From Hue South to Da Nang and Hoi An

Your tour bus will take you or you can purchase bus tickets at travel outlets near the DMA Café in Hue. The drive south, which will take no more than four hours, will take you past Phu Bai (12 miles south of Hue) where the nice smaller Hue Airport is located. It was here in 1967 the 3^rd Marine Division was headquartered and when it moved north to Quang Tri in March of 1968 the Army’s 101^st Airborne Division moved into the area. Today it is a growing industrial area. Proceeding south, you’ll pass through villages with rice fields on both sides and mountains to the west. Eventually you will see a bay and then the South China Sea with an inlet or bay on the right. This area is good for photo stops—with the fishing villages, nets and boats all around. You then climb over Hai Van Pass with great photo ops to the north as you climb up and to the south as you drop down into Da Nang. At the top there are some tourist shops and places to buy a Coke. You need to walk to both sides and look at the views to the north and the south. When we ran convoys over this pass in 1967-68 we used to look at the views from the top and said that someday there would be resorts to the north and south along this beautiful coastline and we were right. You then drop down into Da Nang. We had a huge base here in the war and you can still see some of the cement bunkers at the airport we housed fighter planes and helicopters in to protect them from rocket attack. The only thing to enjoy in Da Nang is an hour’s visit to the Cham Dynasty Museum. It is nicely done and provides you with the story, history and artifacts from this important era in this country.

From Da Nang you head south on Hwy 1 past Marble Mountain (nothing to see except lots of stone carving shops and a temple on top you can hike up to) to the World Heritage Site of Hoi An, built by the Japanese more than 400 years ago. I love this quaint town, and it’s fun to walk around at night with the lanterns lighting the town up. The atmosphere at night is wonderful. You have plenty of restaurants, art shops, shops of all types. It has a special feeling to it. In the daytime you can buy a ticket and take a tour through five of the ancient homes and temples. One restaurant we like is called Brothers. Call for reservatipns and ask for a table on the river side of the patio. This town also has a nice public market you can walk through and feel the bustle and energy of it all. There are more and more nice four- and five-star hotels being built along this section of the coast. The one we like those is one called the Hoi An Beach Resort. It is smaller than the biggies and has nice grounds and two pools. It has unique setting in that it sits off the beach road with their section of the beach (lounge chairs, etc) on the other side of the small road. It also faces a river on the other side that has fishing boats put putting up and down the river and from which side you watch the sunsets. You have the best of both worlds. Ask for rooms on the side facing the river. Some nights, while having dinner on the terrace, they release paper lanterns with lit candles inside of them so they float pass you. It is beautiful and unique. They have local shops near this hotel you can have clothes made for small dollars. They have shuttle busses into town on schedule. Also fun to take pedicab ride back to hotel from town. They also have bikes you can check out for free (or a $1.00 a day) to explore the area. Ask at the front desk where to turn off the road to get through nearby fishing village to visit the End of the Earth Café. One tour most people take while in this area is out to My Song, one of the major Cham Dynasty ancient sites. Well worth your time. You need at least three-nights in this area to do it right.

Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta is a huge area – there are nine tributaries of the Mekong that work their way in and around the islands of the Delta on their way to the sea. You can take a day tour to the northern edge of the Mekong from Saigon. It takes a good six hours to do the tour. You follow Hwy 1 south from Saigon through the ever-increasing suburbs and through a growing number of villages springing up from the rice fields. You will also notice a number of factories. You come to a stop (toilets and snacks) and then you board boats that have canopies on them and seats for one or two people on eihter side of the main aisle and off you go.

You will enjoy slowly motoring through some of the myriad canals on various islands to get a feel of how people live on or near the water. Sometimes lunch is served in a little village on one of the islands. You also will enjoy time out in the open on one of the larger tributaries of the mighty Mekong. This will expose you larger boat traffic. The whole day provides an excellent feel for the rhythm of the Delta. 

