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We flew from Danang and landed in a balmy 91F Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon).  Unlike the colonial feel of Hanoi, HCMC was modern, young and dynamic.  Home to lots of skyscrapers, with development everywhere, it has a distinct international feel–Communist slogans may emanate from loudspeakers set atop government vans driving around the city, but there’s no mistaking that this is a land that embraces capitalism.

In the heart of town we checked into the venerable Continental Hotel, a real throwback to the colonial era, which also served as the headquarters of  TIME  and Newsweek magazines during the war.  First thing we did as a group was take a cyclo (rickshaw) tour of the town, ending at the Independence Palace, the cool white mid-century building which once housed the South Vietnamese government; this is where on April 30, 1975 the North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates, finally ending the war.  Early the next morning, Sebbie and I walked back to the Independence Palace to check it out inside.  The Vietnamese government turned it into a museum, frozen in time in April 1975:  Shag carpets, lime green and orange abound. But we were searching for the war room somewhere in the basement…finally found it–a war bunker with yellowed maps covering the walls and table, also as the Communists found it in 1975.

We also went to the War Remnants Museum, a very sobering exhibit of the effects of the war, told from the Communists’ viewpoint.  So many displays of the weaponry of war, bombing locations and the impact on humans.  Yes, this is the victor’s side of things (no mention of atrocities by the Vietcong), but the extensive displays accurately show the destruction wrought by the US fighting and bombing.

The Mekong Delta

Our touring resumed with two nights in the Mekong Delta, which featured a “homestay” with a local Vietnamese family…a bungalow style camp in the country, we enjoyed their hospitality and delicious seafood meal.  The Delta is the rice bowl of Vietnam and full of fish farms on the major rivers and in small canals. Our lunches included local fruit and coconut, with grilled shrimp with heads on, all very tasty.  In the one-room coconut candy factory that we toured, workers wrapped each candy in waxed paper by hand at lightning speed, and we sampled the tasty product along with some local moonshine (evidently cobra flavored).

It was now New Year’s Eve in our little village and we welcomed 2020 (at midnight Sydney time…hey, we were tired!) with silly string and fireworks and a nice meal.

We made our way back to HCMC after the Mekong Delta trip and got a chance to check out the night markets and rooftop bars.  Rooftop bars are are a big thing in HCMC…a great place to relax with a drink, which we did at the Caravelle Hotel (another cool mid-century design) rooftop bar one evening and and the Rex Hotel Bar with the group on another night.  We also rode the elevator up to the restaurant near the top of the Bitexpo Financial Tower with our group–amazing views  at sunset and the beers were only $3!

Phu Quoc Island

Trips always speed up towards the end, and soon it was time to say goodbye to our new friends after breakfast. We hugged and went on our way to the next part of the trip: Phu Quoc island in the gulf of Thailand.

Phu Quoc is famous for its fish sauce but in recent years has exploded in sun and fun tourism, especially popular with Russians. We decompressed at the beach for a day then took an excursion on a snorkeling boat, which featured a delicious grilled shrimp lunch on the beach.  We got a chance to fish with trotlines, pulling up a dozen little fish…which became the grilled dinner for our crew.

The next day we rented a car (with driver – a requirement), and visited several out-of-the-way places including Starfish Beach which truly had hundreds of beautiful red starfish.  We had also heard rumor of an Australian beach bar on the other side of the island called Rory’s.  As we walked in, ELO was playing…they had us at h-ELO-o.  It was a beautiful last night…we drank beer, cosmos and coca-colas and dined on burgers and spaghetti bolognese…heaven!

It was now our 17th day in Vietnam and we were all ready to go home.  So we started our loooooong journey back to JFK by way of Phu Quoc to Ho Chi Minh City, then to Singapore, where we boarded the A380 on the top deck to Frankfurt.  Got out and stretched for one hour and then back in the plane to JFK.  When we look back on the trip a couple things come to mind: the optimism of the Vietnamese despite their history and the wonderful camaraderie of our tour group.  We have all been in touch via our WhatsApp group chat to share photos, life back home, and now what’s going on with Coronavirus.  We can definitely recommend G Adventures and when it’s ok to travel post-pandemic, Vietnam offers so much…check it out!

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Hoi An’s a port city half-way down the dragon-shaped country and it’s really the jewel of Vietnam.  Vietnam is known as the “Ascending Dragon” due to its shape–we passed a famous bridge in Danang shaped like an undulating dragon.

Hoi An was spared bombing during the war and has emerged in the past twenty years as a must-see stop for with its beautiful shops and restaurants and relaxed feel where you can stroll without breathing exhaust fumes.  In the 18th century, ships from China and Japan visited Hoi An for the spice trade, and you can see that legacy in the architecture.

