By: Holly Kreider
September 10, 2024

My recent mother-daughter trip to Vietnam involved more exciting encounters than one could ever hope to capture in a single blog entry. Our south-to-north 12-day itinerary began in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), proceeded by air to Da Nang and Hoi An, followed by private driver to the imperial city of Hue, and capped off in the northern capital of Hanoi and a 3-day boat tour in Lan Ha Bay – the lesser known but equally beautiful sister of Ha Long Bay. Below I offer some big experiences to chase in your own Vietnam adventure planning.

1. Lodge in style.

When traveling on a budget in the U.S., I gravitate toward AirBnB rentals or hostels for unique and affordable lodging options. But in Southeast Asia, 4- and 5-star hotels rarely cost over $100/night. We veered toward boutique hotels with rooftop pools and bars and high satisfaction ratings. We opted for packages that included breakfast (the buffets are phenomenal) and upgraded to rooms with balconies and panoramic views, because why not? We loved each and every one. Here they are: The Silverland Yen Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, the Garden Inn in Da Nang, the Silk Path Hotel and Spa in Hue, and the GM Premium Hotel in Hanoi.

2. Embrace the motorbike madness.

As Anthony Bourdain described it, "one of the great joys of life is riding a scooter through Vietnam, to be part of this mysterious, thrilling, beautiful choreography…A flowing, gorgeous thing." We took 4-hour evening motorbike tours through both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. A highly-rated tour costs $30/person on AirBnB Experience (plus a generous tip to your driver), and the rewards are priceless. In HCMC, book this tour and specially request Kelly. It was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating, and ultimately meditative, to be part of a city and its 9 million motorbike riders. We gained access to winding alleyways and the people who inhabit them, saw firsthand the country’s urban housing challenges and solutions, traversed numerous city districts and their many night markets (a flower market, black market, and a seafood market), sampled the best street food each city had to offer, and spied swimmers in muddy rivers while crossing a bridge built over 100 years ago. This is NOT for the faint of heart. In fact, my daughter’s bike in Hanoi caught a flat back tire and her driver crept along for another few miles on the tire rim to secure a replacement bike. Yet motorbikes are the beating heart of Vietnam’s cities, and to skip this is to miss the country’s urban life force. If you choose to pass on a motorbike tour, a quicker transportation thrill can be found on Train Street in Hanoi, where a commuter train barrels through a slim alleyway inches from your face while you sip coffee at an outdoor cafe with hordes of other lookie-loos.

3. Seek out sunrise on the beach.

We opted to stay in Da Nang for the second leg of our trip, with just a daytrip into the tourist-favored Hoi An beach resort town 30 minutes south. Our Da Nang hotel joined a strip of chunky high-rises facing the main Da Nang beachfront - a sort of scaled-down unappealing Miami Beach vibe to be honest. The expansive beach was eerily empty when we checked into our hotel the first afternoon, perhaps because the heat of the white sand could literally melt the flesh off your feet. But by accident of jet lag, I looked out our high-rise window at dawn the next morning to see thousands of people at the beach and quickly ran across the street to join them. The sun was rising, the beach was clean and silent, the air was cool, the sea was calm and warm as bath water, and the crowd was entirely Vietnamese – I suspect a mix of locals and in-country tourists. They were floating in the sea alone or in small groups, walking the beach, doing Tai Chi or sit ups, exfoliating their skin with sand, and otherwise starting their day off right in the most remarkable place en masse. It was so magical that I convinced my night-owl daughter to rise before dawn the next morning to join me. If all of humanity could start its day this way, we’d rid the world of all its problems.

4. Light and release a Lantern in Hoi An.

For another moving moment on the water, head to Hoi An at sunset. We walked along the river’s banks and gladly accepted an offer by one boat captain to take us up river for $8 USD in his modest but lantern-festooned boat. We drank beer from a can and gently released small paper lanterns into the river with a silent wish. The colorfully illuminated boats all around us, the glittering water, and the unique bridges, all lent their magic to the scene. Add to your Old Town Hoi An visit a tour of the temples and manors along the main drag or dinner on the river. And for a lantern you can keep, enroll in a simple lantern-making class like this one, which also offered us a brief reprieve from the crowds and blazing sun.

5. Buy a tailored suit and make friends with your tailor.

Hoi An is one of the tailoring capitals of the world with over 200 tailors at the ready to sew you a custom-made suit or traditional Vietnamese dress. Because we spent only one day in Hoi An, we sought out a highly-rated tailor in Hue instead to seed my law student daughter’s professional wardrobe. In less than 24 hours, Bo created two gorgeous three-piece suits for Sarena, and with a steep student discount (under $200/each). She threw in two pairs of shorts from the leftover fabric and a bonus trip to the pharmacy to help locate emergency medicine for mom (me). Now that Bo has Sarena’s measurements, Sarena can order her next suit from afar and have it shipped, easy peasy. See the end result here on Bo’s TikTok channel. And if business suits aren’t your jam, you can also enjoy a Thai massage or a mani-pedi for a pittance!

