Ju goes to Vietnam (Hanoi, Hoi An and Saigon)

[justacey]

This may be a messy way of posting a trip report, but I'm going to do it all in one thread.

Part 1 – about us and getting there and around
We went as 3 couples, myself and my husband L8, his brother and wife (R & B) and our friends (who, since our big Orlando trip last year, seem to be hanging out with in-laws more) (J & L)
R&B had booked their flights a long time ahead as he gets lots of BA miles and us 4 then just booked our flights the same as it seems they had booked the best (timed) flights. The flights were direct from Heathrow to Hanoi (11 hours) and returning from Saigon via Paris (13 / 2 / 1 flight/stopover/flight). We could have had cheaper flights, but they were indirect via places closer to Vietnam. We figured we could have the bare minimum stopover in Paris as there’d always be another flight to Heathrow, rather than missing a stopover in Dubai / China and having to wait another day.
Flight out was on a Dreamliner. It was OK, but loo seat kept falling on me and the flush would go off if you even though of moving. Air france on the way back seemed more comfortable with better loos (and more sweets). Food both ways was airline food (say no more).

We flew internally with Vietjet. Prices were about £25 for the first leg, then £45 for second. Air hostesses’ outfits were very funky with checked shorts. Domestic flights were so much easier than international ones. We paid for hotel shuttles to and from the airports as it was so much easier as there were 6 of us. The last hotel didn’t do a shuttle to the airport, but flagged down 2 taxis for us.

We did the trip totally DIY. We knew we (R&B) wanted to visit Hoi An for a restful holiday stay and we’d been recommended La Siesta, so that was in the bag, we just had to choose hotels in the cities. Having 3 lots of opinions proved hard work. We worked our way down Trip Advisor’s top list within our budgets and then it was “what about this one?”, “what about that one?”, “Oh I’m too busy to look this week”. We finally decided on The Chi in Hanoi and Liberty Central Saigon Citypoint, mainly due to locations.

[justacey]

Hanoi – The Chi Hotel.
This was in the old quarter, the streets were narrow and busy but it was just a 5 minute walk to Hoan Kiem Lake area.
As I understand it, businesses were charged rates based on their frontage, so most buildings in the old quarter are very narrow but can go back a long way. This means that the cheapest rooms in old quarter hotels do not have windows. We chose balcony rooms, perhaps because I had the romantic notion of sitting on the balcony watching the world go by. It just means the rooms overlooked the street and all the traffic noise. The bed was massive. Not quite enough clothes storage for my liking. Bathroom had glass walls like every new hotel seems to nowadays.
This hotel didn’t have a rooftop pool, just a rooftop bar. It was only about 8 floors high. But it was quite nice up there. Breakfast was nice enough. Not too much choice, but you could have whatever eggs you wanted. Once I tried their French baguettes I was hooked and basically that’s what I had for breakfast every day. It was amazingly light and delicious.
All the staff we came across in this hotel (and all the others) were so helpful. We arrived at the hotel before 7am and the rooms weren’t due to be ready until 2pm, but they managed to get us in before midday. We’d change our big notes into smaller ones at reception every morning.

Meals
Pizza 4Ps pizza4ps
Needed to book a table. Pricing a bit mixed. I had a teriyaki and seaweed pizza.
Ngon Villa ngonvilla
Very nice Vietnamese food, I probably had fish or beef.
We then went to a late night sports bar 3 doors down to watch the 6 Nations rugby.
Mediterraneo tripadvisor/Restau...neo-Hanoi.html
I had tuna steak and it wasn’t quite done enough in the middle. The rest of the food was lovely.
Also of note is a bar we visited overlooking the Cathedral. We’d had a hard day walking and their tables had brown paper table cloths and there were crayons on the tables. Needless to say, rude things were drawn after a few cold beers.

