This winter holiday it was time to return to Asia again: this time for a 3 week long motorbike trip through Vietnam, from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City. 🛵
Having traveled to most countries in south east Asia, but never to Vietnam, the choice of spending our Christmas holidays there felt self evident. I’d never been to Vietnam but heard so much about the beautiful landscapes and the great food so I have to admit that my expectations were high.
This trip started in Bangkok, as usual, where Sam and I spent one week catching up with old friends, re-visiting our favorite restaurants and bars and having a "workation" before starting our Christmas holiday.
We had managed to rent out our apartment in Stockholm last minute, and knowing that we'd have most of our expenses at home covered, we treated ourselves with a luxury condo: the newly built XT Phayathai building close to our old condo in Ratchathewi. The rooftop infinity pool made me question, once again, the decision to leave Bangkok and move back to Sweden. During this first week we had time to adjust to the new time zone, the weather (yes, we left Sweden in the middle of the winter and it was freeeezing, so the first days in the Bangkok 36 degrees heat was a bit overwhelming).
After a week in Bangkok, we boarded our flight to Da Nang, Vietnam.
Arriving in Da Nang
The first thing that hit me when we'd arrived in Da Nang was that everything pretty much felt and looked like Thailand, exept it wasn't: which made me constantly forget that people didn't speak Thai here. Repeatedly I embarrassed myself by approaching people with a "sawasdeekaa" and they'd stare at me confusingly. I spoke Thai to the immigration officer, grab driver and hotel receptionist, and so it went on. This made me realized how much time I'd spent in Thailand after we actually moved away, and how little I'd prioritized to explore the rest of South East Asia. I'd simply stayed in my "Thailand comfort zone" and now it was about time to broaden my views.
Da Nang felt small in comparison to Bangkok that we'd just arrived from, but it’s actually one of the biggst cities in Vietnam with 1,3 million people. As usual when we travel Sam and I tend to have disagreements about the accommodation; I don't mind staying in simple guest houses and save money while Sam wants a comfortable bed and doesn't mind paying a bit more. During this trip we had agreed to spend a bit more on hotels than we usually do since we had the income from our apartment in Stockholm. But finding expensive accommodation in Vietnam turned out to be a bit challenging: in most of the towns and cities we visited, getting a comfortable and fairly fancy hotel room would only cost 20$. In Da Nang we booked a hotel that was less than 10$ per nights, but it was still of very decent standard.
Since we stayed just one night in Da Nang, we tried to make the most of it. Here were the highlights:
The dragon bridge is quite impressive to see and worth checking out. Sadly the famous fire show is only happening once a week so we missed it.
Next to the dragon bridge there is one of the more famous night markets, bustling with life, people and endless food stalls. We tried some of the street food but thought the market is a bit overrated, and also overpriced, so instead we headed back to a cozy restaurant that we’d passed by earlier in the day. However, it's still worth visiting the night market if you're in Da Nang just to get a first glimpse of all variation of the Vietnamese street food cuisine.
We had dinner at Moc restaurant. It’s a cozy outdoor terrace with lots of the Vietnamese traditional lanterns. They serve really nice sea food that is even cheaper than the sea food at the night market, so felt like great value for money. We tried some of the scallops and a variation of sea food but weren't hungry enough to go for the fresh fish you could pick from an aquarium in the restaurant and they'd cook it for you. It was quite sad to see how the restaurant kept the fish and shellfish alive in these aquariums though. Some of the big and beautiful ocean living animals where kept in small cages or aquariums, and all the crabs had tied claws so they couldn’t move at all. We figured this was the general praxis at most sea food restaurants, but it was still sad to see.
We ended the day with a stroll along the beach where there are lots of bars and clubs, which seemed to align with what we’d heard about Da Nang; that it’s a good party place.
