I arrived in Hoi An around 7pm on March 7 and took an Uber to my hostel. I dropped my stuff and headed out to explore and to find some dinner. Hoi An has been the center of Vietnam's traditional lantern crafting trade for 400 years, and I was obsessed with them, so beware that several hundred lantern photos are coming your way.
The Japanese Bridge in Hoi An was built in the 17th century, partly with funding from a Japanese businessman, hence the name and the architectural style. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and it's such a well-known landmark in Vietnam that it's actually on the 20,000 Vietnamese dong bank note (which is worth a little less than a dollar).
The An Hoi pedestrian bridge over the Thu Bon river with lantern boats everywhere!
Closeup of lanterns hanging from the bridge
Party boat ready for passengers!
I Googled "best dinner in Hoi An" and a place popped up that Anthony Bourdain had called "the best banh mi in Vietnam," so I couldn't resist. I paid Bánh Mì Phượng a visit and I got a pork banh mi. For anyone not familiar with Vietnamese cuisine, banh mi is basically the most popular sandwich in Vietnam. It's a baguette filled with a variety of things, including meat, eggs, etc. and then it's topped with some vegetables, usually cucumber and shredded carrot and a handful of cilantro, then a dash of chili sauce. I'm sensitive to cilantro (I don't have the soap gene, I just think it often overpowers whatever dish it's in), but I can confirm that the banh mi I had in Hoi An was probably the best I had on the trip. The ingredients were all balanced and the pork was cooked perfectly and it took about 90 seconds for them to make, so it was a delight all around.
I went back to my hostel and called it an early night, and late that night, I was reunited with my tour group when they arrived on their bus from Phong Nha after having spent the day exploring and swimming in a cave in Phong Nha National Park. It sounded like they had a lot of fun but I personally also felt like I made the right call for myself by going to Hue instead.
In addition to lanterns and lantern-making classes, the other thing for which Hoi An is famous is high-speed custom tailoring. The following morning, my tour guide Bunny took me to a tailoring shop where I ordered custom dresses for me and my sister. Total they cost me around $130 USD (which initially gave me a little sticker shock but then I thought about what two custom dresses would cost at home), and when I picked them up two days later, I was really happy with how they came out.
After my morning visit to the tailor, I spent the rest of the day at An Bang Beach and then came back into the city center for dinner and to wander through the Hoi An night market.
An Bang beach in Hoi An
Posing with the lanterns in Hoi An
I warned you, and there are more lantern photos to come!
The following day, Bunny organized a day trip for us to Bà Nà Hills, Vietnam's version of Disneyland. It's a combo resort/amusement park and it's the home of the world's longest cable car, as well as the famous Golden Bridge. The park's setup is really unique because it's on three different levels and the cable cars connect each level. The bottom has food and parking and the first cable car station; the middle has the famous bridge and a variety of gardens; and then the top level is the amusement park. Our tour was unfortunately a little bit of a bust because the tour guide insisted on all of us staying together and we lingered on the garden level for an annoyingly long time so that then we didn't get to spend as much time on rides or exploring the amusement park, but it was still a fun day overall.
On our way to the amusement park, our tour guide stopped at this marble carving studio. They had beautiful things (and some small ones, not just garden art!), but I didn't buy anything.
A close-up shot so you can see the detail on the carved marble
The entrance to Bà Nà Hills
Group selfie in the cable car on the way up
Bà Nà Hills has the longest cable car system in the world
The famous Golden Bridge (The park is so high up that fog is really common, especially in the morning when we were there)
Beautiful hydrangea peacock on the garden level
The amusement park has two mountain coasters so I took this photo from one of them during a slow part
Selfie on the coaster!
Sun World is the name of the amusement park section of Bà Nà Hills and it has a sort of weird European wannabe vibe but it is sort of charming, as well
Another photo from the amusement park (Again, weird but charming)
The Golden Bridge was less foggy when we were leaving
That was our last night in Hoi An so I couldn't resist getting out on one of the lantern boats
The final lantern photo!
