It's hard to easily summarise my feelings for Vietnam. It had some of the highlights of our time in Asia, but was also by the far the most challenging and with the most dissapointments. Much of the negatives are probably due to tourism being a fairly recent development in Vietnam so I think things will improve. We definitely enjoyed our time overall but after being in Thailand it was a bit of an adjustment. This might make it sound like I didn't enjoy Vietnam which isn't true. I just feel like most travel sites only ever talk about how amazing everywhere is and I don't think it's very useful and I would personally like to what isn't going to be fun and easy.
By far the worst part about visiting Vietnam is the travel between cities. There is a railway line that travels the length of the country but catching that train would have to be the worst travel experience of my life. I would never recommend it to anyone due to how incredibly slow, hot, and dirty it is. It was a new experience to be sat in a train having to watch all of the traffic on nearby roads pass us by. At some points the train can't have been travelling at more than 20 or 30 km/h. The average speed for an on time train is only around 50 km/h which is really just useless. The delay we had due to a tunnel collapse doesn't sound like it was particularly unusual and the confusion and lack of communication about what was going on is to be expected. I felt much worse after a 500km train journey that I ever have after being in a plane for 24 hours when going between NZ and the UK.
The main alternative is to travel by bus. There are usually sleeper buses which have stacked pod type seats. We never actually travelled by bus at night so never needed to sleep, but they were quite comfortable to sit in during the day. The problem with busses is that you spend most of the journey feeling like you're about to be killed. In Vietnam the speed of vehicles from slowest to fastest seems to be trucks, cars, vans, and then busses. A journey by bus will involve constant overtaking of all other traffic on single lane roads, most of which are windy and rough. The other issue with bus travel is that we were not dropped off at the advertised stop once.
Driving in Vietnam is so chaotic that renting a car as a tourist isn't really an option. You can hire a car and a driver but not really a car by itself. The problem with this is it means that the places that you can visit easily as a tourist are really cut down to those places that can be reached by bus and train. In practice this means that places in Vietnam are either completely empty of tourists, or completely swamped. I really started to miss being able to just get a car and drive through some less visited parts for a break from the crowds. It is possible to do this via motorbike as a tourist but neither of us had any experience with riding and I don't think Vietnamese roads would be the place to learn. It's also nececssary to get a Vietnamese licence to drive a bike legally (although I wouldn't be surprised if most tourists who do ride in Vietname don't do this).
This lack of easily mobility also means that often the only quick way to see the sights in some places where things are spread out, or outside of town, is to do a tour. Unfortunately most tours main focus seemed to be having as many activities involved as possible, most of which felt like they were there to tick a box. Tours that were available felt like they were all built from the same template. You could choose from several different providers but all did the same things in the same order. The worst for this was Ha Long Bay where dozens of cruises all descend of the same tiny section of the area to all walk their guests through the same cave and then on to the same beach. I couldn't understand why some providers didn't mix things up and avoid some of the crowds.
I think if I were to travel in Vietnam again I'd probably choose to fly longer distances, and book taxis for shorter journeys between cities. Yes it would be quite a bit more expensive but the alternatives are so slow that unless you're on a very tight budget it's not really worth the extra time that it takes to save a bit of money. Long travel days were also really tiring which combined with the hot weather meant that we were always quite tired after arriving in a new place.
A surprising dissapointment in Vietnam was the food. We were both really looking forward to getting there for food in particular but a lot of what we had was really quite bland. Vietnamese food is definitely quite delicate in general but a lot of what we had was just plain boring. There were a lot of plain noodles and dishes where the only seasoning seemed to be a bit of soy sauce. We did have some really great food too but it was really hit an miss, and by the end we were both really looking forward to getting back to Thailand where almost every meal was always great.
Our timing for when we were in the North of the country wasn't ideal as it was extremely smoggy and exceptionally hot most of the time that we were there. The temperatures in Hanoi were about 10 degrees Celcius above average and it was really uncomfortable but it felt like the locals were suffering too. Things returned to normal on our last day in town and it felt like a different place. The smog doesn't sound like it was unusual sadly.
This all sounds quite negative and it's true, there was a lot about Vietnam that was frustrating and dissapointing. There were also some amazing places and experiences. Da Lat felt like a complete change of scenery from the rest of Southeast Asia. Hoi An was beautiful and full of flowers. Hue had some great and unusual food. The Ha Giang Loop was like nothing else I've ever done with some otherworldly scenery. I think had we not come straight from Thailand where things are so easy and consistent it probably wouldn't have felt so mixed. Vietnam is definitely a place worth visiting and I'm glad I went.
