Some people like to laze on the beach at Mui Ne, others love to wander the ancient streets of Hoi An, while many like the mountain vistas of Sapa or Mai Chau.
Well, now it’s time to find out, using the wonders of crowdsourcing list site Listiki. I’ve set up a simple list of my favourite places to set the ball rolling - now it’s up to you to add your own and/or change my rankings if you wish, and let’s see which destinations come out on top!
Last week I was invited to be guest speaker at the City Net Events ‘Meeting Point’ networking event, which took place at the Hard Rock Cafe. My subject: Vietnam Tourism 2010 - What’s Hot, What’s Not! - a summary of what’s happening in the country’s tourism industry at the moment based on my own observations and on feedback from customers and web travel forums such as Tripadvisor.
Several attendees have asked me for a summary of my talk so here, in brief bullet-point form, is a recap of some of the key points…
Hotspots for 2010:
To close, I put Vietnam’s tourism industry into perspective. Whilst France has had a tourism industry since the 18th century or earlier, Thailand since the 1960s, Malaysia since the early 1970s and Spain since 1975, Vietnam’s tourism industry really began in the mid-90s and so it is still a relative beginner. So given its novice status, it isn’t doing too badly and things will continue to improve!
* Thanks to Thomas De Lange and Tran Ngoc Thanh at City Net Events for inviting me to speak at this event and for their excellent organisation.
Based as I am in the south of Vietnam, much of my exploring tends to be done in the country’s bottom half - the Mekong Delta, Phu Quoc, beaches etc. I generally need a pretty good excuse to drag myself up north, so when our Vietnamese friend Tony invited us to his wedding in Hanoi last weekend, we had just the excuse we needed to visit some old and new places.
Hanoi
As is customary on any trip up north, we flew into Hanoi and spent a couple of days in Vietnam’s capital. Hanoi is the equivalent of Marmite - visitors either love it or hate it. Some complain about the unfriendly locals and the harrassment they dish out to tourists; others live the city’s colonial charm and its fascinating Old Quarter. I’m largely in the latter camp - I’ve never experienced the hassle that many visitors speak of and actually find I’m left alone far more than I am here in Saigon, and I love the fact that Hanoi hasn’t sold out its charm the way Saigon has. Though that may change - on my wanderings I discovered that the old art deco building opposite the Opera House has been bulldozed to make way for the Hanoi Stock Exchange, and my favourite cafe, a ramshackle old colonial mansion opposite the Sofitel Metropole, has also been demolished. Having just come from Singapore, a city that suddenly seems to have woken up to the charms of its historic buildings after bulldozing most of them in the 1970s/1980s, it’s disheartening to see how little respect Vietnamese cities have for their own history.
Nevertheless, Hanoi remains - for the moment - a city of considerable aesthetic appeal, particularly in its Old Quarter and around Hoan Kiem Lake. I was
particularly taken with St Joseph’s Cathedral and its surrounding square, a scene straight out of a rural French village.
We stayed in two boutique hotels. The Maison d’Hanoi manages to cram a lot of style into its rooms - too much in fact, as the rooms can feel pretty cramped - but they are very chic and the bed was the most comfortable I have ever slept in, no argument. On our second night we moved to the Serenade, whose rooms are more spacious and equally well designed, though the breakfast, as is sadly often the case in Asian-run hotels, left a little to be desired. And, this being the north, service in both establishments could have been a lot friendlier and more helpful than it was. But two good examples of the boutique hotel, a sector that has yet to get a hold elsewhere in Vietnam - presumably because there are few old buildings left to house them!
We also ate very well at two of Hanoi’s culinary institutions. Highway 4 specialises in mountain food - hearty, robust dishes such as wild boar with deep-fried ginger and fermented rice, and stir-fried buffalo with chilli, all washed down with their own range of rice wines. On our second night we ate at Cha Ca La Vong, a rough & ready establishment that only serves one dish - fish marinated in turmeric and then deep-fried in oil, to which you add dill and fresh greens. It’s arguably the most delicious thing I’ve eaten in Vietnam, and coming from someone who generally doesn’t like Vietnamese food, that’s praise indeed…
Mai Chau
From Hanoi we headed north-west to Mai Chau and its surrounding valley, home to some of the most stunning scenery in the whole country. Heading over the mountain pass before dropping down into the valley gives you an extraordinary view that has hardly changed in centuries - small wooden houses billowing chimney smoke into the air, surrounded by rice paddies. 