Come dusk the old town is alight with thousands of lanterns glowing orange, red and yellow, draped over the streets and bridges.  On those bridges people lower paper lanterns onto the river in a colorful regatta (though they’re discouraging this due to the trash it generates on the riverbanks).

The town is tucked just upstream from the South China Sea, so seafood abounds including octopus, snapper, and all manner of small fish.  To get some cool pics, early one morning I toured the fish market and woke even earlier the next day to check out the meat market.  I like taking photos of street scenes and people in a photojournalist manner when traveling, but I do understand the look on peoples’ faces when they’ve had their picture taken by tourists so many times!

One of G Adventures’ partner companies is Oodles of Noodles in Hoi An, a restaurant / cooking school where the group got the chance to made rice noodles.  Starting with a rice slurry we poured a ladle of the mixture on our steamer covered with cloth and carefully lifted the rice disk off to cut into strips for rice noodles.  Then we tucked into a bowl of delicious noodle soup.

We also learned about the silk production process, from the squirming silk worms munching mulberry leaves, to boiling the cocoons which yield the naturally golden silk thread.  One of the women on our tour, had multiple suits and dresses made during our stay – they work almost around the clock to measure and sew custom suits and clothing to visitors.

In addition to touring, we spent our breaks enjoying the coffee culture of Hoi An.

A highlight of our stay in Hoi An was our bicycle safari, where we took advantage of the close-by rice fields and farms.  We saw farmers tossing seed to plant the winter rice crop, water buffaloes wallowing in muddy water, and duck farms all around.  Near at the end our our ride, a 96 year old man came outside into the warm sun to say hello.  Our tour guide Phi greeted him warmly and in Phi’s eyes you could see how much the younger generation respects older folks who suffered greatly in Vietnam’s 20th century.

By night, we found an Irish Bar with live music that ended in me arm wrestling our totally fun waitress (excuse the noisy iphone pics)!  Some of the best memories!

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Ha Long Bay is hardly undiscovered—thousands of tourists were vacationing along with us in the hundreds of boats dotting the bay.  Still, it’s a big bay and we were able to see the natural beauty (even in the fog that was present during our entire visit!) while staying overnight on a junk boat with nice cabins.  We got out onto the bay on kayaks, stopping to hike through a large cave, then paddled back at dusk to celebrate Christmas Eve with our new friends.  Come Christmas day (in case you were wondering, yes Santa did come for those teenage boys…amazing), we toured a gigantic cave then took the long bus ride back to Hanoi where we enjoyed a nice banh mi with the boys in the Old Quarter before meeting with the group to board an overnight train to Huế.

The words “overnight train” can mean one of two things: something romantic and memorable…or something you have to just have to endure.  Well, this was much more the former.  We lucked out by getting a modern and clean train with pretty comfortable sleeping compartments.  Those old train tracks, however, make Metro-North seem like a bullet train!  Due to jet lag, all the adults were up by 4am.  We had a great time hanging out with the other parents in the hallway, getting drinks from the women selling coffee on the passing stations’ platforms.

Huế

In the morning we arrived at Huế, which sits astride the Perfume River with its Citadel situated on the north bank.   Huế was the capital of Vietnam in the 18th century.  The ao dai, the classic women’s outfit originated in Huế (that’s what the three women below are wearing).

During the Tet Offensive starting  January 31, 1968, American forces and the Vietcong fought right in the citadel…there are hundreds of pock marks on the citadel walls from small arms fire in close urban fighting.  We watched a number of Vietnam movies before our trip and the Stanley Kubrick movie Full Metal Jacket depicts the Battle of Huế.

The next day we opted for the motor bike tour (a high point for all of us…we just sat on the back hugging our very safe drivers!) exploring the alleys and outskirts of Huế.  We stopped at a strategic lookout high above a fork in the Perfume River where an American bunker now sits in the middle of a quiet park.  Later on we stopped at a nón lá (conical hat) weaver and then to a museum of rice, where we learned all kinds of things about rice: how the bran is separated from the rice by tossing in the air from a round woven plate, and how to mill rice to make noodles.

Leaving Huế you climb steeply up the mountains en route to Da Nang, where US Marines first came ashore in 1965.  We stopped at Hải Vân pass on National Route 1A overlooking Danang, with its derelict American bunkers facing north and south—this was the strategic barrier separating the north from the south of Vietnam.  I was reading the famous (and excellent) book that came out in 1977, A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo who was with the US Marine Expeditionary Force that landed in ’65.  As we climbed up to the Hai Van pass I realized that the passage I was reading detailed his own platoon’s travels through the Hai Van pass in between firefights.

