The streets of the Old Quarter are flooded with fruit and vegetable merchants, some of them on wheels.
HOW: Hidden Hanoi offers 2-hour walking tours of the Old Quarter and beyond. Tel 84/91-225-4045; www.hiddenhanoi.com.vn. Cost: $20. GREEN TANGERINE: Tel 84/4-38251286; www.greentangerinehanoi.com. Cost: lunch $15. MAISON D’HANOI HANOVA: Tel 84/4-3938-0999; www.hanovahotel.com. Cost: from $100. BEST TIMES: Oct–Apr has the least rainfall; Dec–Jan can be cool.
Temples, Traders, and Terrific Food
SAIGON’S BUSTLING MARKETS
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Vietnam is a Communist country, but visitors would never know it from the explosive wave of commercial activity that has washed over the country since the 1990s, particularly in Ho Chi Minh City (still commonly called Saigon). Big money is evident in new construction and luxury-car showrooms, but it’s the capitalistic drive on display in more than 40 local markets spread around the city that truly marks Saigon’s entrepreneurial renaissance.
Ben Thanh Market, the French-built municipal marketplace, is the city’s largest and oldest. Hundreds of merchants create a narrow maze of stalls touting everything from the latest Japanese and Korean electronic gizmos to bolts of silk, bottles of cobra wine, and conical “poem” hats. The traditional is stacked up alongside the modern, and animated haggling is a given. Go for the color and the exotic chaos, but realize that no matter how honed your negotiating skills, you’ll still pay twice as much as a local. Culinary consolation is easily achieved at Ben Thanh’s tasty array of food stalls. Tuck into a bowl of pho (pronounced fuh)—delicious beef noodle soup topped with fresh herbs—or the French-Vietnamese combo of banh mi, a crunchy baguette stuffed with pork pâté, cool cucumber, and spicy condiments.
Another of Ho Chi Minh’s principal markets, Binh Tay, is in bustling Cholon, the epicenter of the city’s traditional Chinatown. Follow your nose to the natural medicine and herb shops running between Luong Nhu Phuc and Trieng Quang Phuc streets before diving into the market; look for its Chinese-style architecture topped with a stately clock tower. Cholon is also home to two of the city’s most interesting Buddhist temples. Huge, fragrant coils of incense burn in the Thien Hau pagoda, dedicated to seafarers, while Quan Am pagoda is decorated with ornate ceramics depicting traditional Chinese legends.
Binh Tay is one of Saigon’s commercial hubs.
BEST TIMES: Dec–Apr for drier, cooler weather; Jan or Feb for annual Tet New Year Festival.
Colonial Echoes in an Emerging Metropolis
HERITAGE HOTELS IN SAIGON
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
With a cityscape dominated by construction cranes and unrelenting motorcycle traffic, Ho Chi Minh City often feels like an emerging metropolis stuck on fast-forward. But explore the city’s three most famous heritage hotels and a more gracious and relaxed atmosphere emerges. Nostalgia rules at the Rex Hotel’s rooftop bar, once a home away from home for expats and wartime journalists and still among the city’s most popular watering holes. With year-round Christmas lights, topiary, and singing birds, you won’t mistake it for a sophisticated cocktail joint, but the Rex is dripping with history, and few Westerners pass through town without stopping by. And while the recently renovated rooms are not the city’s most luxurious, they fit the bill for visitors in search of the Saigon Experience.
Before the escalation of the Vietnam War in the early 1960s, Saigon was home to a coterie of spies, drifters, and journalists. For British novelist Graham Greene, Room 214 at the venerable Hotel Continental was his second home, and the hotel is the adopted residence of protagonist Thomas Fowler in Greene’s novel The Quiet American. Its gracious interiors and elegant verandas also appear in the lushly elegant film Indochine (1992).
Opened in 1880 as the city’s premier hotel, the Continental housed the de facto Saigon bureau for The New York Times and Newsweek by the 1960s. Following the war, the elegant façade concealed a forlorn and rundown interior, but the refurbished Continental is again one of Saigon’s best addresses, with spacious, wood-accented rooms.
From the Continental, it’s a short stroll down tree-lined Dong Khoi Street to the Saigon River and the Majestic Hotel. Built in 1925, the Majestic offers value in a colonial ambience. Riverside rooms are slightly more expensive but provide expansive views of the energetic bustle of Saigon River life. Come evening, head up to the hotel’s rooftop bar for a gin and tonic and a vista of the waterway crammed with rice barges and watch as the city’s floating restaurants turn on their soft flickering lights.
