The number of Vietnamese tourists visiting Cambodia in the first six
months of 2009 leapt 40% compared with the same period
last year, the Phnom Penh Post reported government figures as
showing.
The result means that Vietnam has cemented its position
ahead of South Korea as Cambodia’s main source of
foreign visitors. Visa exemption and addition of border
crossings prompted the growth, the report said.
Notice those two words in bold? Vietnam’s foreign visitor numbers would shoot up overnight if key markets such as Australia, US and Japan were given visa exemption. Just mentioning it…
According to this story in the Vietnam News, bars at Vietnam’s 4* & 5* hotels will soon be allowed to stay open until 02:00, as opposed to the current midnight curfew.
Definitely good news - one regular gripe of visitors to Vietnam is that the nightlife could be a lot livelier, particularly outside Saigon & Hanoi, and allowing hotel bars to open into the small hours is a start. And it’s certainly a better proposal than the 2008 idea that, in order to encourage tourists to go out at night, cities should put on more cai luong (traditional Vietnamese opera) and water puppet shows!
The next move should be to allow bars and restaurants to do likewise and stay open until 02:00. In Saigon if you want to drink after midnight, you have little choice but to head over to the backpacker area of Pham Ngu Lao and De Tham, not the most salubrious of locales. Allowing bars to open until 02:00 would be a boost to the local economy, would improve Vietnam’s reputation as a tourist, business and incentive destination, and would be most unlikely to have the sort of catastrophic effect on the nation’s morals the authorities fear - far safer to drink in a licensed bar than some illegal drinking den after all!
Watch this space for a forthcoming blog post on Saigon’s new bar district…
We also had the following email from some guests who did our 2-day Ben Tre homestay tour a couple of weeks ago:
Hi Tim
We had an excellent time at the Mekong Delta - I must day that Phuoc, our guide was fantastic and made the whole experience great for our kids and ourselves.
The homestay was a great experience especially for the children, but the highlight would have to be exploring the small villages on bike, visiting the market and meeting Phuoc’s family. The kids were treated like movie stars and for us, after many backpacking trips through Asia (in our younger days) it was great to discover there are still some places which offer the genuine experience.
I would definitely recommend Come & Go Vietnam!
Amanda Price
I’ve highlighted the relevant text in bold!
And then last night I attended a networking drinks event in Saigon, and got chatting to a couple of new faces who were interested in travelling in Vietnam. Both of them said “What can you offer that’s different?” One of them has only been in Saigon 3 months yet is already tired of tour operators offering the same old products, while the other has been trying to interest local tour operators in running trips to his wife’s home province, an area currently totally off the tourist map. So far no-one has shown any interest, but we’ll definitely be investigating further!
Anyone know why so many tour operators here all offer the same tours and insist on sending their tourists to places already thronged with foreign visitors? The clue is possibly in a point raised by travel writer Paul Theroux in his excellent account of crossing China by train, Riding the Iron Rooster. He ponders why it is that the Chinese all head off en masse to already crowded tourist spots, while some of the country’s most beautiful sites are completely devoid of visitors, and discovers that, as well as their natural desire to be surrounded by other people, visiting a tourist spot that is full of other people confirms that their choice was ‘right’ - i.e. that they have chosen a good place. Whereas a Western tourist likes to feel he’s one of an elite few to have discovered a particular spot.
So it is in Vietnam - I’ve spoken to Vietnamese people who find quiet, peaceful spots like Phu Quoc ‘boring’ as there is ‘nothing to do’, and who prefer the crowded, noisy beaches of Vung Tau. Hence the creation of ‘tourist villages’ in many areas of Vietnam. As local tourists like to visit these artificial spots, local tour operators assume that foreign tourists are the same, when in fact the opposite is the case!
So whilst Vietnam, like the rest of Southeast Asia, is developing rapidly, there are still plenty of undiscovered spots where the visitor can experience real Vietnamese life, rather than an ersatz, watered-down version aimed at tourists. And it’s our aim to take customers there - just not too many of them…
Last Wednesday I took a potential partner for dinner at Saigon bistro The Refinery. The food and service were, as ever, amongst the best you’ll encounter anywhere in the country - unlike pretty much anywhere in Vietnam, the restaurant’s staff manage to provide service that’s confident, laid-back and friendly, while remaining efficient and professional. That’s something that Vietnamese waiting staff regularly fail to pull off, more on which shortly.
A couple of days later I was very surprised to read a post by someone calling himself The Saigon Critic, claiming that the service was “terrible” (and that the kitchen was “a joke”). Ignoring the issue of a newcomer to Saigon’s tourism/hospitality scene publicly running down a well-respected and popular business in the public domain, and under a pseudonym, it highlighted how one man’s great service is another man’s nightmare. I personally prefer the friendly, western-style service at The Refinery to the overly formal, fawning service one gets at the city’s upmarket hotel restaurants, which can make a relaxing evening rather difficult, but I guess it’s horses for courses.
Service in Vietnamese restaurants usually means one of two things. Shoulder-shrugging, halfhearted incompetence, or stifling over-attentiveness, several waiters/waitresses watching your every move, topping up your beer glass every couple of minutes, moving plates around unnecessarily and so on. Try going into a local restaurant alone and relaxing over a meal with a good book. I tried it once, and the only use I got out of the book was waving off waiters left, right & centre as they simultaneously tried to top up my beer (I HATE that!), pile food onto my plate, and put more shrimp onto my table barbecue, all things I prefer to do myself. This is not good service, it’s highly annoying. Even worse is the look of terror on the faces of the waiting staff that are the usual result of a foreign diner showing up, or asking them a question they don’t understand.
