Asia | Vietnam | The Land of Straw Hats

A country we have been looking forward to for a long time. Vietnam. Just pronouncing the word alone makes your hands moist and cold with awe. A yellow star rests in the middle of a red flag, carrying all the suffering and misery, fears and destruction of the many centuries of struggle and oppression that the country and its people had to endure.

With anticipation, we enter the first barricades behind the visa controls and try to find our way through the confusion of travelers. We compare the prices of SIM cards, choose the best rate, and immediately look for the next UBER/GRAP to take us to HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City). They try to sell us a taxi ride for over 400,000 Dong. We politely decline and try to order our taxi through the app, but lo and behold... the airport's free Wi-Fi blocked the applications in order to accept one of the expensive taxi offers... but we're smart - we go into the new private internet and head into the city for just under 100,000 Dong :). First hurdle overcome. Of course, we already knew in advance what dangers could await us here: Fake taxis that would take us nowhere and then demand 100$+; taxis that would take us to fake hotels with the same name as the real ones; and more.

HCMC definitely surprised us. Sometimes there are 2-3 lanes in one direction with more than 5 mopeds on one lane. That means about 15-20 mopeds driving side by side through the jungle of streets (and sidewalks), honking loudly and screeching through the new and old rows of buildings in the city. Food offerings on every corner, street, sidewalk... pretty much every meter of the city. Perfect for Herbert. Vietnam has over 700 native dishes... That's enormous and says a lot about the food culture of the people here. Many influences from the times of occupation by China, France, USA. Perfect Asian cuisine, mixed with local specialties and herbs in a freshly baked crispy baguette. A dream.

In the first days in HCMC, we enjoy the metropolitan flair, the museums, and above all - the indescribably good food :). A classic routine: wandering through narrow high-rise alleys, finding a suitable street restaurant with small plastic stools and an iron table, ordering frog with rice and Vietnamese iced coffee. Very special. The coffee (hot or cold), freshly ground, is strong, pitch black, and traditionally served in a slowly dripping metal filter on a cup with condensed milk. You get used to it quickly and sometimes even have it at midnight.

In HCMC, we took a tour to the Mekong Delta and enjoyed 2 days exploring the beautiful south of Vietnam > Pictures. The landscape is crisscrossed by rivers (the Mekong River alone is one of the 12 longest in the world with >4000km) and thus forms a marshy environment with massive bamboo banks. We saw how rice noodles are made, how incense sticks and coconut candies are made, and 'special BBQ' à la Vietnam.

Then we went back to HCMC, where we immediately hopped on a 'sleeper bus' to MUI NE. We spent the night in a small cheap accommodation near the beach - very interesting - because we had imagined something completely different about Vietnam. If you travel from south to north, you will traverse high sand dune landscapes, dry flat soils, wet rice fields, forests, river landscapes, and finally the 3000m high hills in Sapa. The climate is equally diverse. We had around 25-30 degrees in the south, humid 10-15 in the middle, and dry 5-15 in the north. The next day - visiting sand dunes, walking through shallow river landscapes with red sand, visiting harbors with their nutshell boats, and much more.

Bus to Nha Trang, warming up in a thermal bath. Warm/hot thermal baths, waterfalls, and a hot mud bath brought us back to a suitable operating temperature.

From Nha Trang to Hoi An, we took the Reunification Night Train, which chauffeured us through the scenic paradise in 9 hours. Arriving at 12:00, shuttle to the hotel including a sightseeing tour to the Marble Mountains and then... Hoi An. 'One of the most beautiful cities in the world,' they told us - rightly so. We were greeted with an old town in a way that one could hardly imagine. Old sandstone buildings along the river come to life with thousands of lanterns and floating candles. Priceless > Pictures.

Bus to Hue > ancient temples, buildings, and statues. Boat tour, quirky villagers, and enthusiastic tour pushers.

Bus to Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park. The cold and humid climate did not suit us very well, so we had to deal with a cold and slight fever for about a week from there. In the cold room in Phong Nha, we simply put the hairdryer into the ceiling, which then inflated into a balloon and served as a heating blanket. We rented a moped and raced to the huge caves. The one we visited was 33km long and up to 200m high. We enjoyed the authentic environment of the highlands, climbed local hiking trails - cross country and over them - and gradually began to look forward to warmer areas again.

After 3 nights, we flew to Hanoi, spent 2 nights there, skipped the trip to Halong Bay due to our health condition, stayed for another 2 nights, and then finally traveled with the night train to Sapa, feeling slightly more vital. The very shaky ride hardly allowed us to sleep, and so we arrived tired and exhausted but happy about the great view in Sapa.

Sapa - a whole chapter of its own. For us, the REAL Vietnam. Not overcrowded, super easy to explore with mopeds, and above all, a gigantic scenery of mountains, bamboo forests, rice fields, and old villages. We were happy to spend the time there before we made our way back to Hanoi by bus. There we visited the Vietnam Military History Museum and a water puppet theater, completing our third week in Vietnam.

Propaganda material: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HKeArBAkQTrxv2lyHvzl5Bq9EVwnTrXo?usp=sharing