REX HOTEL: Tel 84/8-3829-2185; www.rexhotelvietnam.com. Cost: from $125. HOTEL CONTINENTAL: Tel 84/8-3829-9201; www.continentalvietnam.com. Cost: from $150. THE MAJESTIC HOTEL: Tel 84/8-3829-5517; www.majesticsaigon.com.vn. Cost: from $160. BEST TIMES: Dec–Apr for cooler, drier weather; Jan or Feb for Tet New Year Festival; May 19 for celebrations of Ho Chi Minh’s birthday.
A Quaint Port with European Influences
HOI AN
Vietnam
For centuries a river port city that drew large numbers of Japanese, Portuguese, Dutch, Arab, Chinese, and French merchants and seafarers, Hoi An today clings to its charm and heritage despite growing numbers of tourists. Its 800-plus historic structures—including Chinese guildhalls, pagodas, and Japanese bridges—were miraculously left unscathed by the Vietnam War. Many have been converted to shops or restaurants or are open to the public free of charge.
Hoi An has a vibrant, eclectic food scene—Asian fusion, traditional Vietnamese, and even Italian restaurants often coexist on the same block. Try popular local dishes such as cao lau, made of Japanese-style soba noodles topped with a hearty helping of fresh herbs, sliced pork, and crunchy banh da rice crackers, in one of the bustling restaurants lining the Thu Bon River. One of the best is Morning Glory, housed in an atmospheric, spacious old shop house. You can join proprietress Trinh Diem Vy for cooking classes that begin with a trip to the large food market. After exploring Hoi An’s surrounding pedestrian cobblestoned streets, stop at one of the town’s cafés for a glass of bia hoi—fresh draft beer that’s just 3 percent alcohol.
Hoi An locals are known for being excellent tailors and shoemakers. The streets are crammed with shops that can have you outfitted and ready to go in two days or less. Bring along a magazine clipping of your favorite designer look and prepare to be impressed.
For an escape from Hoi An’s bustle, check in at the Life Heritage Resort, set beside the river on quiet, tree-shaded grounds. Fifteen minutes outside town, the low-key, high-design Nam Hai Villas sit on an 85-acre expanse of the legendary China Beach, famous during the Vietnam War. Set a day aside to see the abandoned Hindu temple complex at My Son, 30 miles southwest of Hoi An, and return to the Nam Hai’s spa—one of Vietnam’s best—and recharge with a Chedi Jade massage.
WHERE: 18 miles/28 km south of Da Nang and 603 miles/972 km north of Ho Chi Minh City. MORNING GLORY: Tel 84/510-224-1555; www.restaurant-hoian.com. Cost: dinner $20; cooking classes from $15. LIFE HERITAGE RESORT: Tel 84/510-914555; www.life-resorts.com. Cost: from $175. NAM HAI: Tel 84/5103940-000; www.thenamhai.com. Cost: from $600. BEST TIMES: Jan–Mar for the cooler season; monthly full moon festival.
Ghosts of the Nguyen Dynasty
THE IMPERIAL CITY OF HUE
Hue, Vietnam
Modeled on Beijing’s Forbidden City (see p. 480), Hue’s Imperial City lies within a 1,300-acre citadel on the banks of the Song Huong (Perfume River), halfway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The Hue Citadel was the political, religious, and cultural center ruled by the 19 emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945, when Vietnam’s last emperor abdicated the throne. Its Imperial City once housed Vietnam’s grandest temples and finest palaces. Many structures still stand, awash with Chinese-influenced design motifs. At the dynasty’s height, the imperial complex contained hundreds of rooms in dozens of ornately decorated buildings, all protected by a 65-foot-wide moat and 6-foot-thick walls. Neither was enough to stop the destruction wrought by the Fr
ench occupation or the Vietnam War (the 1968 Tet Offensive in particular), but ongoing restoration is gradually transforming moss-covered, crumbling ruins into evocative treasures.
Within the Imperial City, separated by another battery of walls and moats is the even more impressive Forbidden Purple City. It once housed royal family members in an elaborate series of chambers, and the weapons, clothing, housewares, and ceremonial pieces now held by the Citadel’s Museum of Royal Fine Arts illuminate the grand lives enjoyed by their owners. The extravagant mausoleums of the rulers of the Nguyen Dynasty are scattered south of Hue, along the banks of the Perfume River, easily reached by boat.
