Southern Vietnam

January 27-February 1, 2024

Hi friends and family,

In mid-January I booked a trip to Vietnam super last minute and figured out an agenda on the fly, which is similar to how I traveled over the past year in Southeast Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, and Europe. I literally bought my plane ticket from Honolulu to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) with a one-hour layover in Tokyo 3.5 days before my flight took off on Saturday January 27 and didn’t even pack until the morning of my flight.

The hiccup in my trip I was most unprepared for was the visa. I didn’t realize that American citizens visiting Vietnam require a visa to stay in the country for up to 30 days. All the other countries I’ve visited have either not required visas for short stays or sold them on arrival at the airport. I asked about it in the Honolulu airport, not realizing how critical it was, and the Japan Airlines agent told me I wouldn’t be allowed to get on the flight. I asked if I should apply for a visa online, but they were hesitant since the process typically takes 3-5 business days. Instead, they came up with an obscure workaround where I’d fly from HCMC to the island of Phu Quoc, in the south of Vietnam, which didn’t require a visa to enter. From there, I’d be able to fly to HCMC (or elsewhere in mainland Vietnam). I was frantically googling how the visa policy worked and seeing if it was legit and came to the conclusion it would work.

The Japan Airlines agents in Honolulu made some calls so that their agents in Tokyo and HCMC could help escort me through the airport. The main issue was going to be in HCMC, where I’d need assistance to transfer from the international terminal to the domestic terminal. When I arrived in HCMC, though, the people there were saying that the plan wouldn’t work, and that flying from Phu Quoc into mainland Vietnam without a visa was illegal. I tried to tell them that that plan was crafted by Japan Airlines agents, but their English wasn’t great and I’m not sure how much they understood.

One agent took me under his wing and told me that I’d need to get an emergency visa at the airport. He said it would cost between $150-200, which felt a little odd to me since there was a range. He talked to some people in the immigration department and eventually set up a deal where I paid $200 cash for an emergency visa. It felt like a scam since they only accepted cash and were being pretty dodgy about the process. My guess is that the airline agent got a cut of the profits and the people in the immigration department were corrupt and rushed my last-second application through the system. It was a blow to start the trip like that, but on the bright side I didn’t have to get right back on a flight to Honolulu; that would’ve been a huge waste of money and time, so I’m grateful I actually made it into Vietnam.

It was in the early hours of Monday January 29 by the time I made it out of the airport, and I took a grab (Vietnam’s version of Uber) to my hostel in the city. I slept and then went to the hostel breakfast on the rooftop, which was a nice and quiet place in the otherwise chaotic city. The atmosphere on the rooftop was laidback, and I had some good conversation with a guy named Reese from Canada, who’d been traveling Southeast Asia for a couple months. Some Italian girl in the hostel helped the chef cook pasta for breakfast, and we got an all you can eat breakfast buffet included in the already very inexpensive hostel. I spent a little time after breakfast researching where to go next and decided on Dalat, known as “the Alps of Vietnam”.

After that, I went to the War Remnants museum, which was a comprehensive museum on the America-Vietnam War. I spent most of the afternoon there before walking to Ben Thanh Market to get a smoothie and then walking along Bui Vien walking street, which is essentially HCMC’s version of Bangla Road in Phuket or Khao San Road in Bangkok - in other words, it’s sheer madness there. I was walking by at 5pm which was too early for any of the action to have started, but I could tell that the gaudy Vegas sports bars and tiki bars would be rowdy at night. After walking the street, I got a $14 (after tip) massage that was amazing after the long flights. I grabbed some pho for dinner and then caught a sleeper bus to Dalat.

(A little bit of home away from home with the Waikiki tiki bar.)

The sleeper bus is a unique way of traveling in Vietnam, where instead of normal seats on the bus there are reclined seats, similar to beds. Most sleeper buses I’ve seen so far have three columns of beds, with two aisles for walking in between, similar to large airplanes. In each column of beds, there’s a set of lower bunks and a set of upper bunks. The aisles are incredibly narrow, and even walking without any bags requires turning sideways to not bump into people. The size of the bed varies, too; for some of the beds, I had to have my legs bent most of the time, but for others I could mostly stretch out. Overall, I really enjoyed the sleeper buses, especially because many of them drove throughout the night. Vietnam is a big country and most places are 8+ hours away from each other by bus, so it was nice to save the day by traveling at night and it also helped save money on accommodations, although sometimes I was exhausted when I arrive to a new place and needed to crash immediately. One downside of the buses is that they were all more expensive than usual because the holiday of Tet (the lunar new year) was coming up on February 10, and everyone was traveling to see family and head home in the days before and after Tet.

I arrived the next morning in Dalat at 5am and got into my hostel right before my phone died. I snuck into bed in a private room and slept until 10. I didn’t have a plan for the day, but the guy who I shared a room with, an English lad named Chris, asked if I wanted to join him. We rented motorbikes from the hostel, which is something basically every accommodation offers, and went to a tiny little coffee farm called Destiny Coffee Farm.

The farm was incredibly off the beaten path at the end of this long dirt road, and there were barely any other tourists there. We’d only heard of it through word of mouth from some guy at our hostel, but I don’t think many other people knew about it. The guy that runs the farm himself treated us to coffee and tea and told us how he made it. Then he showed us around his farm and how he makes coffee. At the end of the tour, he asked if we wanted to buy cascara tea, which is made from the outside of coffee beans and we said yes to support him. It was a lovely outing and I loved how authentic it felt.

