After living amazing experiences in North Vietnam (here, if you missed it), enjoying slow travelling in Central Vietnam (article available here), it is time for the last part of our Vietnamese adventures: let’s head to South Vietnam. Time to bring back our customized map, to introduce you to the three cities that we’ve visited:

• Nha Trang, the beach city
• Dalat, the mountain attraction
• Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon, the lively

Nha Trang, the beach city

When you search about Nha Trang, the first description that pops up is “coastal resort city“. It is all in all everything there is to know about Nha Trang. That was just about fine for us, as our main purpose for coming here was to meet Alexandre. 5 years ago, Alexandre and I were graduating from the same business school; now, he lives in Ho Chi Minh City with his beautiful and witty Vietnamese wife, Tran. While Dimitri and I have moved to Germany and are currently spending our savings in touring Asia. Funny how time flies!

Nha Trang caters to two types of tourists: Vietnamese tourists here for the weekend, and Russian and Chinese tourists looking for summer vibes. So much that all restaurants, spa and other shops have menus written in Vietnamese, Russian and Mandarin. The white sand of the Greek beaches might not be as welcoming to these populations as before… We also spotted one South Korean restaurant, where all was written in Korean, with Korean staff and Korean customers – in case they ever feel lost in this foreign land?

Why meeting up in Nha Trang, then? Well – to pretend being rich! The city was planned to be the major coastal vacation location for Ho Chi Minh City inhabitants; the hype did not happen, though, as the 8-hour trip from the Southern capital city is quite deterring for a weekend stay. This means that the many, many luxurious coastal resorts offer suites at unbeatable prices. To give you an idea, we booked a 3-person suite in a 4* hotel in front of the beach… for 8€ per person per night.

When our bus reached Nha Trang in the early morning, we were astonished to see the beach and sea packed with Vietnamese tourists and locals at 5am. Come back at 10am, and you are alone on the sand – along a few Westerners. Alexandre explained us that we just had to wait for the sunset, to see them back. Are the Vietnamese secretly vampires? If only!… They just understood the strength of the opponent they had to deal with. Confident in my 50+ sunscream protection, we bathed at 11am – great mistake, as 1 hour was plenty enough for Alexandre and me to turn badly sunburnt. I understand now why 50+ is the smallest protection index you can find in Vietnam, where 80 or 110 SPF suncreams are common sights. Out of curiosity (and pain), we checked the UV index for Nha Trang: 12 out of 12 on a sunny day. We learnt the hard way to go with the local custom of morning and evening baths!

Beside catching up on life, meeting Alexandre meant a crash course in Vietnamese culture. And what better way than with food? Here goes on our culinary journey across Vietnam. We kicked it off with fried chicken at 9am on the first day; followed by sea food feasts with clams, shells, snails and their friends. To say that the food was fresh is an euphemism, as a fish litterally tried to escape at our feet.

We also discovered that the French left a bit more than a few buildings in the country… From the praised Bahn Mi sandwich (from “pain de mie”), to the ca phe (easy one!) and pho mat (fromage), the Vietnamese have integrated several French concepts and translated them into the local phonetics. A great article on the Saigoneer compiles them. Guess how we say “bra” in Vietnamese? Su chien, as soutien(-gorge)!

As some people have to work, Alexandre went back to Ho Chi Minh City, bravely showing up for his team despite too limited hours of sleep and a bus round-trip of 16 hours. Upon his advice, we booked a bus to Dalat with Futa, the best South Vietnamese bus company one can find – impeccable bus state, hotel drop off included in the price ticket, great service and helpful employees. I am quite proud to note that, at this point of our trip, we have become proficient at hands-and-gesture English (such as an employee shooting at us “Follow”, pointing at another passager, who we dutily followed).

Dalat, the mountain attraction

Chances are that you have already had holidays in Vietnam, and still have never heard about Dalat. Dalat is a mountain town, which was nicknamed the City of Eternal Spring thanks to its all-year round temperate climate. This is a rarity in South-East Asia, and I felt as if reborn with its delicious maximum temperature at 25°C. Don’t misunderstand me: I am super happy to discover Asia and South-East Asia, but I am definitively a cold-weather person. You will hardly see me complaining about Hamburg’s weather (which I so deerly miss), and I have still not gotten used to sweating all day and night. Forget the “hot girl summer” with me: I am a hot mess 100% of the time here. The landscapes, the food, the discovery and the people are worth it – I’ll eventually get used to it, at some point, I hope?…

