(Vietnam Vacation Part 1)
Travel
Tales Index - Vietnam Vacation Index - Vietnam Pix
Dear Friends and Family,
This
year, we are taking a trip to Vietnam from December 28, 2006 until February 22, 2007. For one reason
or another, your name is on our travelogue e-mail list. It can NEVER be
removed! (Just kidding) If you know anyone else that would like to receive our
e-mails, have them contact Paul at PaulWorksHard@hotmail.com.
This is the first of a series of e-mails you will be receiving related to our
trip to Vietnam. Here is information about planning, packing,
logistics and answers to some questions people have asked us:
Why Vietnam? (i.e. Paul, Where Do You Get These Nutty Ideas?)
Well, for starters, we have never been there! It will be a bit warmer there than winter in Virginia, Lois can eat pho (noodle soup) for breakfast and we were able to get frequent flier tickets without too much problem. There are a whole host of places we want to go to and this year, we figured we would go somewhere in Asia. A number
of places we would like to go (
Our
two biggest resources are the library and the Internet. We get as many
guidebooks and look at as many web sites as we can. The idea is to decide which
cities/towns/villages/small grouping of huts might be interesting to visit. We
don't figure out exactly what we want to do in a town, just how many days we
might want to spend there.
For
this trip, Paul looked at 5 guidebooks: Footprint Handbooks, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Moon
Handbooks and Fodor's. Which guidebook to use is dependent on the destination. For
Central & South America, Footprint is by far the best. For
Guidebooks we are using on this trip:
|
The Rough Guide To Vietnam by Jan Dodd, Mark Lewis and Ron Emmons |
|
Lonely Planet |
After
doing our research, we create a list of places we want to visit and how long we
want to stay. We get a map of the country (usually from an on-line source) and
circle each place on the map. Next, it is simply a matter of trying to connect
the dots in an intelligent fashion. The guidebooks we use tend to focus more on
logistics than information about various sites. So, they have maps of each town
with lists of places to stay and eat and information about getting from point A
to point B by bus, truck, boat, taxi etc. With the dots connected, we have a
rough idea of our itinerary and what modes of transportation we will use
between places. The initial plan may be changed radically or not at all
depending on how much time we have, if a place is better/worse than it sounded
in the books, if we decide to add/delete a town because of information from
someone we meet on the road, etc.
What Do You Take With
You? (i.e. Paul, Do You Bring Your Telescope?)
Here’s our packing list for this trip (including what we wear heading out):
|
Eagle Creek travel pack |
Waterproof Nylon Shell |
|
Locks for backpack |
2 pair nylon convertible pants |
|
3 foot wire cable to secure backpack |
1 long sleeve heavy fleece shirt |
|
Silk Sleep sack |
1 long sleeve micro fleece shirt |
|
Princeton headlamp |
3 light weight s/s shirts |
|
Nylon Cord - for clothesline etc. |
teva sandals |
|
Zip lock bags (to keep things dry) |
Sneakers |
|
Money belt - hangs from belt |
Socks - 2 pairs |
|
First aid kit |
Underwear - 3 pairs |
|
Toilet articles kit |
Sarong |
|
Digital Camera |
Bandana |
|
Sony Notebook Computer! |
Language dictionary |
|
Passport & back-up photocopy |
Guidebooks |
|
Journal |
Books to read |
This year, for the first time, we are taking a notebook computer with us. It was Paul's birthday present to himself - a Sony VGN-TX670 which weighs in at 2.75 pounds and includes a memory stick reader for our camera and a DVD/CD writer. We will see how it works out, but the idea was to make it easier to write travelogues while on the road and to be able to burn pictures to CD without needing an internet cafe. Believe it or not,
the goal is to bring as little as possible. Our packs weigh about 27 pounds each, including a large supply of reading books.
You
feel miserable for a little while and spend lots of time in the bathroom. On
our
Where Do You Stay? (i.e. At The Holiday Inn?)