The valley is largely occupied by Thai ethnic minorities, and we stayed in the White Thai village of Pom Coong, in a homestay owned by Miss Tu and her extremely friendly and hospitable family. Accommodation here is basic - everyone sleeps in one upper-floor room, on a thin mattress on the floor, covered by a mosquito net - but the food and welcome are anything but basic. And despite the less than luxurious conditions, I still managed to sleep for 9 hours. Those of a less adventurous stripe can stay at the nearby Mai Chau Lodge, a nice Western-managed hotel with pool, sauna and very good rooms, and if you’re staying for more than one night it’s probably a good idea to combine this with a homestay.
Trekking and biking are the most popular activities here, so we headed out with a local guide to cycle through various tribal villages and see how the local minorities live. The villages here are stunning - rows of charming, beautifully maintained wooden stilthouses - and the locals, the children especially, very friendly towards visitors. But the pleasant views don’t obscure that fact that life here is tough. Most families still make their money from farming, and it’s back-breaking work, literally in many cases, with old women bent double from years working in the rice paddies a sadly common sight.
The cycling is generally fairly easy going along the flat valley roads, though when we headed out into the villages we did have to carry our bikes up a couple of steep muddy inclines, but the views of rice terraces and lakes at the top were well worth it, and the ice cold Tiger offered to us when we got back to Pom Coong was very gratefully received.
I’d have to say I enjoyed Mai Chau more than any other place I’ve visited in Vietnam, mainly because it has yet to be touched by mass tourism (there’s none of the hard sell you encounter in Sapa for example) and also because of its simply magnificent scenery. And at only 3 hours’ drive from Hanoi it’s not too difficult to get to.
Kenh Ga
After the lush green vistas of Mai Chau, the rocky outcrops and bleak plains of Kenh Ga seem like another planet. Imagine if someone picked up the limestone karsts of Halong Bay, dropped them into the Fens of eastern England, and threw in an Ionian fishing village for good measure, and you’ll get the picture.
Accessed via a causeway heading off the Ho Chi Minh trail, Kenh Ga is a weird combination of waterways, limestone cliffs, French churches and old stone fishing cottages, and very few tourists make it here, despite it being only 3 hours from Hanoi. Indeed, we practically had to drag the local cafe owner and a boat pilot out of their hammocks in order to procure their services, but we were glad we did - after a tasty lunch of goat meat stir-fried with chilli, we took a 2-hour boat trip around the waterways. One minute you feel like you’re in Halong Bay, with conical-hatted
fishermen foot-rowing their boats past limestone cliffs; the next, you could be in a Greek fishing village, surrounded by harbourside cottages that would fetch a fortune if they were in Europe; and then you’re in the Scottish highlands, with mountains shedding scree down into the pristine waters below. It’s a seriously odd place but very atmospheric.
Unfortunately there’s nowhere to stay here - I could easily have spent a couple of days in one of those cottages - so you’ll have to come here en route to or on the way back from Mai Chau - but it is well worth seeing.
Halong Bay
Like Egypt’s Pyramids of Canada’s Niagara Falls, Halong Bay is Vietnam’s marquee attraction, the one that even people who have never been to Vietnam have no trouble recognising. And deservedly so - with almost 2,000 limestone rocks jutting out of the green water, it’s an unforgettable sight. But at the same time, it’s also crowded in many places with tourist boats, many of dubious quality, and in some places the water is rather dirty.
But get yourself on one of the better boats - we travelled with Bhaya Cruises - and they’ll ensure your route is a quieter one. There are few more relaxing experiences in Vietnam than lying on the deck of a Halong Bay junk with a cold beer, watching the scenery, and occasionally stopping to visit a floating fishing village or some of the Bay’s many caves, with their stunning stalactite/stalagmite formations.
One of the most amazing things about the Bay has nothing to do with its scenery. The area is dotted with floating villages, wooden shacks supported by frames and empty oil barrels, on which fishing families live and work all year round. All the houses miraculously seem to have electricity and TV aerials, and there is even a floating school for the children. Some of the families make a living converting their rowing boats into floating shops for tourists, meaning someone is always on hand with a snack or a cold beer - Vietnamese entrepreneurship gets everywhere!
