About a 6 hour ride past the Hanoi airport north on Route 3, and north of Thai Nguyen, you’ll pass through some areas of terraced rice farming that are a harbinger of the stunning mountainous scenery to come. From the…
The town of Dien Bien Phu itself is just a wide avenue lined with Soviet-era construction. There are a few decent hotels, but mainstream tourism is far from overrunning Dien Bien, a town whose greatest moment in history was, in…
Son La is a small city set in a narrow valley at the foot of low hills. A short walk up to the town’s famous hilltop prison or to one of the viewpoints in the hills above gives you a…
Mai Chau makes a good overnight after the shakedown cruise from Hanoi (about a 5-hr. ride). The town center is a rather dull strip of small shops and a few pho and com stands (noodle soup or rice), but there…
Tired of tourist trails? Here’s a great opportunity to get off the track and into rugged terrain that is little affected by tourism or the world economy. In an area along the border of China and Laos, rugged roads traverse…
Cat Ba Island I first time came to Cat Ba in 1998 on an overnight tour by boat from Halong city. At the time, the little bay of Cat Ba was choked with beat-up old fishing junks, and the quiet…
The light playing on the arching rock formations of Halong Bay is never the same, painting rich colors on a stunning landscape, and the bay attracts many artists and photographers. A Vietnamese fable says that the towering limestone-karsts rock formations…
With its wide avenues and grand parks lined with colonnaded buildings of a yellowed, aging stucco, Haiphong is like a smaller, more manageable version of Hanoi. You won’t find jaw-dropping sights, but the town is worth a wander and not…
Sapa is a small market town that has been a gathering spot for many local hilltribes for nearly 200 years. Hmong and Dao people, among others, still come here to conduct trade, socialize, and attend an ephemeral “love market, ”…
Religion in Vietnam influences every aspect of daily living but is loosely practiced at a temple. Over 75% of Vietnamese follow a mix of Confucianism and its tenets of ancestor worship, as well as Buddhism and Daoism. Buddhism came to…