I’d heard a lot about Hoi An before I arrived, and all of it had been good. That had made it pretty high on my list of places to visit. But when I got there, I was actually really disappointed. Yes, it’s cute. The Old Town has beautiful little buildings, the lanterns hanging in the … Read more
Easy Rider tours are a well-known and popular activity in southern Vietnam. Based in Dalat, the original Easy Riders were former South Vietnamese soldiers who were unable to find work after the war and so turned to working as motorcycle taxi drivers to make a living. Gradually, their reputation for knowing back roads and off … Read more
When I set out on the mission that would make up the substance of this blog post, I had thought it would be called ‘The best soup in all Vietnam’. Later, I revised that to ‘The biggest disappointment in all Vietnam’. But in the end, it wasn’t either of those things that really made the … Read more
In Vietnam, what we in the West know as the Vietnam War is referred to as the American War. The end of the war is Liberation Day. And the Nodorom Palace, headquarters of the South Vietnamese war command, has become the Reunification Palace. On the day the tanks rolled through the Palace gates, capitalist South … Read more
Having foregone the Mekong River border crossing, I was in two minds about taking a side trip to the Delta anyway. On the one hand, it’s supposed to be particularly beautiful; on the other, I just spent a week living right next to the river, and that was a beauty that would be hard to … Read more