Next, we biked to the lake outside of town and walked around before going to a place called Happy Hill Coffee, which was much more touristy and constructed than Destiny by comparison, but it was still nice. We had to buy a drink to get into the park where the shop was located, but after we bought our expensive drinks we could walk around this beautiful woodsy area and sit on various chairs, hammocks, and platforms, looking out at the placid lake, where occasional boaters passed by. It was an interesting experience. Dalat is a popular vacation spot for Vietnamese, so it felt like an attempt at bringing Western treats and culture into Vietnam.

We went back to the hostel afterwards and were happy to be home before it was dark since the driving in Dalat was crazy. There are barely any rules to the road, like many major Asian cities, and we just took it slow to avoid getting in an accident. At home, the two brothers that ran the Dalat Note Hostel we were staying in prepared an incredible family dinner. Almost everyone from the hostel joined and indulged in probably ten different dishes of delicious Vietnamese food. It was so wholesome and such a good way to bring people together.

At night, most of the group went to a bar called Maze Bar, which was touristy but had a cool concept that the bar was a maze. We walked in at ground level and then spent 15 minutes traversing through the caves inside the bar before popping out on the upper level, with another bar. It was really well done and cool to see once. The group from the hostel talked among ourselves and had a good night.

The next day, I had a leisurely morning and chatted with Hữu (pronounced kind of like “Hugh”), the younger of the two brothers that ran the hostel. He was a Western-trained chef for a couple years and was really into food. He made some delicious breakfasts and I cherished our morning conversations when I was the first one up.

After chatting and researching for a while, I decided to hike Lang Biang Mountain, the highest peak in Dalat. It was a much more strenuous hike than I anticipated, and not very well marked, so it felt grueling at times. I did the first half on my own before running into a guy named Calvin from the hostel midway through. The hike kicked my butt and I was breathing heavily and drenched in sweat towards the top. The view at the top was decent, overlooking the city of Dalat and some farmland.

I talked with this Spanish girl for a while and we hiked down together. When I got to the bottom, I discovered that my bike battery had died. Some very friendly employees at the mountain helped me get my bike to the nearest mechanic by using the power of one bike to push the other forward while I rode on the back of the bike with the guy doing the pushing. The mechanic was generous and fixed it for free. I tried to give the mechanic money but he gestured no. I was really thankful to have averted disaster, and thought about how differently that situation could’ve gone in America. I think almost any person would’ve charged an arm and a leg to fix the problem and not helped purely from the goodness of their heart.

In the evening, Hữu took four of us from the hostel on a food tour around Dalat. He said he tried every restaurant when he moved here, so he knew all the best spots and took us to his favorites. The first was the most unassuming little spot on the side of a busy road that made fried rice flour cakes, which were delicious savory treats that had egg and some veggies in them. We doused ours in sauce and it had the best soft and crunchy texture. The next spot was one where we made our own spring rolls from rice paper, cilantro, cucumber and carrots, and already made spring rolls. It was kind of funny to have a fried spring roll inside a fresh one, but it was delicious. The last spot was for dessert, where we tried a delicious treat called grilled banana sweet soup, or chè chuối nướng, in Vietnamese.

All the spots were super local and barely registered on Google Maps. Hữu was telling us that in Vietnam, people in the restaurant industry don’t care so much about Google Maps. They figure that if their food is good, people will keep coming back. He also said a telltale sign of a good restaurant is that they only serve one thing that they specialize in, and may not even have a menu. The food tour was such a treat, and I felt like friends with Hữu after going on it. It all cost only $6 and it was so much delicious food at spots I wouldn’t have found myself. (These ridiculously good prices were very common in Vietnam, especially less touristy areas. My hostel bed in Dalat cost under $3/night and included breakfast.)

On my last day in Dalat, I had an early breakfast and then went on a canyoning tour that I’d booked at the last minute. I had reservations about it the prior day because I thought it might be similar to waterfall hikes, which I can do for free in Hawai'i, but I’m really glad I went through with it because it ended up being a blast. The tour involved rappelling down waterfalls with ropes and a harness, going down water slides (feet first, head first, and as a group), and lazy rivers, which reminded me of the Chiang Mai elephant tour river rafting in Thailand.

It was a small group: the two guides, Tony and Tom; a Polish couple, Adam and Adrianna; and me. Tony was a jokester and made us feel comfortable instantly. Since we were such a small group, we got to do many of the waterfalls twice. I was surprised at how much of a workout rappelling was. It had my quads burning, since I was using my legs to support all of my body weight while leaning backwards. The guide Tom also got some super cool photos of all of us.

(If you're interested in seeing more content from the canyoning day, click here.)

After the tour, I chilled at the hostel for a bit before catching an overnight bus to Hoi An at 5pm. It was a 14-hour ride, but I was able to sleep for a decent amount of it. The one eventful stop was for dinner, at a chaotic bus stop on the side of the road. At one point, the only other Westerner in the place and I locked eyes and silently communicated “What is going on?!”. I eventually figured out the system and got the worst food I had in Vietnam. The meat was gross and I thought it was going to make me sick, so I just at the rice and vegetables. I arrived in Hoi An around 6am, which I'll write about next post. As always, thanks for reading!