On our tour, we do this excursion and then keep heading south to the capital of the Delta, Can Tho, which is a clean bustling city. You want to stay at the five-star Victoria Hotel. It is lovely setting on the river with nice pool and grounds. The hotel provides a boat shuttle at night into town, or you can take a taxi there, and explore Can Tho a bit in the evening. We normally stay two nights. The morning after we arrive we get up early and take boats to the middle of one of the largest floating markets in Asia. These are not just small boats with women selling produce to each other. These are like large wholesale boats that sell to smaller boats. It is a great photo op. There is another smaller floating market up the channel about 40 minutes. It is fun to stop at one of the local villages on the way back and walk through their markets before getting back on your boat and back to the hotel. The contrast between Sapa and Ha Long Bay in the north is so vastly different from the bustle of the Mekong.

If you do Vietnam, enjoy all the areas it has to offer.

Hello to Hue

Hue is a must-see city. You can make the trip via train, bus or by plane; I have done all three. My first year back to Vietnam I took my group southward for 2.5 days of driving to Hue on a 28-passenger bus. I warned them ahead of time that flying and the train were faster, but when I was there with the Marines in 1967-68 along the DMZ I told myself that someday I would be able to drive down Highway 1 from Hanoi all the way to the Mekong and this would be part of that journey. They agreed to the bumpy ride and off we went. We stayed in what we would call two-star hotels along the way. The bottom line is we saw so many things one does not see by plane or train and all had a blast. We laughed at things till we cried. The people we met never saw Americans and were curious and friendly. It was a great “people moment” journey.          

If you take a train there is one that leaves Hanoi around 8:30 or 9 p.m. You arrive in Hue around 7 or 8 a.m. The sleeper cars usually have seven compartments and each compartment has two upper and lower bunks with a little table and lamp to put your crackers and cheese on. There are usually basic toilets at each end of the car. If there are two of you, you might find yourself in a compartment with two other people. The mattress is covered and a blanket is furnished. Some bring a sack sheet or wear sweat clothes to bed. In the morning (an hour or so before you arrive in Hue), someone will come around and wake you up and maybe offer snacks, etc. Sometime a sleeping car might have one compartment that only sleeps two people. You would need to ask about this. It cost extra compared to a four people max compartment.

One year I had 28 people on my tour. I booked one rail car, seven compartments, four in each. The train pulls into Hanoi rail station and you normally have around eight minutes to rush to the train, find your rail car and hop on. They run on time. Well, a few minutes before the train pulled in our guide, who had been acting nervous, told me there had been a mistake in booking sleeping cars and our group was split between two cars, not all in one car as planned. Too late to make changes. The train came, we ran out to the cars and hopped on and then tried to find our car and compartment number. Turns out three beautiful ladies in our group wound up with an older Vietnamese man, who was waving goodbye to his wife and kid through the window. His eyes got huge when the three American ladies walked in. It was funny! His wife, on the platform, started laughing when she saw his compartment mates. Another couple wound up in a compartment with a young Vietnamese couple and their 2-year-old child. I was expecting all to be mad because our plan to be together on same car and in same compartments fell by the wayside. Turns out no one wanted to change compartments. They said to leave it all as is and it became a great experience. Everyone loved that ride.   

The plane is the fastest, of course. It is about a 1.5-hour flight at the most. You land 12 miles south of Hue at a town called Phu Bai. They have a nice newer airport. The drive up to Hue is on a nice four-lane road with lots of shops and homes lining both sides of the road into town.

Hue consists of two side divided by the Perfume River. The south side is the more modern and newer part of the city. The north side is made up of the famous Citadel. From the air, it looks like a huge shadow box with a huge thick tall wall around the outside and then smaller walls all around in the inside until you get inside of the smallest box and that where there Emperors in old day lived with their families. In the Vietnam War there was a huge battle here during TET (February 1968). More than 10,000 were killed in 30 days. As I was in the Marines stationed at Phu Bai (12 miles to the south) I was in and out of Hue during the battle. Not a fun time! It has been fun to return in recent years and see the rebirth of Hue. You can still see scars of war in the Citadel and some buildings were destroyed and gone forever but improvements are made year after year to this World Heritage must-see site. Best hotel to stay at is the Morin Hotel, an old classic French hotel. Nice size rooms. Lots of history shown in the pictures of events and happenings dating back to the early 1900s that adorn the walls. Not only is it across the street from the banks of the Perfume River (there’s a bridge that crosses over to the Citadel side with lights that change color at night and add to the ambience of it all), but it also has a very nice interior courtyard and garden when breakfast and dinners are done. The pool is there as well. Just around the corner on the back side is a newer 16-story hotel that has a great terrace bar you can visit and enjoy the 360-degree view with your favorite beverage.

