Category: 2023-01 Hanoi to Singapore

Following a short but sweet visit to the colonial highland town of Đà Lạt, we were back on the road with our sights set on Ho Chi Minh City (formerly, and also still commonly, referred to as Sài Gòn). Once again, Team Tortoise and Team Hare went our separate ways:

🐢 Team Tortoise (Oli & Sara) boarded an eight-hour (daytime) sleeper bus in Đà Lạt, transferred to a minibus on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City (or HCMC for short), and walked the final 1.5 km to our hotel

🐇 Team Hare (Helen & Mick) hopped on a 50-minute flight to Ho Chi Minh City Airport, and took a taxi into the city

Unsurprisingly, flying was much faster and quite a bit more expensive, but emitted about five times as much carbon as taking the bus. Although their flight required them to depart our Đà Lạt hotel at 6am, Helen & Mick’s time advantage did give them the chance to go for lunch, visit a market, take a nap, and still be waiting for us in the hotel lobby looking refreshed when we arrived hot and tired! Still, I think the bus worked out much more favourably than it did on the last leg of our journey!

	Team Hare 🐇	Team Tortoise 🐢
Time	4 hours	10 hours
Cost	£112.46	£27.07
Carbon	106 kgCO2e	20 kgCO2e

As we arrived in the city, HCMC felt incredibly busy, with its eight-lane roads and endless tide of motorbikes. Even when applying Sara’s guide to crossing the road and heeding the pedestrian lights (where present), navigating HCMC’s streets wasn’t exactly a relaxing affair. Still, we loved the city’s endless energy, and couldn’t wait to eat some more Vietnamese specialities. After all, when I asked my HCMC-born barber in Hanoi what his favourite food was from home, he replied with enthusiasm: “EVERYTHING TASTES BETTER IN HO CHI MINH, MAN!”

Top of Sara’s food list was Bún chả, a dish of cold vermicelli noodles, pork meatballs and barbecued pork belly, fresh herbs and pickled carrot, all in a delicious broth and accompanied by a very deep fried spring roll. Despite this dish’s origins in Hanoi, it had so far evaded us since our arrival in Vietnam, so we put our faith in my barber’s theory that it would taste even better in HCMC and headed to Bún chả Hồ Gươm to get our fill. We were pretty hungry by the time we arrived, and the peppery spring rolls, salty barbecued pork, sticky noodles and huge pile of fresh leaves certainly hit the spot.

HCMC is the largest city in Vietnam (and has a population similar to that of London!), so we took a lift up to the 49th floor of the Bitexco Financial Tower to get a bit of perspective. Bizarrely, this skyscraper incorporates a helipad three-quarters of the way up, and the appearance makes it look like a UFO has crash-landed and become wedged in the building. It’s this helipad that contains the observation deck, where we watched the rush hour traffic flow through the city before the sun set behind the high-rise offices.

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The next day we took a taxi out to Chợ Lớn, HCMC’s Chinese quarter, which holds the record as the world’s largest Chinatown! Chợ Lớn is home to a handful of colourful temples, as well as a whole street of medicinal herb merchants.

We came across a huge variety of architecture as we walked the streets of HCMC. From the beautifully restored French-colonial Central Post Office and the vibrant pink gothic exterior of Tan Dinh Catholic Church, to the crumbling facades of Chợ Lớn and the ultra-modern skyscrapers of District 1, HCMC seemed to have something for everyone.

For our last dinner together, we decided to go out with a bang with a meal at Barbecue Garden. Our table featured a pit in the centre, into which the staff inserted a bowl of red-hot coals covered with a grill on which we cooked a handful of kebabs and vegetables. I’m going to blame the low light (rather than the draft beer) for the blurry photo below!

It was then sadly time to say goodbye to Mick & Helen, as they headed off to the airport to continue their trip through India. They called a Grab taxi (the SE-Asia equivalent of Uber), but were a little concerned when a tiny hatchback turned up. In contrast, the taxi driver looked downright panicked when he saw the four of us standing there, but relaxed when he realised only two people were travelling. He then optimistically tried to fit one of the suitcases into the boot, before giving up and stacking them on the backseat, leaving Helen & Mick to squeeze into what little space remained! We really enjoyed exploring Vietnam together – thanks so much for joining us on this leg of the trip 🙂

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While Helen & Mick headed to Delhi, we continued south to the archipelago of Côn Đảo to try to get our heads around the beautiful islands’ harrowing past.