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When we spoke with friends about our family trip to Vietnam, invariably they asked, “Why Vietnam?”  The short answer is that Vietnam is “accessible Asia”.  The country’s a manageable size with a pleasant climate (in December).  Additionally, there were so many opportunities for adventure—kayaking, motor bike rides (as a passenger), sleeping on a junk boat— that would appeal to our 14 and 16 year old boys.  The food was also a draw as we already loved pho, banh mi, bun, and summer rolls…savory,  a bit sweet, salty, fresh—it’s a tasty, dynamic and healthy cuisine.  And the Vietnamese like their bia hoi (fresh beer), which goes down so nice with all the food.  Additionally, of course, our sad shared history with Vietnam—what they call the American War—was a major reason to visit.

We opted to take a tour and are so glad we did.  Dealing with serious jet lag from the 12-hour time difference, a language barrier, and the amount of research required to do everything right would have been overwhelming.  So we signed up with G Adventures , a tour company affiliated with National Geographic with an emphasis on meeting the locals and giving back to the communities.  We were also drawn to them because they offered tours for families which involved less touring/lecturing (which the boys would hate) and more hands-on, fun activities.

We met the group in Hanoi…it included two other American families, an English couple and their son and daughter, and an Australian-South African family of four.  Eight kids, ranging from 6 to 16.  The adults and kids became fast friends and the sense of adventure bonded us all together…doing fun activities in the day and sharing a meal and a drink at night.  Our tour guide, Phi, was just perfect…enthusiastic and open…and expert at balancing the time spent as a group vs. free time.  We spent twelve days together and he joked that he actually spent two years with us..2019 and 2020!  A great guy…the eight kids just loved him.  We are all still in touch via What’s App – it has been so nice during this virus to connect with people around the world and hear what’s happening first hand and know that they are all doing okay.

Hanoi

We started the tour in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, an atmospheric dense area with people darting in every direction, huddled together on tiny plastic stools eating and drinking just off the curb, charcoal grills glowing on every corner.  The deluge of motorbikes made crossing the street quite a daring adventure…the good advice was to keep a steady pace and be predictable…the drivers will avoid hitting you that way!

Much of Hanoi’s French colonial architecture remains, making it feel much older than Ho Chi Minh City.  We visited the “Hanoi Hilton” prison where American POWs such as Senator John McCain were detained.  And we stood silent with the masses to shuffle by Ho Chi Minh in his Soviet-built mausoleum; no cameras allowed.

The Hanoi street scene is remarkable—the social distance of people is so much less and everywhere you look there are people communing–eating, talking, drinking, working—all together as a family or group of friends–a stark contrast to the culture in our cities. The night markets are particularly festive and we managed to go to several throughout the trip.

Here are 5 take-aways from Hanoi:

•  Coffee – We did not know there was such a big coffee culture.  But, like Paris, cafe society was alive and well with many cafes having all the chairs/tables facing the streets so you can people watch while enjoying the latest cuppa.

•  Ballroom dancing –  Walking home from dinner, we ended up joining a crowd gathered to watch an impromptu group of couples ballroom dancing to a boom box in the street – think Fanueil Hall buskers – yet ballroom dancers – it was truly magical.

•  Spas – At $20/massage, Jane had two in three days.  They were incredible – one Thai massage where a tiny woman jumped on her back and used her whole body to dig deep into her muscles.  The second was a hot stone massage which she’d never experienced before.  She tried and can recommend both Dzao Spa and Orchids Spa.

•  Christmas – While the majority of the country worships a combination of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (although there are millions of Catholics in the country, a legacy of French missionaries) they sure love Christmas!  There were many shops selling Christmas decorations and outfits and many adults wearing Santa costumes at the night markets…super festive!

•  Optimism – The Vietnamese people we met were warm, welcoming, optimistic and proud of their country.  Really a can-do culture.  With a growing economy for the last twenty some years, everyone has seen so much positive change they are truly optimistic and excited as their country grows their standard of living.

Check back soon as we continue on to Ha Long Bay!

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Whether you and your children are running through the arches, laying in the grass or laughing in front of a wall of roses…West Hartford CT’s Elizabeth Park Rose Garden and the rest of the park make a wonderful backdrop for family portrait photography!

IRIS Photography will be photographing Simple and Custom Sessions:

Monday, June 17th – Friday, June 21st plus Sunday, June 23rd!

Enjoy:

* Easy  before and after work appointments (when the light is best this time of year!)

* Fun, fast and friendly sessions keep that kids engaged and parents relaxed

* Natural, loose posing…capturing real expressions and connections.

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