The next morning we went on a mission to buy a scooter, and found one for 5 million that’s about 200 $. It’s very easy to buy a motorbike in Vietnam, and quite cheap and easy to resell it after your trip. For us, the main challenge was to find helmets (that ended up costing almost half 1/3 of the cost of the bike). Nowadays the government has implemented strong rules forcing everyone to wear a helmet, but after seeing what kind of helmets people were wearing it was clear that most of them did it only to not get fined by the police. Not because of their own actual safety in case of an accident - most helmets seemed to be very bad quality. Sam and I always have the opposite problem when it comes to helmets in Asia: all the helmets are always too small for him, and too big for me. After some searching he eventually found one in XL size, and I had to buy one in kids size since none of the regular adult sized ones fitted me. So this was the helmet I had to wear for the next upcoming weeks:
The funny thing is that in Sweden you’d get a lot of attention if you’d drive around with this one, people would look and laugh, but being in Asia this is pretty normal. I quickly learnt that I wasn’t that special after all; when there was teddy bears, other cartoon caracteres and superheroes driving around out there.
Leaving Da Nang and heading south
After buying the scooter and sorting out the helmets we headed south. Our first stop was Hoi An, where we arrived in the evening and did some exploring around the old town. I’d heard a lot about it and it truly was really cozy with all the colorful lanterns and small lights everywhere. However, it was definitely more touristy than I had thought and most of the restaurants seemed to serve food that wasn’t that authentic. We had some traditional Vietnamese soup and dumplings and spent the rest of the evening “bar hopping” (the cocktails were strong. First time ever that I got the question from the bartender whether I wanted the cocktail “medium or very strong”, less strong wasn’t even an option). We visited the newly opened Mad Monkey hostel which was a bit nostalgic, and had a late night bhan my sandwich.
Leaving Hoi An and encountering the rain...
The weather was pretty unstable this time of the year, so it seemed to rain quite hard but occasionally which made it a bit hard to plan our motorbike trip. It was time for us to start heading down south, and after some research we figured out that the best way would be through the mountains in the inlands rather than along the coast. Before starting our first stretch of the drive, we had a great brunch at a cafe called Magic brunch. And the smoothie bowl was indeed quite magic - one of the best ones I have ever had and it was only 35,000 vnd = 1,5 dollars. I also tried the famous local Vietnamese "egg coffee" for the first time: black coffee mixed with egg yolk, called Cà Phê Trúng. It was delicious and more like a sweet creamy dessert than coffee. It became a favorite and the first out of many I had during this trip.
After having breakfast we started our first proper day of driving, a 100 km stretch from Hoi An to a small town called Kham Duc in the mountains. Knowing that the weather could be unpredictable we made the smart decision to buy rain ponchos before we headed off. And they turned out to be very needed: we were driving in rain almost the whole day. When we finally reached we were soaked from top to toe and freezing. I wasn't in my best mood and started regretting the whole trip. Central Vietnam turned out to be both rainy and cold in December... The driving took a lot longer than we’d anticipated, around 5 hours in total, because of the poor road conditions, ongoing road work and the constant heavy rain.
We stayed in a small guesthouse called “Sweet homestay 21 & yoga”, that wasn’t very nice (the sheets and towels weren't very clean…), but I was just so happy about the warm shower and dry clothes so I didn’t care much. Then we headed out for dinner, but the small town was very local and we couldn't find many restaurants open. In the end we had hot pot in a small local bar where most of the village men had gathered to drink. The rain continued all through the night and the next morning...
The rain continues. Reaching Kon Tum.
When we woke up it had rained the whole night and was still raining in the morning. Nothing had dried up and we had no choice but to put on our wet clothes and shoes again…
We started our drive early morning to try to get away from the rainy region as fast as possible, and it worked - after one hour of driving the sky finally cleared up and the rain stopped. It seemed like the heavy rain clouds were stopped by the mountain range that we’d just crossed. We felt so pleased to slowly dry up and be met by the warm sun again.
On the way to our next overnight stop, a city called Kon Tum, we stopped by smaller towns to have snacks and of course my favorite sandwich: banh me. I tried another kind of Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk. I've totally fallen in love with the salty Vietnamese coffee.
In Kon Tum we found a really nice hotel, surprisingly fresh and nice for being a non-touristy city, called Bong Villa Hotel. It was just 15 dollars per night and even had a small pool.
We had a nice evening exploring the city, had a beer by the riverside and watched the sunset, and a really nice seafood dinner at a very local restaurant.