What we did
I really liked Hanoi. It had different areas such as the old quarter, the French part and other areas.
I’d heard of Hanoi Kids, an organisation that organises free walking tours with students so they can learn English. They only had a half day on the Sunday available for us as they get fully booked quickly, so I then organised a food tour for our first night, Friday and a full day for Saturday with Hanoi Free Walking Tours, which is the same as Hanoi Kids, but not as well known. If I could recommend just one thing to do, it would be one of these tours. They are amazing.
I was a bit nervous about the food, so I thought a food tour the first night would help me put my mind at rest. It did for me, I realised that I wouldn’t die from eating slightly unusual food, however I think it put J&L off as they were very European with their choices after that. Mind you the “jellyfish rice” we had to start with would put anyone off. Rice in Hanoi is formed into a pancake, then meat scattered on it then rolled. It felt like jellyfish and we yearned to have grain rice. Luckily we got this in Hoi An and Saigon.

The other thing I was scared of before going was crossing the roads. It is absolutely chaotic there. The streets aren’t narrow, but in the old quarter the pavements are. Where do the thousands of mopeds park? On the pavement, so you have to walk in the road. The same road that the mopeds do their best to fill all available space. Crossing the roads was easy after the first few times. You just do it and don’t look in either direction as you’ll be like Bambi in the headlights (not that many mopeds use their lights) and freeze which is the worst thing you can do.

We had different students for each day, all seemed to be doing different courses and all had a magnificent grasp of English, knowing words you wouldn’t expect them to. Our favourite was Jenny on the Saturday. We have a wicked sense of humour and always insult and make fun of each other and she was a bit shocked to start with, but soon got used to us. We certainly clocked up the miles on our tour. She took us to a cathedral, a temple, an old house, round the lake, up the railway line, to the Opera House, the Temple of Literature. and then to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum. We didn’t want to see Uncle Ho’s body as we’d have to queue for 2 hours just to walk past. You don’t have to pay to have a walking tour, but you do have to pay the student’s admission if any (they get in for half price) and feed and water them if you stop for anything.
One of the things I want to see was the train, but we missed it running.

Sunday we had two girls from Hanoi Kids. We visited the Hanoi Hilton. It’s quite a depressing place, then the Military Museum. Vietnam has had quite a few occupiers and if you mention the Vietnam War, they sigh and say “which one?”. Considering the amount of tanks and airplanes you see just walking around (on private property, not just lying around), the Vietnamese seem to have put it behind them and are looking to the future.

At the weekends, the streets around Hoan Kiem lake are closed to traffic and families come to hang out. The youngsters like to play badminton – with their feet! A few times we were stopped by teenagers asking if they can ask us questions to learn English. You still might get run over – by the toddlers in remote control cars, they are everywhere.

The streets are fascinating. You will have a whole row of shops selling exactly the same thing. I’d read about it in Tony James Slater’s travelogue book “Shave My Spider”, so was delighted to come across Packing Tape Street. I don’t think it’s called that, but there was a whole row of shops selling just packing tape. How do you choose which one to buy from?

We had 4 nights in Hanoi, so the last day we split up. I wanted to see Long Bien bridge so I went with L8 & R, J&L and B went to find a shopping mall. We’d tried to find how to get onto the bridge on the first day, if only we’d crossed the road we’d have got onto it. The bridge is an historic one. It was bombed in the war and used to be the longest in Asia. It’s a full mile long. It has the railway line in the middle and mopeds and bikes have a one way road each side. There is a footway on each side but it’s extremely narrow and is paving slabs balanced on metal. The handrail is rusty and low in places and it didn’t seem safe. There were signs saying no pedestrians, but I’m assuming they were to make sure you walked facing the traffic. We only saw about 2 other people on the bridge. We got half way and debated whether to turn back, then 3/4s and debated and decided to get to the other side. It’s just as well we did as it absolutely bucketed down. We flagged down a taxi and got to by the lake so we could contact the other group. It cost about £1.50 for a 4km / 20 minute ride. It was mad seeing how the taxi driver worked his way through the traffic. Other group were still shopping and didn’t know it was raining, so we had another taxi to get us back to the hotel.