In addition to taking a guided tour of the Citadel you also need to take a one-hour pedicab ride at night that takes you from hotel, across the river, around the Citadel area and back over to the new side of the city on another bridge and back to the hotel. Then the next day take another one-hour pedicab ride around the new side of this growing city. There is a large public market this is fun to explore located on the Citadel side. You will enjoy the site of all the women wearing their white blouses and pants and straw hats riding bikes. At night you can go out of the hotel and turn right and walk down to the center of town on the south side of the river to the DMZ Café. In the five-block area around this Café you will find lots of good restaurants of all types. If you want to book a full-day tour up to Dong Ha (40 miles to the North) to see the battle sites from Khe Sanh to Cau Viet and more, there are agencies you can sign up with. You should be able to do this via your hotel as well. Another thing you must do is take a half-day, so-called large boat trip up the Perfume River. You make stops at a couple of temples along the ways. You also visit one of the tombs of past leaders. Tombs are huge acres of land surrounded by walls with many buildings, gardens and even lakes in some of them. There are many such tombs surrounding Hue you can hire a taxi driver to take you to. You need three nights in Hue to do it right (arrival day plus two full days to explore and or relax). Lots of shopping in Hue as well.

Ha Long Bay Adventure

About a nice four-hour drive through the busy countryside to the West/Southwest past Haiphong you arrive at the World Heritage Site of Ha Long Bay. On the way you usually stop at a nice large store with handicrafts of all types. They have painting, jewelry, pottery, etc. The main port town sits in the middle of the more than 100 mile stretch of coastline that has countless unique sandstone monolithic rocks and little islands that rise from the sea. In some areas, these rocks appear inland a bit as well. Yes, there are hotels in the area but the best way to enjoy this area is to take a 24-hour overnight cruise. In recent years the fleet of junk-type boats for charter has increased along with the growth and demand of tourists. You can sign up for one of these at any travel agency in Hanoi (or maybe through the front desk of your hotel). They have boats that carry six to 30 people. The private cabins/bathrooms are bigger than one would think and are clean. The ships have upper decks and deck chairs to sit and enjoy the spectacular scenery as you move along. The food is excellent and plentiful. You usually stop at a couple of islands, and you have the chance to walk up to visit observation posts or temple caves. You will pass fishing villages built on the water. You usually anchor in a small bay along with other similar boats. It is a colorful setting. Most times you board small boats in the morning and paddle through a cave on an island to an inland waterway. On your way back to the place you started from the day before you will be fed a lunch. You debark a little after noon and then bus back to Hanoi for at least one night at a hotel (unless you are taking a night train or flight to another place).

Prepping for Zambia (or anywhere else, really)

I'm excited about escorting my first trip to Africa (with Lenora's expert help, of course!). I wasn't so excited, however, to realize that my immunizations were out of date and needed to be updated. So, braving today's 105-degree heat (crazy hot for Portland), I ventured to my local travel immunization clinic for updates.

We're frequently asked about what shots and medicines people need to go to various far-flung locations around the world. Our recommendation -- talk to your doctor, check the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website, the US State Department website, and your local travel clinic. There's lots of great information, and it's very helpful to have a professional to talk to.

Believe me, having just survived six shots (see, I told you I was out of date!), it feels good to know you've received excellent medication preparation before your trip. Now I can focus on the fun stuff -- like making sure I have a good camera lens and maybe getting a Kindle so I don't have to pack multiple books in my safari bag. 

And don't forget to get trip insurance. Always a good idea ... because you just never know.