I’ve been sidetracked by the mad dash of my last two or so weeks of research and abandonded this blog thing. I head home today and will be writing up Hanoi, Halong Bay, Ninh Binh, Sapa, Hue, Danang, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Dalat to expand the online guide to match 99% of most travelers’ itineraries. Meanwhile, I offer these suggestions: DON’T BUS … Read on
Some travelers I meet traveling north-to-south or south-to-north across Vietnam are skipping Hue, a sleepy city about mid-way up Vietnam’s slender girth. All too often those who do come often miss its greatest attraction – not the royal tombs in the hills up the Perfume River, or the bomb-blasted Citadel in town, but the food. I always try to fit Hue in on … Read on
T.H.E. B.E.S.T. C.A.V.E. O.F. A.L.L. T.I.M.E.VIETNAMESE LOVE CAVES, and pretty much every visitor to Halong Bay — Vietnam’s famed sea spot of limestone cliffs peeking up from the green sea off the coast a few hours east of Hanoi — go on wooden junk-style ships that pay a visit to a cave or two. Today I made it to the top attraction, the … Read on
A crowd in Vietnam either means a group of parents waiting for kids leaving school, or a fight. In Hanoi, there’s a third option, if you see a crowd on the rim of Hoan Kiem Lake (Restored Sword Lake) in the center of town: someone’s seen the six-foot-long turtle that many believe doesn’t exist. Hanoi’s famed lake is based on a 15th-century legend … Read on
VIETNAM’S BEST MUSEUM:Hanoi’s Ethnology Museum – an awkward 15- or 20-minute drive west of the center — is likely Vietnam’s best museum and all visitors to the capital city should set aside a few hours to see it. In the two-floor white building are exhibits and videos that tell the tale of Vietnam’s ethnicities, starting with the Viet (Kinh) — or ‘Vietnamese’ — … Read on
Lonely Planet author and friend Tom Downs recently said to me that pretty much any time you see old photos of a place, you see what the place was like 20 or more years before that. In other words, we — as traveling documentarians, either by writing or camera — tend to focus on what’s already old, nostalgic. For example, while studying Russian … Read on
