My parents usually buy a travel book or borrow one from the library, but I typically read up on Reddit and Google. While Google is all ‘pristine white beaches’, Reddit had me kinda pessimistic about going to Vietnam. Beaches were supposed be littered in plastic, some villages full of Korean or Russian tourists, and traffic would be chaos and cities full of pollution. Bus rides are hell, ice cubes in drinks will make you sick. Watch out when carrying a bag or your phone as it’ll be stolen. Take a taxi or actually, buy anything, and you’ll be scammed.
But every medium has its up and downsides. Google’s top-ranking search results are all SEO-blabla, but they do give you good pointers to continue searching. My mom and dad’s paper books are outdated and don’t take you off-the-beaten-path, nor tell you how to use modern apps such as Grab, but they provide a more curated list of options than anything else. And Reddit, especially r/vietnam, is full of loud whiners, but there’s still plenty of great advice in the comments.
The truth is somewhere in the middle of all of these. The only thing that actually changed our travel plan was the AQI score (Air Quality Index) of Hanoi. We went to the south instead, going to Ho Chi Minh, Vung Tau, Phan Thiet, and Mui Ne.
And like every trip I’ve made in Southeast Asia (India, Thailand, Cambodia) so far, our two weeks started with being intimated by the new country. Afraid to have any drink with ice, constantly watching my bag, and afraid to eat in any place except restaurants with a thousand ratings on Google Maps. Then slowly you loosen up, and you’re actually fine with booking tickets for long bus drives, and even start haggling over the price. After two weeks you’re comfortable and quick to navigate through the country.
Of course, you don’t fully learn about a country this way — you only learn how to travel it, and maybe how to appreciate it.
We spent our last day in the country in Ho Chi Minh, with celebrations ongoing for the Lunar Year (Tết). On a huge square, a lady stands singing a song, and it mixes everything I’ve seen. The thousands of scooters, the noise, the trash, the nature and the sea. The kind people and the scars of the Vietnam history. The food, the traditional clothes, and the architecture in the city they even now, call Saigon. And despite not understanding a word of what she was singing, I could feel all of that in her voice, how she sang to me.