One thing that we’ve been a bit surprised about is that people always throw all their trash and food waste straight on the floor in all restaurants, even in the nicer ones. The poor waiters need to clean it up from the floor, and it gives a very dirty impression when you enter a restaurant. Even thought it was a common thing we had a hard time to get used to it, and kept throwing our trash in the bin instead of the floor...
Stomach bug hitting me...
Things don’t always go as you plan in Asia. The seafood we had the night before ended up making me really sick, so after a night of bad stomach we had to extend our hotel stay for another night. This time tho, compared to how we used to plan our trips previous years, we’d planned enough time for situations like this and although it sucked to just lay in bed and feel sick, it made it easier to know that we wouldn’t have to stress with the driving.
After a night with high fever and feeling really bad, my hopes that we would be able to continue our trip wasn’t high. But after some hours and some resting I still decided to try (one of the biggest problems is the lack of public toilets along the road in Vietnam, which is not a good combination with bad stomach).
Our next drive was from Kon Tum to a small town called Ea Drang (around 4 hours north from Dalat). The drive went surprisingly well, and we could check into a roadside hotel and sleep before continuing the drive southwards the next morning. It felt really cold in the highlands, so my thick fleece was barely enough to keep me warm during the drive. 18 degrees can feel warm in Scandinavia, however, after the 30 degrees weather in Bangkok it felt surprisingly chilly.
Todays hack: we have always been using Google translate live to translate menus (in rural Vietnam no one speaks English and all menus are in Vietnamese), but Sam realized that you can just take a photo of the menu and ask chatGPT to translate AND explain the menu which makes it a lot easier to understand what the dishes are. With Google translate the translations are often very weird, “stomach pot fish-egg stew” or something similar.
Another key take away is to always bring hand sanitizer when traveling in rural Vietnam. When you do find a toilet, there is almost never soap to wash your hands with. After getting stomach sick we bought a bottle of hand sanitizer, which maybe would have saved me lots of suffering if we’d had it earlier this trip.
A quiet Christmas Eve in the Vietnamese countryside
Christmas Eve! It always feels strange to wake up in Asia in a very non-Christmasy environment. I never really have the feeling of Christmas Eve here, and at the same time I’m happy to be here and not at home in the cold and dark.
What I’d had in mind for Christmas Eve didn’t happen tho. Every Christmas that we’ve celebrated in Asia, we’ve been out having a nice dinner, drinks and dressed up. It always makes it feel a bit festive despite not having the white Christmas.
This time we were quite behind schedule since I got sick. So we ended up spending Christmas Eve in a small town by lake Lak half way towards Dalat. I felt a bit worse again so the fancy Christmas dinner i had had in mind ended up being just rice in an empty local restaurant. And instead of dressing up I’d bought a very ugly second hand jacket on the road since it was so cold.
It definitely wasn’t one of the best Christmas Eves I’ve had, but I guess it could have been worse.
Reaching Dalat
We woke up early and started our drive towards Dalat. It was super windy and Sam had to hold tight to the bike, but the road got a lot nicer to drive on. Most of the way we’d been driving on big countryside roads and there had been lots of trucks and minivans passing by all the time. Most of them have super loud horns and kept honking all the time, so it was both loud and scary when they overtook us. When we got closer to Dalat, the roads became smaller and in better condition. That made us feel a bit more relieved as we were entering the mountain areas with more steep and challenging roads in general.
The night before we’d spoken to a tour guide in the hotel we stayed at, who told us that the maximum speed for any motorbikes in Vietnam is 60 km/h. That explained why we thought everyone drove so slowly even on the big roads. We also realized our speed meeter showed the wrong speed, when we were driving 60 km/h it showed just 45km/h. Now we had to adjust and keep a lower speed, which I was also quite pleased about. I always feel a bit anxious driving a small scooter on hectic busy roads here.
The road to Dalat was really stunning. Everywhere the sceneries were beautiful. The higher up in the mountains we got the colder it got, and I was happy for my jacket.
We found a hotel that was very cheap and great location (Homeland hotel), around 10 dollars per night. The bed was rock hard tho, but that’s quite common all over Asia.
We stayed two nights in Dalat to have enough time to drive around and explore both the city and the surroundings. The city itself was quite touristy, and most of the sightseeing around as well ( there are lots of “Instagram parks” and similar cafes and parks meant only for photos).