The one major thing about Vietnam is there’s wifi everywhere. On buses, and at food carts. Often the password is 123456789 or [name of establishment]123.
I really liked Hanoi, it was an easy place to be.

[justacey]

Hoi An - La Siesta Resort.
As we got into our luxury transfer from the airport we were given cold towels and cold water. The journey took 50 minutes. If the service staff in the other hotels were great, the staff here were superb. Every single one of them would greet us.
R&B’s room was above the breakfast area so they were moved. When asked if their room was ok J&L mentioned the annoying kids running up and down the corridor, so they were invited to move, they refused as they didn’t see the need. They’d be asked every day is everything OK now? To compensate for this, we had a free shuttle to the airport.
The hotel was at the edge of town but had a free shuttle bus We’d catch it in and then walk back. It was only about 15 minutes.
The hotel had 2 pools, one of which was absolutely freezing. We’d spend the afternoon lazing by the pool then at 4, we’d hog a swinging double bed and drink happy hour cocktails. There’d only be room for 4 of us on the bed, so 2 would drag chairs up closer. The staff would rush over to drag a table for us and keep us plied with drinks.
We were in the old block, so my view was half the cold pool and half the paddy fields. The newer block had more suites and was more expensive, but you couldn’t fault the old block. In fact the new block overlooking the bigger pool would probably be noisier.
Breakfast was larger here, but I still had my French baguettes.

Food
We wandered into the town each night for food with no recommendations here, we just chose from the outside.
Green Heaven tripadvisor/Restau..._Province.html
I had stuffed chicken breasts which were delicious. The large Tiger beers were a good price too.
Ms Vy’s Kitchen and Deli tastevietnam.asia/vys-kitche...taurant-hoi-an
So good we visited twice. They were both on days we’d been cycling, which wasn’t a good idea as their wooden chairs were really uncomfortable.
Ms Vy has a few restaurants in Hoi An. If you went towards the rear there was a “worker’s canteen”. Some of the choices available there were certainly not for the British palate. There was a worldwide food festival going on the week we were there and a lot of the chefs were eating here.
Morning Glory tastevietnam.asia/morning-gl...taurant-hoi-an
J&L didn’t stay with us here as there wasn’t anything (English) they fancied. I had fish. Boy, did I have fish. It was a very fine fish with a nice smile. Red snapper I think. I’m sure his name was Bob. R had fish too, but his was 3 teeny pieces.

Red Bean lasiestaresorts/wine-din...an-restaurant/
We were too lazy to leave the hotel so had dinner where we normally had breakfast. I think it was nice.
Hai Café visithoian/haicafe/
This was a nice location in a courtyard where they’d serve bbq meats.

What we did
This was the relaxing part of the holiday and from the moment we arrived, we knew we’d made the right choice.
The first morning we borrowed the hotel bikes and went for a cycle. I’m not a bike rider and was petrified, especially since we turned towards the centre of town. I soon got the hang of it and we set off on the road out of town to the beach. We had a rough idea where the sister place to our hotel was, where we could park our bikes. As we approached the beach we kept getting accosted by people trying to flag us down so we’d park our bikes with them. Since I struggled to stop or manoeuvre I did a bit of shouting at them. The beach was ok, water a bit choppy. We did cycle back there later in the week with our bathers to go in sea.
The rest of the party decided they were going to get suits made. I couldn’t be bothered so stayed by the pool. If they went once, they went every day for a fitting. It did kind of make them slave to the clock, although they could catch the bus down, get the fitting and be back on the return bus.
Hoi An is a lovely town, there were loads and loads of tourists bussed in every day. Since we enjoyed the pool so much we’d only go into town in the evenings for food, so didn’t see the town by day, it was very pretty at night with all the lanterns.
We got our washing laundered while we were there. It was about a pound per kilo.

