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 Each forum had different opinions, outdated information, and strong feelings about the “right” way to enter Vietnam.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…
By Maria Santos | Lisbon, Portugal Forget everything you know about grabbing coffee on the go. In Vietnam, coffee is a meditation, a social event, and possibly a lifestyle. The concept of a quick espresso does not exist here. My first ca phe sua da took twenty minutes to arrive. I thought something was wrong.…
By Daniel Kim | Seattle, Washington I came to Vietnam for two weeks and stayed for two months. The reason? Banh mi. And pho. And bun cha. And about forty other dishes I’d never heard of before landing in Hanoi. My first morning in the Old Quarter, jet-lagged and hungry, I stumbled upon a tiny…
By Rebecca Torres | Austin, Texas Three days before my flight to Ho Chi Minh City, I realized I hadn’t applied for my visa. Pure panic set in. I’d been so focused on booking tours and researching street food spots that the actual entry requirements completely slipped my mind. It was a Sunday evening when…
Vietnami e-viisa ootamine võib tunduda lõputu, eriti kui lennud on broneeritud ja hotellid reserveeritud. Olen selle protsessi nüüdseks kolm korda läbi teinud ja iga kord tundub, et staatus „Töötlemisel“ kestab igavesti. Ametlik portaal aadressil evisa.gov.vn on piisavalt lihtne – lihtsalt sisestage oma registreerimiskood ja e-posti aadress ning näete, kusmaal asjad on. Mida enamik inimesi ei…