Vietnam

Vietnam is tough. Vietnam is the country, after all, that swallows beating cobra hearts in rice whiskey to relax after-hours. It is a country whose will to live has been challenged since its inception by foreign armies without number—from impassive imperial China to the bloodthirsty Khmer Rouge, from colonial France to the napalm bombers of the Americans. Vietnam is hallucinogenic limestone landscapes and dense forests sprawling across chocolate river deltas, insane high-pitched motorbike traffic and 5-to-9 workdays. And travel here is subject to the same extremes. Expect endless, comically crowded bus rides blaring the same four Vietpop songs without cease; expect to spend hours a day negotiating the price of absolutely everything; expect to be pummeled by waves of mind-numbing heat and 48-hour batteries of rain; expect to be stared at; expect motorbike break-downs in deserted mountains. In short—expect adventure. Unparalleled, expectation-breaking, story-making, life-changing adventure.

 A Taste of Vietnam from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

FACTS AND FIGURES
Population: 90 million (2011).
Number Of Vietnamese Ethnic Groups: 54.
Number Of Political Parties: 1.
Total Area: 331.698 sq. km.
Length From North To South: 1650km.
Width Of The Country At Quảng Bình Province: 50km.
Highest Elevation: 3144m.
Total Coastline: 3444km, excluding islands.
Total Number Of Islands In Ha Long Bay: 1969.
Median Age: 25.9 years.
Average Height Of A Vietnamese Man In His Twenties: 162.5cm.
Price Of Bia Hơi (Beer): 1500.
Price Of Bottled Water: 5000.
Average Annual Humidity: 84%.
Tons Of Rice Produced Annually: 38 million.
Number Of Seconds A Snake’S Heart Continues Beating Once Dropped Into A Shot Of Whiskey: Depends on how many seconds it takes for it to meet the human digestive tract.
Hiv Infection Rate: 0.3% (2006).
Distance To The Nearest English-Speaking Continent (Australia):  5100km.

What you pay in time, sweat, and energy in Vietnam, you get back a thousandfold. The natural beauty of the country is legendary and spectacularly varied, with brilliant white beaches and lonely mountain passes that pierce the clouds. Jagged monoliths shoot up from mirror-bright bays in the far north; intricate lattices of canals run under mangrove canopies in the far south. The landscape resonates, too, with a history both chaotic and profound via faded, millennia-old relics of fallen dynasties and abandoned tanks and bunkers rusting under new grass. The country’s architecture echoes the same contorted past, from eye-bending Chàm ruins and bucolic French villas to glass-and-steel monuments to globalization.

Inevitably, you will be blown away by Vietnamese cuisine. Masterfully subtle, in the debt of kitchens from Sichuan Province to Marseille, meals considered prosaic by everyday Vietnamese are nonetheless revered by epicures the world over. And no meal better expresses the country’s culinary genius than pho—tender rice noodles under thin sheets of beef, floating in amber broth with ginger, star anise, mint, basil, and lime. It’s the national food, the street food, the breakfast-lunch-and-dinner food of both the urban poor and the five-star kitchens. It’s that good.

The people of Vietnam are stubborn, demanding, and intensely proud of their country. To travelers unused to constant bargaining and zero personal space, they can be extremely frustrating; they can also be what makes your visit more meaningful than you ever would have expected. The fundamental good nature and sincere extraversion of the Vietnamese are overwhelming. You’ll be invited to play pick-up football with kids in the street, celebrate Tet in the living rooms of joyful families, and coach English at every available opportunity. But best of all is their contagious, undying optimism; in the face of warfare, poverty, and hunger, there persists in Vietnam the belief that things will get better—much better—fueled by the tireless will to make them so. Today’s Vietnam is modernizing with a vengeance, and the atmosphere is thick with hope and breathless anticipation.

Yes, Vietnam is tough. But you didn’t pick up this book for “easy.” You chose Vietnam because you want travel to thrill and amaze you—because you want stories that will last you the rest of your life. You chose it for the dizzying diversity of landscapes, tastes, and ethnicities that make traveling to Vietnam, dare we say, the greatest adventure on the planet. So go. And take us with you.

Essentials

Passport Required: Yes

Visa Required: Yes

Recommended Vaccinations: Diphtheria, typhoid, hepatitis A and B, measles, and polio top the list—you’ll need more if you stay for longer.

Phone Numbers: 115 for emergencies, 113 for police, 003312 for international operator assistance

Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, 80 Quán Sứ, Hà Nội (4 942 3998),

Currency: Ðồng (Ð),

Coolest Way to Enter the Country: A few Cambodian tourist companies offer daily transport by boat from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta. The trip costs US$7-15 one way.

Cutest Name for Something That’s Really Pretty Dangerous: Xe ôm, which means “hugging bike”—the passenger hugs the driver to stay on—is the most popular form of transportation around Vietnam.

Staying Budget: Generally speaking, the cheapest rooms will cost US$3-6 (50,000-95,000Ð) and have a bed, shared bath, and little else.

Vietnam When To Go

When you go depends on where you go. The country’s climate is completely subject to the whims of tropical monsoons, which are unpredictable, especially on the coast. Northwest and southeast monsoons are seasonal; travelers will be delighted to know that additional, unscheduled tropical storms can wreak havoc at any time. Monsoons on the northern coast are most likely to occur between July and November, while from Hu\ south they hit earlier, in April and May. And it is always humid, almost everywhere in the country.

The timing and character of Vietnam’s seasons vary substantially from north to south. In the south, temperatures remain reasonably constant, but precipitation is seasonal, with the dry season from November to March and the wet season from May to October. The farther north you go, the more the temperature varies between winter and summer, hitting punishing spikes in the northwestern highlands (40˚C in the summer; the odd snowfall during January and February). Just to complicate matters, dry and wet seasons are inverted along the central coast, where the dry season occurs from March to August—but beware that on the coast, “dry season” is an admittedly optimistic term.

Thus, travelers destined for the north should time their visit between October and December or March and April, the months between the summer’s heat and humidity and the cold, misty drizzle of the winter. During the summer, lower temperatures make Ha Noi somewhat more bearable than the rural areas of the Red River Delta. Along the Northern Coast, September through December and March through April are the most advisable periods during which to visit, as errant tropical storms are less likely after October. Farther down the coast, especially from Hue south, visits are most pleasant between February and May, due to the reversal of the wet season. The Central Highlands are best visited during the dry season between December and April, although the later you go, the hotter it gets; the same applies to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and the Mekong Delta, where summer torrents prove particularly disruptive to regional transportation. On the bright side, there’s usually somewhere in the country that’s sunny and dry at any given time. But if you’re traveling throughout the country, do what everyone else does: bring a durable raincoat, and expect to get wet anyway. (letsgo.com)