The highlight was to visit the coffee farms. Most of Vietnams coffee production happens in this region, and wherever we drove we saw coffee plantations and coffee farms. The first coffee farm was called Midori, managed by a group of young people who were passionate about producing organic coffee. They also had a home stay and meditation courses, and the place itself was really relaxing and calm with nice views.
We also did a coffee workshop at another coffee farm, where the owner did a class teaching us all that there is to know about coffee, and how he produces his high quality coffee. I’ve been drinking coffee every day of my grown up life, but I never knew there were so many different coffee beans and so much to learn about the farming and the production.
Heading towards sunnier and warmer places...
After two days in Dalat it was finally time to head towards the coast. We’d planned to stay a week in Mui Ne, a beach time known for lots of beach sports like kitesurfing and windsurfing which we intended to try.
We drove the slightly longer route along the east coast, but it was worth it - the views were stunning and the road very good.
I was quite shocked by all the trash tho. Not only along most of the road but also along all the beaches. It was on another level than what I’d seen in India, or anywhere else in the world actually. The amount of plastic waste was unimaginable for someone like me coming from Scandinavia and used to never see even a cigarette thrown in the nature.
That first impression kind of destroyed my first day at the coast. I was just so disappointed at humanity, the beaches that otherwise could have been beautiful but now looked like a waste yard and at the Vietnamese government for not addressing the issue.
After the first day I could kind of get over the disappointment and try to ignore most of the trash, to still be able to enjoy my time. We stayed the first two nights at a nice beach bungalow for around 30 dollars a night, right by the beach (where you couldn’t swim, besides all the trash it was also high tide most of the time, but there was a pool), and next to the iHome backpackers hostel where it was lively and we could have some drinks.
We still did our best to find some really nice Vietnamese food, but without success. Most dishes still tasted too oily and tasteless. The breakfasts were impressing me tho. We found a smoothie bowl place called May Bowl that served the best smoothie bowls I ever had for just 80,000 vnd = 3,5 dollars. And the coffee I still enjoyed a lot. Not everything was tasteless.
Trying out kitesurfing was Sam’s idea, who usually requires a bit more action than I do during our vacations. I’d never been standing on any board before (not even snowboarding), so for me this was all knew and a bit scary, while for Sam who’d done surfing before, it was nothing that new.
After doing a basic two hour introduction session at the Vietnamese Kiteboarding School (one of the many kiteboarding schools in Mui Ne, that we decided to go for), I quickly realized that this wasn’t gonna be easy. We spent one week in Mui Ne and after 6 hours of training with an instructor I couldn’t even stand on the board. For me this course made me more of a “kite-flyer” rather than a kitesurfer. I had a hard time to get over my frustration of not succeeding, but also ended up feeling proud of myself for at least trying and accepted that learning a sport like this takes a lot of patience.
Besides kitesurfing in Mui Ne, we spent a lot of time on the beach, watching beautiful sunsets from cute beach bars, exploring the surrounding fishing villages and sand dunes. Sadly most of the more local beaches outside of the touristy areas were very trashy, so we were quite forced to (unlike we usually do when we travel) stay in the most touristy areas.
I also learnt to drive a scooter for the first time in my life, and one morning we just roamed around Mui Ne where the traffic was more calm and I could practice driving in my own pace.
During New Year’s Eve, Sam was quite sick with a flu, so we took it easy. We had a nice dinner in Pitstop food court, one of the several trendy food courts around Mui Ne. This one has nice sea views, a DJ, lots of lively vibes and a wide selection of food. I gave the local Dalat wine another chance (it’s so cheap), but realized it’s really not for me; sour and flavorless.
Overall Mui Ne was a nice place to spend a week in, we met several digital nomads who lived there long term, so it would probably be easy to find your community and spend some time there. However, as a tourist I’d always prefer the Thai islands over the Vietnamese south coast.
After Mui Ne it was time for us to continue to our last stop on this trip: Ho Chi Minh City, where we’d sell our bike and I was gonna continue to Cambodia.
