The Highlights of Vietnam from North to South

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The main attraction is the bay itself, scattered with thousands of rocky formations and uninhabited islands, many of which have beautiful caves you can explore. I took a day-long boat trip which included a fantastic lunch of fresh fish and seafood, and a really sweet driver (captain?) and the cook and guide, LeAnh. You can find these kinds of boat trips right at the ferry dock, which is pretty hard to miss!

I stayed at the 3-star Halong Bay Hotel which was clean and well-located, just a few minutes' walk from the water.

Hue is a calm, poetic city through whose heart snakes the Perfume River, quiet and chocolate-colored as it carries the day's catch downriver to the central market. It's definitely a city I'd recommend visiting for a few nights, although if you go during the winter like I did, make sure to check weather reports before arriving. I was lucky to miss the massive rainstorms and flooding which tragically killed a number of people and wiped out a few small villages along the river, which unfortunately isn't a very rare occurance in this region.

Highlights included a day trip to the Imperial Palace and the central market, which is massive, bustling and amazing in its size and variety!

As you can tell, a highlight of Hoi An is the delicious local cuisine, but there's more to it than that! Nearby are some amazing old Cham ruins called My Son which are worth the hour or so trip. And Hoi An itself is great to wander around for a day or two - the architecture is colorful and bright, and the river gives the town a special fishing village type of charm.

The city is made up of two different areas: the Old Quarter, which dates back 500 years and is a maze of twisty, claustrophobic streets and alleys, and the more modern sprawl fanning out from the Old Quarter, which is more European in nature. One of the stranger things you'll notice while walking through the streets of the Old Quarter is that, on each street, every single shop sells the identical product! There are only shoes on one block, only silkscreens on another, only carburetors on another. At first I naively attributed this to poor city planning, or to a lack of understanding of key principles of supply and demand on the locals' part. But then I read in my Rough Guide that, hundreds of years ago, what is now the Old Quarter was divided into 36 artists' guilds, many of which are still in some form of existence today. The guide listed over a dozen street names, each street's original meaning, and what's sold there today. This served as a great navigation tool with which to explore the quarter, which otherwise is almost too overwhelming to really get a handle on.

Hanoi had some of the best museums of any of the places I visited, although it should be said that I wasn't really visiting many museums in sunny, 90-degree Thailand or Nepal! The Army Museum, whose courtyard is full of weaponry from the past 100 years, including a giant Russian Mig fighter plane, is a highlight of the city and gives a candid presentation of the war-torn history of Vietnam. When I was there, the museum had a poignant exhibit on "Vietnamese Women of Combat" which highlighted, through photographs, letters, diaries, and newspaper articles, the roles of Vietnamese women during wartime throughout the country's history.

I took a day trip down to the Mekong Delta which I arranged through a small hotel I found in the budget hotel neighborhood, called Pham Ngu Lao. You can pretty mcuh walk into any of the hotels there and sign up for a trip to the Mekong or the Cu Chi Tunnels, also nearby. The Mekong Delta was a great day trip and included the bus ride, various boats (both motor and rowboats), visits to about 3 or 4 islands and tours around them, and a fantastic lunch. I think the whole thing was under $20 for the entire day - amazing!

Overall, Ho Chi Minh City is certainly worth a visit, but keep in mind that it's a place that has gone through some dramatic modernization in a very short amount of time, and that the frenzy can be tough to deal with. In a way, though, it was a perfect final stop on my trip, serving as a fitting reintroduction to the Western world.