Hotels,
motels, guesthouses, inns, pensiones, albergues - any place that has cheap
rooms for rent. The guidebooks list places to stay in each town. We have no
reservations, except for our first night in Hanoi since we arrive at 10:30 PM.
Our understanding is that
budget accommodations with air conditioning and satellite TV are in the $6-$20 range. We'll probably
spend at the low end of the range outside of the major cities and toward the high end in Hanoi and Saigon. In some cases, we might end up sharing a bathroom.
We usually don't know where we are staying until we walk up to the
place, ask to see a room and decide whether or not we like it. Occasionally, we
call ahead if the next stop
is a large city or we expect it to be difficult to find a room. We have never
slept out in the cold, but have paid a lot more than we wanted; stayed in a
place we really didn't like or spent an hour or two looking.
Costs to date:
|
Airfare for 2 into Hanoi and Out of Saigon |
$240 + 140,000 frequent flier miles |
|
2 Guidebooks and a Phrasebook |
$48 |
Based
on the reading we've done, we are expecting costs to be around $45 per day for
the two of us. We are bringing $1030
in cash (there's nothing like the US dollar), credit cards and two ATM cards.
The cheapest and best way to change money is to use your ATM card to get local
currency. The credit cards and cash are backups.
The
official language in Vietnam is, of course, Vietnamese. Hopefully, we should be able to find people that speak some English (younger people) or French (older people). Usually, people are very helpful. While we might be confused as to what exactly is going on at times, we should be able to fumble our way along.
People that run guesthouses tend to speak some English and, more importantly, are used to tourists and what they might want to do or where they might want to go. You just keep asking the same questions and trying to get reassurance that this bus really is going where you want and not China!
In preparation for this trip, Paul has spent some time listening to Pimsleur's Basic Vietnamese language course. Probably just enough to get us into trouble! We hope to pick up some of the basics as we go along. It’s amazing how much you can learn when immersed in a language. We will bring a small phrasebook and a sense of humor as well...
What About Jacques, Eddie & Alice? (and who are they?)
Jacques is our
60 pound wire haired dog and Eddie and Alice are our two cats. They all take a winter
vacation as well. Jacques goes to the JoAnne Spa and Good Friends Boarding House where he will hang out with his doggie pals Riley and Corey.
Eddie and Alice go to the Sue & Walter "We Need Some Mice Killers" Bed and Breakfast. Yes, it pays to have some really good friends. Thanks to JoAnne, Sue and Walter.
How Do You Get Two Months Off From Work?
Ask.
It works for Paul. Don’t ask and don’t work. That is Lois’ method. Actually,
Paul is quite lucky. The people Paul works for have been exceptionally
accommodating of his desire to take a little extra time off. So, thank you very
much to Erin and Steve.
Click
here to see our intended route. We fly American airlines from Washington, DC to Chicago and then on to Tokyo and then JAL into Hanoi. We return from Saigon, via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific. Below is an ordered list of the places we are
planning on seeing and how long Paul thought we might want to spend there. Given that transportation in Vietnam can be very time consuming, the roads are very rough in places and
we don't know if we can actually get between some of these points, the chances of sticking to this itinerary are very slim!
|
|
7 days |
Bach Ma National Park |
2 |
|
Mai Chau |
3 |
|
1 |
|
|
1 |
Hoi An |
4 |
|
Lai Chau |
2 |
Nha Trang |
3 |
|
Sa Pa |
2 |
Buon Me Thuot |
3 |
|
Bac Ha |
3 |
|
3 |
|
Ba Be Park |
2 |
|
1 |
|
Thai Nguyen |
1 |
Miu Ne |
3 |
|
Haiphong |
1 |
Ho Chi Minh City |
4 |
|
Ha Long |
2 |
My Tho |
1 |
|
Cat Ba |
3 |
|
1 |
|
|
4 |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
4 |
|
|
Happy Holidays & Happy New Year To Everyone!
Lois & Paul
December 28, 2006