In 1802 when the first emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty established control over all of Vietnam, Huế became the seat of power and the capital of the nation. It remained so until 1945 when the last emperor abdicated and the capital moved north to Hanoi.

Even though much of the city was damaged or destroyed during the Tet Offensive of the American/Vietnam war, Huế’s dynastic past comes alive with a visit to the vast 19th century Citadel. This enormous complex surrounded by a moat and fortified stone walls includes the Imperial City, numerous gardens, and the Forbidden Purple City.

Outside the city, we toured the tomb of Minh Mang, the second emperor of the dynasty. When we say tomb, we really mean giant complex with numerous temples, buildings, and gardens in addition to the actual tomb.

We also visited the Pagoda of the Celestial Lady, another remnant of the Nguyen Dynasty. In addition to its beautiful grounds, bonsai trees, and rock gardens, this temple also houses the car which drove the Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức to his self-immolation in Saigon in 1963 to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government.

A relic of more recent times, we scootered to an abandoned water park just outside the city. Previously an off-the-beaten-path backpacker hangout spot, this park is now a popular place for tourists to experience an eerie glimpse of a world being reclaimed by nature and for locals to make a buck off all the hype. The park’s centerpiece is a giant dragon, but you can also find old slides, statues, and - if you believe the rumors - the occasional crocodile.

The food throughout Vietnam differs as you travel north to south, and Huế had several unique dishes to try, plus one new Vietnamese beer! While most of the beer in Vietnam comes from either Hanoi or Saigon, Huda is brewed right in Huế and fits right in with the other light (flavorless) Asian beers. To go along with our new beer, we also tried:

• Bún bò Huế: Although we have had bún bò before, the noodle soup from Huế has slightly different ingredients and is spicier than its counterparts. In addition to beef, oxtail, or pork knuckle, this soup sometimes include cubes of congealed pig blood. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds, and it really just looks (and tastes) like very firm brown tofu.
• Bánh bèo: Rice cakes served in small dishes and topped with ingredients like shrimp, scallions, mung bean paste, and fried shallots with a bit of a fish sauce mixture put on top. Small and tasty, these make a perfect appetizer or snack any time of day!
• Nem lụi: These are sausages skewered onto lemongrass, grilled, and then served with herbs, cucumbers, pickled veggies, chili paste, and a delicious sauce that you roll up into rice paper. Eat, enjoy, and be happily messy.

To continue our outdoor activities, we headed south from Cát Bà to see the limestone peaks rising out of lush rice paddies in Tam Coc and to explore some of the giant caves in Phong Nha.

Tam Coc & Ninh Binh

Tam Coc is supposed to be a beautiful sea of lush green rice paddies with stunning limestone peaks shooting vertically skyward - that is, if you don’t visit during winter. When we arrived, the paddies were still mud pastures just starting to turn green and the sky was a dreary gray. Regardless, the limestone peaks made for an impressive landscape not unlike that of Halong Bay. We explored the region by scooter, weaving through rice paddies and between small towns. That evening we found a small local brewery in Ninh Binh - not a bad way to end the day!

Travel tip: If you’re interested in visiting Vietnam but pressed for time, skip Tam Coc. Cát Bà and the Halong Bay area are more beautiful and have more activities to offer!

Phong Nha

We took a bus from Ninh Binh to Dong Hoi where we were supposed to connect with a local bus out to Phong Nha. As the travel gods would have it, our bus arrived in Dong Hoi after the last bus left so we followed some fellow travelers to a hostel and crashed for the night before catching another bus in the morning. Hooray for flexible travel plans!

Phong Nha is a small town along the western border of Vietnam near Laos. The Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park is home to over 300 caves and grottoes, including the largest cave in the world (Sơn Đoòng Cave) and the longest underground river. Our first foray into the park was via boat along the Son River to visit Phong Nha Cave. The boat ride is about thirty minutes from town and then travels about 1.5 kilometers into the cave, which is basically nothing considering the cave is 44.5 kilometers long! Due to its massive size, this cave was also used as a hideout, hospital, and for storage during the Vietnam War.