Across the river, built around a former colonial governor’s Art Deco home, La Résidence Hôtel & Spa has 122 rooms and suites, many with balconies overlooking the water and the Citadel—an especially impressive sight at night, when the Imperial City is illuminated. Outside the city center is the comfortable resort Pilgrimage Village. Though just 10 minutes by car from central Hue, its thatch-roofed bungalows and villas exude a relaxed, rural ambience. Hue’s cuisine is renowned for being Vietnam’s finest, and both La Résidence and Pilgrimage Village have excellent dining rooms with traditional Hue food. But an essential experience is to eat at the city’s simple shop houses, where you can try banh khoai—a delicate rice-flour pancake stuffed with pork, crunchy bean sprouts, and peanut sauce—with a locally brewed Huda beer.
A gateway leads into the Imperial City’s Hien Lam Pavilion.
WHERE: 434 miles/689 km south of Hanoi. LA RÉSIDENCE: Tel 84/54-383-7475; www.la-residence-hue.com. Cost: from $140. PILGRIMAGE VILLAGE: Tel 84/54-388-5461; www.pilgrimagevillage.com. Cost: from $150. BEST TIMES: Feb–Aug for least rainfall; Feb–Apr for cooler temperatures.
Vietnam through the Back Door
THE MEKONG DELTA
Vietnam
From its source high in the Tibetan Plateau, the Mekong River journeys for 3,050 miles through China, Myanmar, Laos (see p. 601), Cambodia, and Vietnam—where it fragments into nine main distributaries before finally entering the South China Sea. The Vietnamese call it Song Cuu Long, or “River of Nine Dragons.” And upstream in Thailand and Laos, it’s the Mae Nam Khong, or “Mother of All Rivers,” a very accurate description for the sustaining labyrinth of land and water that forms the Mekong River delta.
Referred to as “Vietnam’s rice bowl,” the delta is one of the most fertile areas in southeast Asia, supplying the country with most of its rice, fruit, and seafood, and affording travelers wonderful insights into the real Vietnam. In riverside villages accessible only by boat, visitors can see a countryside little changed by the centuries—as well as experience the warmth of the local people and enjoy juicy tropical fruit, potent rice wine, and simple full-flavored meals. Like any of history’s great trade thoroughfares, the delta is home to many different peoples, including Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmer, and Cham. Floating river merchants and city markets showcase the area’s bounty, and delving into the Mekong’s heartland reveals floating towns, villages on stilts, and the popular beaches of Ha Tien, just a few miles from the Cambodian border.
To best experience the languid rhythms of the delta, charter your own slow-moving boat. The Song Xanh is a minifleet of four intimate wooden sampans, each with an airy bedroom and living area—plus a chef and a river-savvy skipper. The Song Xanh’s journey begins at Cai Be, about 60 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, and meanders along canals and tributaries before stopping in the French-colonial port town of Sa Dec. Guests eat and sleep onboard before setting off to Can Tho, the delta’s largest city and home to the enormous Phung Hiep floating market—a bustling affair where seven branches of the Mekong converge.
Produce-filled boats act as storefronts of the Phung Hiep floating market.
WHERE: Can Tho is 99 miles/159 km southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. HOW: Ann Tours offers 1- and multi-day tours of the delta region, departing from Ho Chi Minh City. Tel 84/8-3925-3636; www.anntours.com. Cost: 1-day tour $70. SONG XANH: Tel 84/9-79420204; www.songxanhcruisemekong.com. Cost: 2-day tour of the delta from $250 per person, inclusive. Originates in Ho Chi Minh City. WHERE TO STAY: The Colonial-style Victoria Can Tho Resort is an excellent base for exploring the area. Tel 84/710-381-0111; www.victoriahotels-asia.com. Cost: from $165. BEST TIME: Dec–Mar for cooler and drier weather.
Beachside R&R
NHA TRANG
Vietnam
Vietnam’s beach capital is the perfect place to wind down after a whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia. Fringed with palm trees and unfurling for 4 miles, it is one of the most beautiful stretches of sand on the South China Sea. From morning to night, the elegant promenade is infused with a lively but easygoing vibe. At dawn, legions of locals perform tai chi exercises; later in the day an expanding array of sophisticated restaurants and clubs spring to life. Until relatively recently, the city of around 350,000 was a favorite of the backpacker crowd, but they’ve moved on; it’s now Vietnamese families who come en masse, keeping the atmosphere local and festive.
Spend a leisurely evening sampling excellent seafood at any of the town’s outdoor restaurants (where lemongrass prawns, chili crabs, and abalone are in abundance), or, for a traditional experience, find a spot at Cho Dam, the central food market.