[justacey]

Saigon - Liberty Central Saigon Citypoint
There are a few Liberty Central Hotels. We chose this one as it was a bit more central. This one had 18 floors with a rooftop pool. We spent most afternoons here in the pool. Not much shade until after 2pm.
The main problem with the hotel’s location is that it is right by a massive construction site. The construction is for a massive new metro, so there’s an awful lot of hotels affected.
This one had the biggest breakfast choice but guess what I had, yup, baguettes.

Food

Pasteur Street Brewery tripadvisor/Restau...Minh_City.html
After going up and down stairs as there were 2 buildings opposite and about 6 different little rooms, we had (expensive) craft beers and all had a lovely chicken sandwich in massive doorstop bread slices. I had Jasmine beer which was lovely.

J+L wanted Hard Rock Café food so we joined them for a drink and left them to go to Barbeque Garden Restaurant tripadvisor/Restau...Minh_City.html as it looked nice and I fancied some skewered meat. I was brave and ordered goat and wild boar. Then we realised that we’d have to cook it ourselves on the bbq plate in the middle of the table. Well we laughed and laughed and laughed all night. We didn’t know how to cook things (especially me! ), there was smoke heading towards L8 wherever he sat. And the toilets were outside in the adjacent car park. Boring steaks was the better choice. The goat was chewy, but the boar was lovely.
Skewers tripadvisor/Restau...Minh_City.html
Another Mediterranean restaurant. I had lemon chicken but it was extremely garlicky. J+L returned here the last night, but we wanted Vietnamese.
Nha Hang Ngon vietnam-guide/nha-hang-ngon.htm
This looked fantastic, the menu was a hardback book of about 50 pages, there was surely something there we’d fancy. We ordered a few starters and (since nobody in Vietnam understood the concept of starters before mains) we said we’d order mains in a bit. Not one of the starters was nice. The Thai fish cakes were solid rubber. So we cut our losses and went next door to
Secret Garden tripadvisor/Restau...Minh_City.html
We had to go up a few flights of stairs past people’s shoes that were outside their front doors. The place was packed but they squished us in and the food was lovely, sat on a bit of roof. We should have gone straight there.
We finished off the holiday at the cocktail bar on the roof of the Rex Hotel vietnam-guide/rex-hotel-rooftop-bar.htm
£10 per cocktail !

A special mention goes to Cong Caphe tripadvisor/Restau...Minh_City.html which we’d never have found on our own. We went expecting a nice cup of tea or coffee and were surprised to find them all cold. Liptons over ice was a revelation. We returned here.


What we did
We were back in a big city again. I’d messaged Saigon Free Walking Tours last year and they said they’d let me know a few days before. They (or me) had got confused and they thought we wanted a Food Tour on the first day which we didn’t, so we weren’t actually sure if we would have a tour. They did confirm late the night before, so off we went. We were taken on a whirlwind tour of Cathedral, City Hall, Opera House, Post Office and ended up at War Remnants Museum. It was quite harrowing in there, similar to Hanoi Hilton. I felt disrespectful taking photos of torture chambers, so didn’t.