Our second day in Phong Nha, we rented a scooter to explore more of the national park and visit Paradise Cave. First discovered in 2005 and opened to the public in 2010, the cave is considered the longest dry cave in Asia and named so because of its beautiful interior. It is MASSIVE inside and contains spectacularly colored stalagmites and stalactites. This was easily the most impressive cave we have ever seen, plus it was fun to do some actual hiking through the cave and the surrounding park. But don’t worry: we stuck to the trails since the park has one of the highest concentrations of unexploded ordinances in the world, particularly on its border with Laos.

After Paradise Cave, we took the long way home with a drive through the mountainous jungle roads. This area was one of the most beautiful places we visited in all of Vietnam.

We used Hanoi as a springboard for a few excursions before leaving northern Vietnam. Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve we headed north for a three day trek in Sa Pa, and after the holidays we went east to Cát Bà Island so we could see the famous Halong Bay.

Trekking in Sa Pa

Part of the package we booked for Sa Pa included a super nice overnight train ride. Unfortunately, going to sleep right after boarding and being woken up at 5 am made the train not that exciting. Coming from temperate Hanoi, we were surprised that nobody mentioned just how cold, rainy, and muddy Sa Pa would be. Thankfully, we brought our full packs with all the weather gear we needed. Several other people in our group came with nothing more than shorts, flip flops, and t-shirts so they had to walk into town to purchase brand new boots, socks, pants, coats, and hats. Luckily for them, it was crazy cheap to buy North Face knockoffs.

We started our trek through the region by hiking down a muddy mountain between rice paddies. Before long, everyone’s butt was covered in mud after many falls. Several local women followed our group, offering help down the slopes while only wearing simple rubber boots on their feet, making us feel pretty pathetic in our high tech gear. Some even carried children in baskets on their back! We quickly learned that these women were working for tips and anyone who used their help was more or less required to buy souvenirs from them at the break points.

All the guides we met along the hike could weave crowns, bracelets, and more from the grasses and leaves along the trail. Our guide taught Vesper how to make a horse. He was very proud of his creation.

In order to see how the local ethnic groups live, our guide took us through several villages that dot the countryside. We saw gardens and livestock, learned how to make spring rolls, and watched kids playing with makeshift toys. We also learned how local textiles are woven and dyed and saw a working water-powered rice flour mill.

The last day of our hike, we stopped at a beautiful waterfall before heading back to catch the train to Hanoi. Despite the cold weather, some hikers even jumped in for a quick swim! We were not that brave.

The island of Cát Bà

Many visitors to northern Vietnam opt to do a cruise through the iconic Halong Bay, but we followed the advice of friends and went directly to Cát Bà. The Halong area is more about resorts and cruises, while Cát Bà is more for budget-minded backpackers. From here, we were still able to do a full day boat cruise exploring Halong Bay and Lan Ha Bay where we kayaked through small caves and limestone isles, visited fish farms, and ate some delicious local seafood for lunch.

We also explored the island by scooter, visited an old cannon fort, hiked through the national park, and spent a little R&R on some of the island’s beaches. The town of Cát Bà is nothing to write home about, but the scenery of the island and surrounding bays is a unique and beautiful landscape to explore.

We arrived in Hanoi on December 23 to find the Old Quarter abuzz with people and decorations for the holidays. The energy was contagious, and we were excited to be in a new country and ready to try all the new things! New food, new sights, and a new language all waiting to be discovered.

We started off our explorations of the city with several museums and cultural landmarks. The Vietnam Military History Museum had old aircraft, bombs, and other paraphernalia from the Indochina Wars and throughout the rest of Vietnam’s history. We also visited the Hỏa Lò Prison, sarcastically called the “Hanoi Hilton” by American POWs from the Vietnam War. Most of the prison has been demolished, but the part remaining documents both the French use of torture on Vietnamese political prisoners in the first half of the 1900s as well as the Vietnamese detention of American POWs during the 1960s. The most interesting aspect was that they held nothing back documenting the French atrocities to Vietnamese prisoners, but emphasized how well the Vietnamese treated American POWs. Although American POWs have documented the torture and poor living conditions there, the museum only showed positive and humane treatment: prisoners playing basketball and volleyball, having Christmas feasts, etc. - living situations so nice that it was like being in a hotel!