We decided to drive along the coast instead of the shortest route to Ho Chi Minh City, and stopped one night in a small town called Phước Hải. Here we tried some new street food, but once again nothing impressed us. I had some very oily fried tofu, and Sam a few meat dishes. It was nice to experience the local night life tho and sit on the streets watching all the life going on.
The next day we’d originally planned to pass by the Mekong Delta and stay there one night, but Sam had passed on his flu to me and I started feeling quite sick. So we decided to head straight to Ho Chi Minh, which meant two car ferries and a couple of hour drive. While getting closer to the city, the traffic intensified and turned into something we’d never experienced before. Vietnam is in general known for having more motorbikes than cars on the roads, but this was still far beyond what I had imagined. The scooters literally took over the roads, and the traffic was insanely intense - I was relieved that Sam was the one driving and not me. I’d just learnt the basics of how to drive a scooter, but couldn’t even have survived 2 minutes on these streets.
We eventually made it to our hotel, a cute boutique newly renovated place called Justay Pink Church. There we parked the scooter in their garage and decided to leave it there for the rest of our stay. Taking Grab taxi was more relaxing and still very cheap, so we had no need of using the bike anymore.
We spent 3 days in Ho Chi Minh, before I had to take a bus across the border to Phnom Penh to start work. Sadly I was quite sick so we ended up taking it easy and spent quite a lot of time in the hotel room.
However, we had some good highlights:
The social club rooftop bar: here we had a few happy hour cocktails (50% off between 3-7 pm), and a swim with a great view (despite the heavy smog)
The Nam Vegetarian bistro: after having so much bad food especially for me as a vegetarian, I was super happy to find this little hidden gem. It’s both cozy, nice to eat in and the vegetarian food they serve is top class. I never knew that there were so many mushrooms that could be cooked in so many different shapes and ways but this place definitely opened my eyes for mushrooms. Even Sam, a typical meat eater, said he wanted to come back.
The rooftop bar called Blank Lounge in the Landmark 81 tower, on the 76 floor. The building itself is the highest one in the country (above 400 meters high), and also higher than any building in Bangkok (even 100 meters higher than Mahanakhon). You can visit a sky deck on the 81st floor if you buy a ticket, but we felt like it was more worth it to pay 8 dollars for a drink in the bar instead. The view was really cool but once again the smog and heavy pollution made the views less spectacular.
All the street food: it’s everywhere in this city. There are several markets that are nice to visit too, we visited the Chợ Tân Định market where they sell lots of interesting snacks and cheap clothes and garments.
The biggest downsides in Ho Chi Minh were definitely the intense air pollution and the heavy traffic. We’ve been spending lots of time in India and other Asian countries, but still nothing was comparable to the motorbike traffic in this city. It felt like the motorbike mafia: the bike drivers did whatever they wanted to, they had no rules and would simply just drive on the pedestrian roads (that were already super narrow). While walking on the streets you had to constantly watch out not to have a bike driving over your feet. The drivers would have no shame and almost hit you because they’d drive so close to you when you’d try to cross the road. Crossing the roads felt like a death mission each time…
The air pollution was also quite bad. We basically didn’t see the sun, it was this grayish layer over the whole city. From the rooftop bars the view was limited due to the heavy smog. And inhaling the air outdoors definitely came with health consequences. We only spent 3 days in this city, but I felt bad for all the kids growing up in the middle of the city center and spending lots of their childhood outdoors without proper face masks. During the time we were in HCMC the PM2.5 index number was almost 200 which means that all outdoor time should be limited.
Still, it was an interesting time to spend in HCMC and also interesting to see the differences between this city and Bangkok where we’d lived two years.
The last day of my time in Vietnam, I departed a bus to Phnom Penh where eventually I ended up being the only passenger the whole 7 hour bus ride. It felt really strange sitting all alone in a big bus.
In Cambodia two months of work for WaterAid in Phnom Penh waited for me, and I felt bitter sweet about leaving Vietnam. This country had disappointed me in many ways, but also surprised me and even though I wouldn’t necessarily want to come back, I would miss the kindhearted and friendly people, the complete chaos on the roads and the beautiful rice fields.
And I’d definitely miss driving around in a pikatchu helmet on our red “Elisabeth” scooter.