The following day, we had a half day in Hoi An before we headed to the airport in Da Nang to fly down to Ho Chi Minh City. I picked up my tailored dresses that day and then I went to a spa to get my hair washed, which is personally my favorite thing and it only costs like $5 in Southeast Asia. We then headed for the airport and landed in Ho Chi Minh around 6:30pm. We took a bus to our hostel, dropped all of our stuff and regrouped for a late dinner nearby. Some of the other (younger) people on my tour went out after dinner but I called it an early night because I wanted to be up and at 'em for our sightseeing tour of Ho Chi Minh City the following day.
I'm referring to the city as Ho Chi Minh City in this blog post because that is its official name, but our tour guide Bunny is from there and she told us that locals prefer to call it Saigon, so really either one is acceptable.
I foolishly didn't take any photos at our first two stops: the Mariamman Hindu Temple and the Ben Thanh Central Market. The Hindu temple, while interesting, was small and I couldn't get any decent photos, and we went in the back door of the market so there weren't any good photos there, either. But finally I started taking photos at our third stop!
The Independence Palace, which was the home and workplace of the president of the Republic of Vietnam (or South Vietnam). According to Wikipedia, "it was the site of the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 that ended the Vietnam War, when a North Vietnamese Army tank crashed through its gates." I stuck my phone through said gate to take this photo.
The Saigon Central Post Office, which was completed in 1891 by the French when they still colonized Vietnam. It's mostly a tourist attraction now and you can buy really nice postcards here, but there's a small working post office inside too so you can actually still mail things from here!
The Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Saigon is directly across from the post office and has been under restoration since 2017 and apparently won't be done until 2027 (Delays from COVID have slowed things down considerably).
This is a stolen photo from the internet to show you what the basilica looks like when it's not covered in scaffolding.
The Ho Chi Minh City Opera House
Ho Chi Minh City Hall, aka the People's Committee Headquarters building, and the Nguyen Hue Fountain in front of it
The War Remnants Museum, which contains artifacts and exhibits about the Vietnam War. It used to be called the "Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes," so you can imagine that they really don't hold back regarding the genocide committed by the Americans. To be clear, I don't think the Americans ever should have gone to Vietnam and I'm very comfortable calling it a genocide, but this museum has received criticism for not contextualizing the information they're presenting. There's no mention of what the North Vietnamese, or the Viet Cong (VC), did to their citizens who supported the US and who were anti-communist.
This graphic in the museum showed the expense of the war and the quantity of bombs dropped on Southeast Asia during the war, which I found very instructive.
Overall, I thought the museum was excellent, especially a whole section they had on the journalists from around the world who put their lives on the line (and occasionally lost them) to cover the war. And as I pointed out, they really don't hold back about what the Americans did in terms of mass murder and torture, so that I felt a little queasy by the time I left. I was admittedly surprised that they didn't touch on the mass rape and sexual assault that I know went on during the Vietnam War; I thought maybe, even after all this time, it's too touchy of a subject for them to include, since a lot of the other anecdotes in the museum are from survivors.
This was an exhibit of children's paintings of the effects of Agent Orange in their communities.
Alleyway in Ho Chi Minh City
We went to a rooftop bar that night and walked down Bui Vien Street to get there, which is the most famous clubbing street in Ho Chi Minh City. It's pedestrian-only, which is why you can see people sitting or dancing in the street.
At the rooftop bar in Ho Chi Minh City
The following day, I did my own thing again and I booked a day trip to Củ Chi Tunnels and the Mekong Delta. If I had stayed with my tour group, they were also going to the tunnels, but I really wanted to see the Delta so I decided to go for it.
According to Wikipedia, "the tunnels of Củ Chi are an immense network of connecting tunnels located in the Củ Chi District of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, and are part of a much larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country. The Củ Chi tunnels were the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and were the Viet Cong's base of operations for the Tết Offensive in 1968.
The tunnels were used by Viet Cong soldiers as hiding spots during combat, as well as serving as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous North Vietnamese fighters. The tunnel systems were of great importance to the Viet Cong in their resistance to American forces, and helped to counter the growing American military presence."
