About Vietnam

Go here before it’s too late – you still have a few years so you don’t have to rush. It’s quite a lot of tourists already, but more the kind of advanced travelers and Backpackers, no mass tourism yet.
Places like Nha Trang, Mui Ne and Dalat are not crowded at all even a lot of tourists already. We mainly meet them on the buses between destinations and on arranged trips but the beaches are almost empty.
Coming here it’s only necessary to book the flight and maybe your first night at a Hotel for the rest of your stay it’s no problem to get Hotel rooms and also more cheaper this way because most of the Hotels listed on the internet are the more expensive ones. There are a lot of small hotels and guesthouses that are perfectly ok even as low as from $5 a night. It’s possible to live here for $10-15 a day food and accommodation included. Travel is also cheap; a bus ticket from Mui Ne to Saigon (200km) is $5 an air ticket from Saigon to Dalat (40 min) $40. A whole day trip with sightseeing from your hotel including lunch from $8. I met somebody who had traveled by bus from Phnom Penh in Cambodia to Saigon included river crossings and hotel for $12.
The only thing that disappointed me in Vietnam was the food; even the “west food” they try to make is no good. I was in a “Mexican Restaurant” and ordered some tortillas, salsa and guacamole but it tasted absolutely nothing…and the salsa was not salsa and the guacamole probably not guacamole but some other green stuff….or what about Spaghetti Carbonara with beef!!! I also experienced that the cleanliness was so so and generally not very good so best to be careful with what you eat..
Peoples knowledge of English is also limited which resulted in some problems when ordering…like you get ice tea instead of hot tea etc.
And it’s the sellers and beggars; people going around selling things you don’t need coming in to restaurants while you are eating can be quite annoying. It’s maybe more disabled people here than normal elsewhere maybe because of the war. It feels much better to give them money than buying some rubbish from the street sellers. In Saigon particularly there are also a lot of children going around selling chewing gum that can be quite difficult to get rid of but things like this you have to expect in countries like this.
Vietnam is a country with some beautiful scenery and not at all like I expected. I want to come back and then visit the North with Hanoi and Halong Bay. Hanoi is a much nicer city they say and also the capital. Halong Bay is on the world’s top ten list of special places and also Sapa Highland on the border to Laos and China. Also in the complete south of Vietnam on the border to Cambodia is an island, Phu Quoc, with some fantastic beaches.