While in town, we also saw the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the One Pillar Pagoda before heading to the Temple of Literature. Built in 1074 as a temple to Confucius, it also houses the country’s first national university. It’s a beautiful and peaceful place to wander around and learn a bit about the Vietnamese education system.

Apart from the cultural sights, our favorite part of Hanoi was the food. It was DELICIOUS! Since we were spending Christmas away from home, we signed up for a food tour on Christmas Day to meet up with other travelers and learn more about Vietnamese cuisine. It was an awesome way to learn how to eat certain foods and what the Vietnamese words are for things like beef, chicken, grilled, noodles, etc. Foods we ate included:

Side note: Vietnamese is a super hard language to speak! Despite us now knowing how to read a lot of different words, people stare at us blankly when we try and order in Vietnamese because a minor change in tone means we have said something completely different. There are six tones in northern Vietnamese, and they can entirely change the word. For example, the word “ma” can mean six different things depending on how you pronounce it: ma = ghost, mà = but, má = cheek or mother, mả = tomb or grave, mã = horse or code, mạ = rice seedling. Our untrained ears can barely hear the difference between these.

We ended up in Hanoi for New Year’s Eve, and our hostel had a huge (free!) hot pot dinner to celebrate. Hanoi also introduced us to bia hơi or “fresh beer.” This ultra light beer is brewed daily and is dirt cheap - about 25 cents a glass! There was even a “Beer Corner” near our hostel, which was packed with visitors perched on tiny plastic stools drinking this beer while music blasted from the stages set up for the holidays. It was a pretty great way to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve!

We spent two weeks traveling through Laos on our way from Thailand to Vietnam. Laos has beautiful countryside and friendly people, but don’t go too far off the beaten path: “Laos has the distinction of being the world’s most heavily bombed nation”, and people still die every year from finding unexploded ordnance.

Our first stop was the border city of Huay Xai, where we spent the night before boarding our slow boat. The slow boat is an inexpensive and popular two day float down the Mekong River, taking passengers from the Thai border to Luang Probang. The boats were three rows across of car seats - think the back row of your mom’s minivan - and not much else. What the slow boat lacked in comfort, it made up for in views of the river and the surrounding countryside. You can bring your own food, a book, and, if you plan ahead, a cooler full of beer.

Luang Probang is the most popular destination is Loas and seems surprisingly untouched by modern tourism. The entire area is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, helping it to maintain the charming traditional and French colonial architecture. The city center contains several wats, a shrine on a hill with views of the Mekong, a night market, and plenty of nightlife for tourists.

The surrounding area has several more attractions, including Kuang Si Falls and its bear rescue center. We also hiked to a hidden spring area with a rope swing, a small bar, and a cave full of Buddha statues.

After Luang Prabang, we made our way to Vang Vieng. While the countryside was gorgeous, everything else in town was focused on partying. The number one activity is drunk river tubing, and hostels and bars hand out free shots (and sometimes bottles!) of “lao-lao” (rice whiskey) or laughing gas balloons. Some restaurants even have pot, shrooms, and opium listed on their “happy menus,” served à la carte or baked into your food. This scene was too intense for more than a couple days, so we moved outside of town where we found some hiking, caves, and a hot air balloon ride - an early Christmas present to ourselves!

Our final stop in Laos was an overnight in the capital city of Vientiane before catching a flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. Overall we were a bit underwhelmed by Laos: we found it to be more expensive and lower quality than Thailand, the food was a bit bland, and everyone seemed to go to the same four or five places. We’re glad we went since we were in the region, but it’s a country we probably wouldn’t have gone out of our way to visit otherwise.