By Ryan Brooks | Los Angeles, California Ho Chi Minh City has a night shift. Around midnight, when most cities are winding down, Saigon is just getting started. The street food comes out, the rooftop bars fill up, the city transforms. District 1 is the obvious choice for nightlife, and it delivers. Bui Vien Street…
By Henrik Larsen | Copenhagen, Denmark Every guidebook mentions Sapa’s rice terraces. They show the same photos: emerald green steps carved into mountains, Hmong women in traditional dress, misty valleys stretching forever. Beautiful, accurate, incomplete. Nobody mentions the mud. In rainy season, which is most of the trekking season, the trails become rivers of clay.…
By Laura Chen | Vancouver, Canada Timing your Vietnam e-visa application is an art I only learned after two trips. The first time, I applied a month early and spent weeks with that approval just sitting in my email. The second time, I applied four days before departure and nearly gave myself a breakdown. Here’s…
By Patrick Morrison | Edinburgh, Scotland Hoi An is famous for two things: lanterns and tailors. The lanterns are beautiful for photos. The tailors are useful for life. I came for the lanterns and left with a wardrobe. The tailor shops outnumber cafes in this town. Every second storefront promises custom suits in 24 hours,…
By Chen Wei | Singapore Everyone visits Ha Long Bay. It’s the most famous sight in Vietnam, UNESCO listed, bucket-list material. Which means it’s also crawling with tour boats, floating vendors, and thousands of tourists all taking the same photo of the same limestone karsts. A Vietnamese friend gave me a tip that changed everything:…
By Nina Johansson | Stockholm, Sweden Sweden is expensive. Vietnam is not. This basic economic reality funded three months of travel on savings that would have lasted three weeks at home. My average daily spend was around 25 USD, and I never felt like I was sacrificing anything. Accommodation took the biggest chunk, averaging about…
By Marcus Williams | Toronto, Canada When I started planning my Vietnam trip, the visa options confused me. E-visa? Visa on arrival? Embassy visa? Each forum had different opinions, outdated information, and strong feelings about the “right” way to enter Vietnam. Here’s what I eventually figured out, and the choice I made. The e-visa is…
By Sophie Laurent | Paris, France Her name was Ba Ngoai, which means grandmother in Vietnamese, though she wasn’t mine. I met her through a cooking class in Hanoi that turned out to be just her kitchen and three confused tourists. No English, no recipe cards, no measurements. Ba Ngoai communicated through gestures, taste tests,…
By Alex Turner | Melbourne, Australia On day three in Vietnam, I rented a motorbike. By day four, I had scraped knees, a bruised ego, and several important lessons about two-wheeled transportation in Southeast Asia. The rental process is alarmingly casual. Show your passport, pay a deposit, sign nothing resembling a legal document, and suddenly…
By James O’Connor | Dublin, Ireland I’ve always avoided beach destinations. Too crowded, too touristy, too many resorts blocking ocean views. So when my travel partner insisted on adding Da Nang to our Vietnam itinerary, I agreed reluctantly, expecting to be bored within hours. Wrong. Completely, wonderfully wrong. Da Nang is not your typical beach…