Thankfully an increasing number of restaurants, such as the aforementioned Refinery, are doing their best to improve matters and provide service that is relaxed and friendly without being lazy or halfhearted. And it isn’t just foreign-run restaurants - dine at rooftop barbecue restaurant 3T and you will witness the most highly-drilled, ruthlessly efficient team outside the average army training camp.
And it’s important - with most mid-range to high-end restaurants in town all offering good quality food & wine and a pleasant ambience in which to consume it, service is frequently the only differentiating factor. I can name at least half a dozen places that offer acceptable food but to which I won’t be returning because of the poor service, and another half dozen that I visit regularly because the service is so good - and the quality of the service dictates the kind of word-of-mouth marketing each establishment will receive from myself and other customers. Bad service = bad reputation. Good service = free advertising!
How about you - got any good/bad service stories to share?
Walk into any tour operator in Saigon & ask for a 1 or 2-day Mekong Delta trip, & chances are they’ll all propose exactly the same itinerary, involving My Tho, Vinh Long, a couple of ersatz ‘tourist villages’ (a term that fills me with horror!), an unsatisfying lunch, and back to Saigon before you’ve even caught your breath.
If you’ve never been to the Delta before it’s still a fascinating experience, but being rushed around a well-trodden tourist trail isn’t really what the Delta is all about. Fortunately the new Rach Mieu bridge, which links Tien Giang province to Ben Tre, has made it quicker and easier to get off the tourist trail and into some real Delta exploring.
I know Ben Tre well as my wife grew up there and her family live near the former ferry dock at Rach Mieu - now rendered superfluous by the bridge which has shaved off at least 40 minutes from the journey time to/from Saigon. You can now drive to Ben Tre province in less than 2 hours, making it a feasible alternative to the usual Delta tour.
So last weekend I headed down for a couple of days, whizzing over the new bridge and enjoying the specacular views from the top. The best way to explore Ben Tre province is either by renting a motorbike, or using pedal power - we can arrange mountain bike hire in Rach Mieu, and the flat, quiet roads make for ideal cycling. Once you’ve got your wheels, it’s just a case of idling along the roads, through sleepy villages. Narrow lanes off the main roads often lead to tiny hamlets or hidden temples, and the scenery is always green and fringed with palm trees.
Well worth exploring are the narrow country lanes around Rach Mieu and Giong Trom, and of course Ben Tre town itself, with its bustling riverside market. Cross over the bridge to the other side of the river and you’ll find more quiet country lanes. It’s idyllic, typically tropical countryside, and even better, you’re unlikely to come across another tourist all day.
Eating and drinking are cheap here - an iced coffee costs around 5,000VND (less than 30c) - and if you want to stay overnight, the few hotels and guesthouses in the province are much, much cheaper than those across the river. Alternatively, we can arrange a homestay to give you a real taste of Delta life.
Tempted? Have a look at our slideshow below, and then visit our website or email me at tim@comeandgovietnam.com.
People often ask us about beach resorts close to Saigon, and the received wisdom is generally that you have a choice between the dirty, crowded beaches of Vung Tau, or Mui Ne, which is a beautiful spot but a pretty long drive.
So this weekend I set out to discover the little known area between the two aforementioned towns, a stretch of coastline increasingly referred to as the ‘Vietnamese Riviera’. And what I found was pleasantly surprising.
Time being limited we missed out the southern region around Loc An and Ho Tram, and headed straight for La Gi, where our guide was Tri, ex-Saigon tour guide and now the owner of La Gi’s hippest hangout, Bamboo Café. La Gi is a sleepy, pleasant little town with some beautiful deserted beaches nearby. They probably won’t be deserted for long – most of the beachfront land has already been allocated for resort projects. However the two resorts already open near the town are struggling due to a combination of non-existent marketing and the difficulty of finding reliable English-speaking staff in the area.
For our overnight stay we opted for Vuon 2Vinh, a stunning garden homestay owned by Tri’s family. Set in a lush garden with a beautiful lotus pond, it consists of a main house with 2 bedrooms and an outdoor terrace with bar, TV, DVD and, most importantly, a well-stocked fridge, and a smaller traditional wooden house where Tri’s mother cooks up delicious homemade seafood dishes.At just 3 hrs’ drive from Saigon it’s a great getaway for anyone needing a peaceful retreat from the city, and kids will love playing in the garden with John, the family’s extremely laid-back German Shepherd.
The following day we drove 35km up the coast to Ke Ga. I was expecting a similar scene to La Gi, but surprisingly Ke Ga already boasts numerous resorts which, with the exception of the luxurious Princess d’Annam, were all previously unknown to me, again because they seem to think they can attract guests without actually marketing themselves.
We stopped in for a drink at Seaside Hut resort, a very nice little place with a big pool, luxurious beachfront bungalows and one of the most glorious stretches of deserted white sand I’ve ever seen. The resort seemed to be completely empty. It’s extraordinary that this area, which boasts plenty of resorts, cafes and restaurants and such an amazing beach, should be so completely off the radar for both tourists and expats, despite being closer to Saigon than the more feted Mui Ne!
We finished off our trip by driving up to Mui Ne itself for a seafood lunch. Every time I visit this place I’m amazed at how many more resorts have opened, and judging from the amount of construction work going on, there are yet more on the way. How they can all achieve decent occupancy in such an oversupplied market is a mystery.
A thoroughly enlightening trip then, and I can heartily recommend a couple of days on the beach at Ke Ga combined with a La Gi homestay, as an alternative to the increasingly developed Mui Ne. In ten years’ time this whole stretch of coast will probably be packed with resorts, so go as soon as you can and make the most of the peace and quiet!
A common question on travel forums such as Tripadvisor is, is Vietnam a suitable place to take kids? If so, where should we go and what should we do?
I was going to write a piece on the topic myself but this article in The Times has already done it for me! Very useful if you’re planning a family holiday to Vietnam.