So basically Củ Chi was a rebel cell in South Vietnam, and VC from the North or other parts of the country knew they could find sanctuary there if they could just make it to Củ Chi. My tour guide in Củ Chi was really interesting, because her father had fought with the Marines for the south and was originally anti-communist, so her perspective was completely different from Bunny's, my other tour guide. Bunny very earnestly told me that "the Americans" had committed a massacre in Hue; meanwhile, I'd been taught that the Hue massacre was perpetrated by the North Vietnamese, and my guide at the tunnels, Nguyen, also said the same thing. She also told us that, since her father fought on the side of the South, many of his friends fled when it became obvious that the North was going to be victorious. He stayed in Vietnam for the sake of his family and he ended up in a "reeducation camp," (aka a concentration camp) for 8 months. Nguyen told us he knew people who were stuck in the camps for years. Seeing the tunnels and the booby traps the Vietnamese built also gave me a whole other layer of understanding for how many American soldiers coming back from Vietnam had crippling PTSD; I can only imagine the atrocities they witnessed and the constant anxiety and paranoia. The whole situation was obviously a mess, but visiting the tunnels was riveting.
One example of the booby traps around the tunnels. The vertical part would be lying flat in the jungle so that when a person stepped on it, they would fall through and be impaled on the spikes below.
Many of the tunnels we saw had been widened for tourists, but this is an example entry point of one of the original tunnels. Lucky for the Vietnamese that they are relatively small people!
This Irish tourist was close to if not over 6 feet so I just wanted to show how snug these spaces really were
More booby trap examples. Their English names are second on the sign.
This door trap would be strung up so that it would swing down, spikes first, into whoever opened the door
Exit from one of the original tunnels
This is one of the tunnels that's been widened for tourists to walk through. I don't know if the picture makes it clear how small it still is. My guide, Nguyen, was an incredibly nice lady and she very gently told me, as a plus-size lady, that I should maybe consider not going in and I was quick to reassure her that I wasn't even considering it.
This is the exit from the tourist-friendly tunnel.
This hidey hole was so narrow that any of the tourists who wanted to try it had to go in with their arms straight up because their shoulders were too wide otherwise.
Overall, I'm sure you can tell the tunnels were fascinating, and I really appreciated hearing Nguyen's unique perspective as the daughter of a South Vietnamese Marine. After we wrapped up there, we headed onward to the Mekong Delta.
According to Wikipedia, the Mekong Delta "is the region in southwestern Vietnam where the Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of distributaries. Its wet coastal geography makes it an important source of agriculture and aquaculture for the country. The Mekong Delta has been dubbed a 'biological treasure trove'. Over 1,000 animal species were recorded between 1997 and 2007." The Mekong Delta is also known as the "rice bowl" of Vietnam because of the thriving agriculture there.
When we arrived in the Delta, we boarded a motor boat to Thoi Son Island, aka Coconut Island, and zipped around in a golf cart, seeing the beautiful flowers on the island and sampling some delicious fruit that was grown locally, before we boarded a rowboat through the coconut waterways.
Riding in the motorboat over to Coconut Island
Beautiful azaleas and butterflies on Coconut Island
Riding around the island in a golf cart (with a group of Korean tourists, as luck would have it!)
Riding through the coconut waterways
My tour guide kindly took this photo of me, among the coconut trees!
Our last stop in the Delta was this candy shop where they make coconut candy. They harvest the sugar from the coconut and turn it into a taffy-like chewy candy that has no additives or preservatives and still has a 6-month shelf-life. I got two different flavors and have been giving it out as souvenirs, so anyone who got candy from me, this is where it was made!
The tour was great and I had a wonderful day but we got stuck in a lot of traffic and didn't get back to the city until after 9pm. I did a quick Google search to see what was open near me where I could get some food, since I had missed dinner, and couldn't find much. I had a stroke of genius and searched for kebab places, since I associate those with being open late, and found one that was a 5-minute walk away. I went and grabbed a doner kebab for a quick dinner and then went to bed early, because we were leaving early the next morning in our bus to Cambodia.
Comments