drivers we sallied forth to find the Fivi Mart that the map in The Lonely Planet promised was ‘just up the road’. We never did find it that day, but we did stumble across Bia Hoi Junction, another must-visit destination I had highlighted in the Lonely Planet. More of Bia Hoi later.
Next morning, promptly at 8am, our private guide, Luong, arrived to show us the sights of Hanoi, on a full day private tour. Once again, the benefits of Travel Indochina’s private small-tour guides became obvious. Arriving at the Ho Chi Minh quarter we avoided the queues of literally thousands of visitors, and busloads more arriving every minute. Without our guide to smooth the way, we would have had no hope of coping with the entry process, let alone the protocols and etiquette required by the officialdom. As well as their ‘cut-through’ capabilities, we found our guides to be especially informative about historical and cultural aspects of life in Vietnam and very willing to offer suggestions to cater for our personal interests.
A fundamental part of the private tour was a familiarisation trip through Hanoi’s ancient, vibrant Old Quarter. Being market junkies, we marvelled at the variety of stalls and shops and vowed to return and spend more time, and money, there. We did. Several times. That evening, we took a cab to the Sofitel Plaza in the West Lake area to take in the view of Hanoi’s sunset from the 20th floor cocktail bar, but unfortunately the weather had set in and rain was the order of the evening.
Next day, we checked out of the Hilton, stored our luggage, and hopped into Tao’s car for the 3 hour journey east to Halong Bay for our overnight sojourn on the 55m Emeraude Classic replica cruise steamer. Greeted by the purser, the love child of Wayne Newton and Basil Fawlty, we received a ‘beautiful’ fruit drink and our cabin key and commanded to attend the restaurant precisely at 1pm to enjoy the ‘beautiful’ Vietnamese buffet lunch. The lunch was fairly basic, and very little of it represented Vietnamese cuisine as we understood it, but at least the beer tasted good.
Unfortunately the weather was coolish, and very misty, so the much-anticipated view of the thousands of tiny islands in Halong Bay didn’t eventuate. There was one stop at Hang Sung Sot cave to join dozens of tourist junks disgorging tourists for a furtive giggle at penis rock in the smallest of the 3 huge limestone caves, not dissimilar to those at Buchan or Jenolan. Other than that, the only planned activity before our ‘beautiful’ evening dinner was a Vietnamese cookery exhibition on the top deck at 4pm. Given that it was cold and drizzling, and the Vietnamese lunch was an uninspiring example of the chef’s art, we opted for an afternoon nap instead.
The buffet dinner was much the same as lunch, too similar to be hygienic, accompanied by a vocal duet that, like the purser, was firmly rooted in the seventies. Next morning, the boat returned to port along the same route it left and we disembarked right on time to meet our driver parked on the side of the road. The weather on Halong Bay was unfortunate but didn’t influence our lack of enjoyment of the Emeraude Classic Cruise. It simply wasn’t our taste – we thought it cheesier than a camembert cardigan.
Back to Hanoi, checking into the Opera Hilton again, this time to get a view of the stately adjacent Opera House for the last 2 nights of our vacation. We spent the last full day shopping and fossicking through the markets in the Old Quarter. We collected the new eye glasses we ordered 2 days earlier (average price around $70 pair for frames and prescription lenses), as well as the typical low-cost DVDs, lacquer ware and brand name knockoffs that abound in such markets.
Lunch time was my excuse to revisit Bia Hoi junction for some cultural and anthropological research. We had visited one bia hoi bar before, on an earlier foray into the Old Quarter, but nothing prepared us for lunchtime at Bia Hoi Junction. The bia hoi bar is a Vietnamese micro bar that only serves bia hoi (fresh beer) straight from the keg. Bia Hoi has no preservatives and is delivered daily, so hangovers are reputed to be a rarity.
At Bia Hoi junction there are 3 such bars where literally hundreds of motorbikes parked on the sidewalks, their owners seated on small tables and knocking back beer at an alarming rate. We arrived at the largest, Bia Hoi Viet, sat at the first empty table we could find and 2 Schooners of beer materialised out of thin air. Six beers each and a helping of the Hanoi fish specialty, Cha Ca, later we watched the hundreds of bikes returned to their tipsy owners who took off back to work as if a siren had sounded. The twelve beers and large meal came to a total of AUD$6.30, including tip. That’s my idea of a great working lunch.
On our last day in Vietnam we pottered around Hoan Kiem lake and the Old Quarter before being collected by our driver for the trip to the airport in the afternoon. We spent the last of our Dong (Vietnamese currency) and US dollars on souvenirs and lunch, which caused a minor heart flutter later when we were required to pay departure tax at HCMC airport and had to assemble a variety of currencies to meet the price.
In summary, we thoroughly enjoyed our Vietnam visit. The package put together by Travel Indochina perfectly suited our requirements, and the service we received from them was nothing short of fantastic. We are already planning a return visit and will undoubtedly contact them to make the necessary arrangements.