We wanted to visit Cu Chi Tunnels but hadn’t booked anything, so found a row of tourist trip shops. They all had a person playing on their phone, so we chose the middle of them. We could have had a private tour for about £25 each, but decided on a group tour for £10 each. Only 4 of us went, me and L8, and R&B. The bus was supposed to pick us up at 8:30 but was so late because of traffic and took forever to get out of the city. I think it was an hour to go 4 miles. Bus wasn’t comfortable. Because we were late, our guide played the propaganda video on the bus, so that saved us having to watch it at the tunnels. He wasn’t half dramatic and kept us awake. They took us to visit a handicapped handicraft place on the way. They made lovely pictures with egg shells and I’d have bought something but it was very expensive and I had no money on me.
We were offered to return by river for £10 each but another family got the last places.
The Cu Chi Tunnels was quite a place. There were loads of visitors but for each “exhibit” there were a few of them so you could find one without a group. Exhibits were teeny tunnel entrances, bomb craters, what looked like a termite mound but was air holes for the tunnels and displays of man traps.
Then we visited what everyone goes for. The tunnels. The first bit is 100m long with escape exits at every 20m. B didn’t plan on going down, but I persuaded her to follow me with the intention of getting out at 20. Even though they’ve been Americanised, it was still uncomfortable walking stooped. I had a small bottle of water in my trouser leg pocket and it kept scraping the wall. L8 was worried he’d damage his Apple watch. Me and B exited and walked to where the others would come out. My, they were all a bit red and sweaty and pained looking. The next bit was 30m, then another 20m, so I made B join us again. It was hard work, but not as hard as the first 100, according to the boys.
You could shoot guns but the ammo was expensive and we’d done shooting before, elsewhere. Then it was the 2 hour trip back. It was a long day for not a lot, but it was something we were glad we did. Boy that pool was inviting on our return. J&L had taken a boat trip up the river and said it was nice, but the river was minging.

Our last full day was a lie in and a wander down towards the dock where we could see there was a cruise ship. We should have realised that docks are not really tourist places and it was tricky crossing roads that we really shouldn’t have.

We split up for the afternoon and me and L8 went to the Reunification Palace. Apparently it had been shut for 3 days for some dignitary’s funeral and was about to open in 10 minutes. So we shot inside and got around before the crowds arrived. It was like being in a time capsule from the 1970s. It was really cool going down into the bunker and seeing old maps, telephones, and various massive machines.
In Hanoi, the people said “Hanoi is safe, Saigon is dodgy”, but we didn’t see any sign of any dodginess. The streets were wider (and luckily, so were the footways) but there were more cars here, so crossing roads was a bit more trickier. Most streets were one way, so if there were queues, or traffic wanted to travel the wrong way, they’d just drive down the footway. There were more pedestrian crossings, but mopeds often ignored the lights. Some lights would be green for pedestrians and green for mopeds. They have no concept of disabled access. There’d often be a big storm drain access where you’d expect there to be a dropped kerb.

[justacey]

Highs
Vietnamese people are wonderfully friendly.

No tipping expected

Wifi is everywhere.

HereWeGo app - got me home every time.

Cash from cashpoints, even with fees are better value than getting it from UK.

Lows or strange things
They love their glass walled bathrooms. Every single hotel we looked at had these. Needless to say the first thing we did was pulled the blinds down.

Starters and Mains. Absolutely no concept of bringing all starters then all mains. Food would turn up randomly.

Toilets. B had to visit a toilet every time we went near them, so the running joke was "what's the score" most of them a bit grubby, but not too much of a low.


Phew. That took a bit of doing. I just need to format the posts a bit better and stick some photos in.

[DisneyDaffodil]

Thank you Justacey, it sounds like an amazing trip. I will checking out all your links for our trip next year and no doubt asking more questions 😀

Were you pleased with your choice of hotels in each place? We are definitely visiting Ho Chi Minh (as our son lives there) and probably Hoi An. We are not sure about Hanoi as we will want to spend time with our son so may be longer in HCM than most tourists. I admit I am worried about crossing the roads there though 😀

[stockport1965]

Great trip report. Lots of information to help us plan our trip to Vietnam next year!

Food looks great, thanks for your help so far, sure we'll have many more questions

[justacey]

Ask away, the pair of you. Or anybody in the future

There was nothing wrong with any of our hotels. The city ones had fab locations and were reasonable prices. Hoi An was a little out of town, but it was nice to walk the food off. On TripAdvisor, your struggling to find a 4* for that one, they are all deserved 5*s.
The only complaint with all the hotels is not enough shelf space for the contents of 2 20kg suitcases. Just as well I had packing cubes

[letty]

I stayed in the same hotel in HCM, spent a lovely afternoon at that rooftop pool!
HCM a Crazy , crazy place but I loved it

[Melbatb]

What an interesting report! Thanks for sharing!