Come & Go Vietnam Blog

This weekend I was invited to spend the night the Imperial, Vung Tau’s first 5-star hotel. Never one to turn down an invitation, I hopped in the car on Saturday morning and headed east, along what is currently one of the most messed-up stretches of road in southern Vietnam. It’ll be great when it’s fixed, but as usual the fixing seems to be taking much longer than it should. Should’ve taken the hydrofoil!

The Imperial

It was my first trip to Vung Tau in nearly 4 years, and I was impressed with how the town has improved. Clearly all that oil money is being wisely invested in roads, pavements & other infrastructure – I even saw proper garbage disposal trucks. The place has a clean, prosperous air, a world away from the shabby domestic resort of my first couple of visits, and the wide roads and lack of traffic are a real breath of fresh air after Saigon.

That said, the beach remains noisy, overcrowded and not particularly clean, with local companies on teambuilding weekends a particular menace. Why anyone would want to jump about fully clothed on a beach while someone yells at them through a loudhailer is completely beyond me, and the day loudhailers are banned from Vietnam’s beaches will be one of great celebration.

But this is where staying at a 5* resort came in handy, as the Imperial, as well as having a very nice pool out back, also has its own private beach club, with beach area, pool, bar, seafood restaurant and private day rooms. Very nice and a welcome escape from the crowded public beach.

Imperial Bedroom

The hotel itself is decorated in ornate Louis XVI style – whilst that’s not to my particular taste it does give the place a bit of old-world charm and a somewhat opulent feel. Special praise for the beds which are ridiculously soft & comfortable. The hotel also has an English-style pub, a lobby bar, a couple of restaurants, several meeting rooms and a gym, and is located right on the main Back Beach strip with plenty of bars & restaurants nearby. A cut above other Vung Tau hotels and a good option for a family weekend in Vung Tau.

A few other recommendations:

Drinking

My memory is a little hazy here but I enjoyed 99 (a very nice French-style cafe with a terrace and good value carafes of wine), VFB (an outdoor bar backing onto the Palace Hotel), and McCallum’s Irish Bar, where we watched the football on a big screen and whose owner seemed intent on giving us as much free beer as possible. Always a winner.

Eating

Sunday afternoon at 99 Cafe

The best meal I had all weekend was the seafood at Ganh Hao restaurant, on the coast road leading out of the town. Very fresh shrimp, great spring rolls and a very meaty grilled tilapia, washed down with a reasonably priced bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Just over $10 each for the 3 of us, what a bargain.

Beach

For sunbathing & swimming, the above-mentioned Imperial Beach Club is as good as it gets. At $10 for a day pass ($60 if you rent a private pool-facing lounge for the day) it’s not cheap, but it is clean, quiet and secure, and has the most comfortable sunbeds anywhere in Vietnam.

So thank you Vung Tau for giving me a pleasant surprise this weekend. I still prefer Mui Ne & Phu Quoc, but with VT only being a 75-minute hydrofoil ride away, it’s a good option if you only have a couple of nights to spare.

Front Beach

I recently posted about our aim of giving customers experiences of the real Mekong Delta, away from the well-trodden tourist routes. My posting seems to have struck a chord as since it was published we’ve had several enquiries from travellers wanting to book Mekong homestays & suchlike.

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…

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!

Want to visit La Gi or Ke Ga? Whet your appetite with a look at our picture gallery, and then visit our Ke Ga deals page or ask us for a quote!