Crystal-clear waters off the coast make Nha Trang an ideal place for diving and snorkeling, especially around the two dozen smaller, scenic islands to the north and south of the beach. Many of them can be visited on a day trip by chartered boat or guided tour. If all that sounds too energetic, simply rent a beach chair from one of the many waterfront bars and restaurants, sit back, and enjoy the view of the lush islands from the mainland.
Six Senses is located on remote Ninh Van Bay, accessible only by a 20-minute boat ride. The resort emphasizes privacy and pampering—especially at its exceptional spa—making this one of Vietnam’s most special hideaways. A more accessible sister property and Nha Trang’s only beachfront resort is Evason Ana Mandara where guests stay in thatch-roofed villas. After enjoying the resort’s private beach, the intoxicating treatments of its spa call, followed by a dinner of East-West fusion cuisine at the Pavilion restaurant.
WHERE: 280 miles/450 km north of Ho Chi Minh City. SIX SENSES NINH VAN BAY: Tel 84/58-372-2222; www.sixsenses.com. Cost: from $650 (off-peak), from $840 (peak). EVASON ANA MANDARA: Tel 84/58-352-2222; www.sixsenses.com. Cost: from $290. BEST TIMES: Jan–Sep for the dry season; Apr–Jun are the least windy months.
Untrammeled and Lovely, Vietnam’s Largest Island
PHU QUOC
Vietnam
Overlooked for decades, Vietnam’s largest island has finally caught the world’s attention. Around 30 miles long—roughly the size of Singapore—Phu Quoc features long strands of pristine beach, a verdant and lush interior, and just a handful of resorts and inexpensive local eateries. No building is higher than two stories, most of the island’s interior rain forest remains undisturbed, and the Phu Quoc National Park, established in 2001, covers 70 percent of the island, guaranteeing protection for future generations. Change is sure to come, though, as an international airport is slated to open soon. So try to go now, while the only way to get to Phu Quoc is still by hydrofoil or on the daily turboprops from Ho Chi Minh City.
La Veranda Resort, on Duong Dong Beach, is an oasis of luxury. Built recently but in French-Colonial style, the boutique property effortlessly evokes the past with whitewashed louvers, paddle fans, four-poster beds, and touches of white wicker. The resort’s Peppertree and Beach Grill restaurants are excellent, but sooner or later everyone ends up at the family-run Palm Tree next door. This humble beach shack’s combination of freshly caught seafood—squid, garrupa, and kingfish—and cold 333 beer is hard to beat. Many dishes are prepared using peppercorns and nuoc mam, a pungent fish sauce that is Phu Quoc’s most famous export. On nearby Ong Lang beach, the beach-bungalow resort at Mango Bay cleverly uses solar electricity panels and has incorporated recycled, local materials to ensure that the airy accommodations blend
in seamlessly with the lush grounds. Don’t expect television or air-conditioning, but do look forward to a rustic, romantic ambience. Spend your lazy days discovering exceptional beaches with gin-clear water, where you can kayak, snorkel, and dive. This is your chance to experience a Southeast Asian idyll that has—so far—kept overdevelopment at bay.
The island’s beaches have a reputation for being quiet and unspoiled.
WHERE: 28 miles/48 km off the southeast coast; boats leave from Rach Gia. LA VERANDA: Tel 84/77-398-2988; www.laverandaresort.com. Cost: from $150. MANGO BAY: Tel 84/903-382-207; www.mangobayphuquoc.com. Cost: from $70. BEST TIME: Nov–May for the dry season (Apr–May are the hottest months).
Tribal Markets in the Vietnamese Alps
SAPA
Vietnam
It’s a shame the train journey from Hanoi to Lao Cai runs only at night, as the 8-hour journey traverses some of Vietnam’s most stunning mountain country. It’s a traveler’s consolation, then, that the 90-minute journey by car from the Lao Cai train station up to Sapa wends through equally rugged and beautiful landscapes—especially when early morning banks of mist are beginning to lift from the surrounding valleys and peaks.
The northern Vietnam hill town of Sapa is perched at 5,000 feet in the Hoang Lien Mountains (dubbed the Tonkinese Alps by the colonial French, who arrived in the 1920s). This craggy region abutting Laos and China is home to 30-odd minority hill tribes collectively known as Montagnards (“mountain people”). The Black Hmong and Red Dao dominate, filling the former hill station’s marketplace on Saturdays to trade their homegrown produce, sell handicrafts, and share news. Later, on Saturday evenings, the Montagnard gather to socialize at a weekly “love market.” Sunday is the day you want to head 4 hours north to the market in Bac Ha, a remote town that’s home to the colorfully dressed Flower Hmong people.
1,000 Places to See Before You Die Page 101