Anyway, back to Dalat, after this glamorous digression. We loved Dalat from the start. The colorful houses, the up-and-down streets climbed by motorbikes, the kindness of its inhabitants. Dalat is a popular tourist location for the Vietnamese, not so much with international travellers, who lack the time to visit the inner country. Like in South India, people were welcoming us with big smiles, both sides using Google Translate to communicate. We discovered here the local rice paper pizza, cooked on a grill by a busy grandma. Perfect when paired with a deep red soda (closer to a biochemical weapon that anything else). We also saw a quite telling example of the love of the Vietnamese for their dogs, with a dog with died hair and nail polish. Fancy!

Life is nice in Dalat, and the tourism companies know it. Every remotely picturesque place has been transformed into Instagram spots; buses and buses full of tourists come to the night market; more and more locations are opening, specialized in providing Instagram content. I searched for something authentic on Google Maps – no luck. With limited hopes, we rented an automatic motorbike to go check the Florest, a flower park some kilometers away from Dalat. Little did we know that we would end up along forest tracks, crossing rivers and open fields for what felt hours.

As your forever driver (RIP Dimitri’s driver licenses, lost in India), I summoned all my concentration and determination to reach our target… before falling into the mud at 2km/h, a few meters only from the Florest entrance. No harm done, but here was I, completely covered in mud, Dimitri only slightly splashed. Fair enough, he advised me to go a different way, while mine led us to our doom. That’s when that came into play the best office center manager in the world – without a word, the Florest staff gave us their water hose, brought our scooter to us while we were cleaning ourselves, started cleaning it up with brushes, went back to bring us towels and even offered me a sweater (that I kindly refused). While taking care of welcoming new guests. The Florest is a nice open air garden, that we will likely not remember – but their manager!…

Once we had recovered from the thrill, we went to get blessings from a gigantic Lady Buddha, looking over passers-by with her serene smile. Buddhists believed that everyone could achieve enlightment – so why not women? I love Buddhists. We hardly could find any information about her online, so I’ll let you appreciate her beauty without further ado.

Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon, the lively

After two days only in Dalat, time to hit the road again – to Ho Chi Minh City, alias Saigon! Formerly capital of South Vietnam, Saigon was renamed into Ho Chi Minh City, following the victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam. Little be said that none of the people living in the South that we met referred to the massive city with its new name, sticking to Saigon. As far as we were told, one could still find strong cultural divide between North and South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese reknown for being more traditional, compared to the South, more international and open-minded.

Our Saigon visit was top-notch, custom-made by Alexandre and Tran, who both knew all the local gems where we could feast for a penny. To quote Alexandre, Saigon is not a city that you visit, it is a “city where you live“. The French that I met at the local alumni party could not agree more – most of them arrived at random 10+ years ago, and never left. Important to note as well that you can make yourself a very comfortable living, when you are a foreigner… (Not the case in Germany – sick)

Our programme for this crazy weekend, with Alexandre, his wife Tran and their friend Guillaume:

• Food, food, food: French breakfast (with real baguette! and butter!!!), a lot of sea food, the best Pho of our lives, and more deliciousness (including more dried mango – thank you, Tran!)
• Visit of the City Palace, so that we could say that we visited something (we skipped the infamous War Remnants Museum: we did not have the heart to see what atrocities humans were capable of, especially following the results of the European elections where the far-right won a fair share of the seats)
• Karaokeeeeee (in a fa-bu-lous setting) 🧑‍🎤
• Korean spa, that we left relaxed to the core (despite the “fish massage” – first time in our lives, will never do it again, thank you)
• Motorbike tours – me with Tran on her automatic motorbike 🛵, Dimi with Alex on his moto 🏍️

Warm thank you from the bottom of our hearts to Alexandre and Tran, for these memorable times! You concluded in apotheosis our time in Vietnam. We will see you in cold, rainy Germany. ♥️

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Honestly, do I need to write a wrap up about our month in Vietnam? We absolutely enjoyed our time in the Red Country. It is small enough not to feel rushed when visiting it in one month, and diverse enough to discover new wonders in each region. It is hard to match India when it comes to monuments, but that’s alright – both are winners when it comes to food. We were also surprised about how cheap everything was, as we paid way less than in India and in Nepal, with better accommodation standards. We will remember you fondly, Vietnam!

Stick with us for our next stop: Cambodia, Vietnam’s tormented neighbor.