6. Eat your heart out.

In my extensive travels, only Malaysia rivals Vietnam as an international food capital. Vietnamese food is fresh and light, yet complex and comforting. Choices are abundant and affordable, ranging from street food stalls and local wet markets to high-end restaurants (Michelin stars can be found in all of the above). Food tours are a great way to survey your food surrounds, find trusted vendors, and cater to your food preferences.

Beginners will love being introduced to the basics like Pho (pronounced “fah”), a fragrant rice noodle soup served for breakfast; Bahn Mi, a sandwich slathered in pate and served on a freshly baked baguette; Goi Cuon, spring rolls stuffed with prawn, cukes, pineapple, vermicelli noodles and lettuce; and Ca Phe, iced Vietnamese coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Because we hail from a county in California with 140,000 Vietnamese people and regularly partake in the usual fare, we sought out more uncommon menu items. Here were some of our favorites:

● Dry Pho - a heap of rice noodles, chicken, crushed peanuts, crispy onions, and a side bowl of broth. Pure joy in a bowl. Try this Michelin-star hole-in-the wall tucked alongside motorbike repair shops in Hanoi.

● Snake-head fish soup - we saw buckets of these freshwater eely fish in boats along Hue’s main river, and sampled a tasty signature fish soup with handmade chewy rice noodles in a mom-and-pop place near our Hue hotel.

● Southern noodles (Bun Bo Nam Bo) - like its cousin, Bun Cha, this Hanoi dish swaps in beef for pork and in our case, fat tri-colored organic vermicelli, and julienned vegies. Juicy and fresh.

● Bun Bo Hue - a spicy salty soup with crab meatballs and beef and sometimes pork knuckles, blood curds, and even swizzle (water buffalo penis). Although a regional speciality of Hue, and indeed we slurped a tasty bowl in Hue’s main market, our most heavenly bite came from a hole-in-the-wall in Ho Chi Minh City.

● Bo La Lot - a fragrant and smoky parcel of grilled marinated beef wrapped in wild betel leaf and served with a sweet and savory dipping sauce. Tender and delicious.

● Breakfast porridges - including congee, a comforting rice gruel topped with whatever salty crunchy things your heart desires. My daughter also loved a viscous kudzu-powder slurry topped with goji berries, pumpkin seeds, and other delights.

● Papaya salad - with green papaya and other veggies, crunchy peanuts, a funky citrus dressing, and the meaty twist - beef jerky. We gladly licked our plastic plates clean sitting in a parking lot in HCMC near the nameless street vendor who has been slinging this salad to locals for decades.

● Crispy rice crepes (Bahn Xeo) - filled with shrimp and sometimes pork, wrapped in greens like fish leaf, mint, fresh coriander, and lettuce, and dipped in a delicate fishy sauce. Depending on the region, these crepes might be as big as your head or as dainty as a silver dollar.

● Cha Ca Ha Noi - turmeric-encrusted fresh fish sauteed at your table with fresh dill and spring onions, and accompanied by vermicelli, peanuts, shrimp paste, and cilantro. We splurged on this Michelin star restaurant in Hanoi, which required reservations and set us back a big $20 bucks USD for dinner for two.

● Mi Quang - this noodle soup variant includes meat, hard boiled egg, peanuts, and a crispy rice cracker that you break into bits to put atop your soup. We indulged at Michelin star-rated Nu Do Kitchen in Da Nang, where the mesmerizing Master Chef Carol Pham served us personally in the lush atrium of her own home. The whole meal set us back $12 USD.

Our favorite food list could literally go on for days, although some items we tasted didn’t make the cut, like pho noodle rolls, frog leg noodles, grilled oysters slathered in cheese, and Bia Hoi (the fresh beer of Vietnam that tastes like watered-down Bud Light). The point is to taste it all while you have the chance, preferably in the company of locals.

7. Take time to get to know the people of Vietnam.

In the Hanoi airport waiting for our delayed flight home via Taipei, an older Vietnamese gentleman struck up a conversation with me. He left Vietnam in the late 70s, started a restaurant in Orange County a decade later, and had come back to visit family near Hue for a few weeks. I saw lots of photos of his beautiful daughters and promised to visit his restaurant the next time I’m in Southern California. This was a typical encounter during our stay – to a fault the Vietnamese people were open, friendly, humble, and curious. A restaurateur offered to give us a tour of her home, a tailor walked my daughter to the pharmacy for medicine, and young motorbike tour guides engaged in deep conversations about psychology, politics, war, racism, and police relations. A group of girls in Hanoi asked if they could practice their English with us (see photo). The most touching example came from a rice-farmer-turned-driver in Hue, who bravely shared in halting English the multi-generational trauma his family experienced. First, his grandparents survived the French war, then his parents survived the American (aka Vietnam) war, and even now the latter generations continue to suffer the echoes of war– a nephew, brother, and two friends died from accidentally detonated bombs in his family’s rice fields, and his sister’s long-standing PTSD reappears each time she hears a loud noise (which triggers her childhood spent hiding in tunnels during bombings). We could only listen, thank him for his candor, and apologize for our own country’s hand in his family’s suffering. We saved our tears for the privacy of our hotel room after the tour. It was a powerful reminder to listen with respect and connect to each other’s humanity. The War Remnants Museum in HCMC offers another important opportunity to learn about the American War from the Vietnamese perspective, with a particularly moving exhibit on the devastating effects of Agent Orange.

8. Escape the heat and the mosquitos.

Not so much an adventure to chase, but rather ones to avoid, are mosquito-borne illnesses like Dengue Fever and the potential heat stroke that a 98 degree day with 50%+ humidity might induce in August in Vietnam.

To minimize mosquito bites (one can never fully avoid them), we sprayed ourselves religiously with 30% DEET. When that failed, we graduated to 100% DEET, which disintegrated our paper admission ticket into Hue’s Citadel, so was also likely damaging our health. Plus it didn’t keep the mosquitos off. So we took our cues from the locals and wore long pants and shirts regardless of how hot it was outside. This really did the trick. It may have helped that we doused key clothing in Permethrin bug poison in advance of our trip.

Meanwhile, we escaped the heat by:

● Being outdoors in the early morning and evening hours rather than midday – see sunrise beach and night motorbike tour ideas above.

● Spending a half a day in Ba Na Hills, 5,000 feet above sea level and 20 degrees cooler than the city below. It’ll cost you a steep $35 USD entry fee and a 30-minute gondola ride straight up, but the cooler climate, Golden Bridge, extensive gardens, and sweeping views make it worthwhile. We hired a private guide to navigate this Disney-like landscape more easily (skipping the corny French Village, with the exception of the cool toboggan ride down the mountain).

● Eating and drinking frozen concoctions in many forms. We partook in passion fruit margaritas from Soul Kitchen under an umbrella at An Bang beach in Hoi An, munched dry-ice-frozen Kix-like cereal from a street vendor near Hoàn Kiếm Lake in Hanoi and breathed smoke like dragons as a result, bought melon-flavored popsicles in Hue’s Citadel for 50 cents, savored several cool yogurt-based desserts with fresh tropical fruits and water-buffalo whipped cream, slurped fresh-pressed sugar cane juice with Calamansi lime in HCMC, and ate cold “egg coffee” with a spoon. This last treat, served hot or cold, substitutes sweetened egg meringue for the milk typically found in Vietnamese coffee (necessitated by war-time milk shortages) and is truly heaven in a cup.

9. Kayak and swim in Lan Ha Bay.

The northern Vietnam coast hosts three incredible bays peppered with karst rock formations. The most well-known is Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site overrun with 700+ boats at any given time. We opted for the less-crowded, but equally awe-inspiring Lan Ha Bay for this 3-day 2-night cruise at the end of our trip. My annoyance with the 3-hour drive from Hanoi, the crowded port, and the 45-minute transfer boat ride, quickly melted away once I spied the stunning scenery, first from the comfort of a huge stateroom and balcony, then from a kayak on the calm waters pierced by lush towering rock formations. A serene swim at a secluded beach with a tiny Buddhist temple as its only landmark tops my best-ever beach experiences (others on my list: Varadero Beach in Cuba, Manuel Antonio Beach in Costa Rica, and Mala Mala in Fiji). Sunrise tai chi on the top deck while our boat weaved silently through the rock-strewn Bay wasn’t bad either…

In sum, we loved our Vietnam adventure, but barely scratched its surface. On my future wishlist are a multi-day boat trip through the MiKong Delta with its floating markets, marshy bike rides, and manta rays the size of VW buses and a three-day trek through Son Doong, the world’s largest cave with its own lakes and forests inside, which requires reservations a year in advance and enough lung capacity to climb five flights of stairs without resting. As adventure trekkers are inclined to say, “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

9 Ideas for Your Next Vietnam Adventure