After a couple of days eating all the Cao lầu we could lay our hands on in An Bàng, we were on the road again and heading south towards Đà Lạt, an old hill station in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It was a long journey (more than 700 km), so it was time for another Top Gear race!

🐢 Team Tortoise (Oli and Sara) opted to take an 9-hour daytime train down the coast to Nha Trang, stop there overnight and then take a further 3.5-hour bus through the mountains to Đà Lạt

🐇 Team Hare (Helen and Mick) sensibly chose to take a quick 45-minute flight from Đà Nẵng to Đà Lạt on Vietnam Airlines

The race was on!

	Team Hare 🐇	Team Tortoise 🐢
Time	5 hours	25 hours (inc. 7-hour stopover in a hotel in Nha Trang)
Cost	£85.50	£81.76
Carbon	240 kgCO2e	49 kgCO2e

Verdict: I think it’s fair to say that if carbon wasn’t a consideration, Team 🐇’s route was the winner. The cost was practically identical, but the journey took Team 🐢 more than four times as long. However, Team 🐇 did emit nearly five times as much carbon as Team 🐢! They also missed out on some truly beautiful countryside views from the train and didn’t get to ride on a sleeper bus (which we found unexpectedly exciting, although I’m not sure I’d actually want to spend a night on one…)

When we finally arrived, we were rewarded with some of the loveliest accommodation on our entire trip. Đà Lạt was built as a hill station for the French colonialists to escape the heat of Vietnamese summers, and we stayed on a beautiful estate in one of the original villas built during the 1920s or 1930s. The villas have been entirely (but very convincingly) restyled now, and even appeared in Architectural Digest when the resort first reopened in 2009! I later read that Đà Lạt is the Vietnamese capital for honeymoons, which made total sense – our hotel in particular really had that feel. I also read that there’s a widespread belief that if you visit Đà Lạt with your partner, you will break up. I’m not sure how these two co-exist – I like to think that all the newlyweds who visit Đà Lạt don’t have time for such superstition. Let’s hope they are right!

With only one full day in Đà Lạt, there wasn’t much time to laze by the pool as we had a list of offbeat attractions to visit, the first of which was appropriately named the Crazy House. Built by a Đặng Việt Nga, an architect who had studied in Moscow, it is a constant work in progress, with bits being added and transformed all the time. Part hotel, part house and part museum, with animal-themed rooms and a whole section built to look like it was under the sea, I’ve never seen anything quite like it! We attempted to follow a QR code walking tour but almost immediately lost the trail, so instead poked around by ourselves and met other people who were also lost and had been for some time! Our exploration culminated in a climb over a frankly-quite-alarming walkway that soared above the eaves and gave spectacular views of the city and surrounding mountains, as well as a brilliant view of just how far we’d fall if we lost our balance, since the handrails were rather lower than we would have preferred 😬

Our second stop was at Đà Lạt Railway Station, a beautiful art-deco style building that was constructed by the French in 1938.

Oli got very excited learning about the cog railway that used to connect Đà Lạt to the coast, so I’ll hand over to him for this part.

Đà Lạt used to be connected to the North-South mainline by steam train, which required 34 km of rack-railway to cover the 1,400m of elevation gain through the mountains, featuring a maximum incline of 12%! However, the railway was repeatedly attacked during the Vietnam-American War, and was partially dismantled after the war to use the parts for repairs to the North-South line. Most recently, plans have been made to restore the connection to the North-South line by 2030, once again allowing trains from Hanoi to run all the way to Đà Lạt. This would have been a faster and even more spectacular alternative to our train and bus combo, and would likely have convinced Mick & Helen out of flying this leg of the journey!

Oli

Meanwhile, Dad was busy climbing all over the trains that sat in the station. Mum and I were mainly searching for a cafe that would do us a nice cold drink!

There was so much more to Đà Lạt that we didn’t get a chance to visit on our all-too-brief stopover, including the pretty central lake that we passed briefly a couple of times (complete with swan pedalos that I was desperate to get Dad on), the Cát Tiên National Park (with elephants and gibbons) and even a winery (although I did try the wine elsewhere and it was…interesting)! But for now, we were adding our lovely hotel to our to-revisit-one-day list and were heading south to the happy chaos of Saigon.

Vietnam is famous for having some of the most intimidating roads in the world. Actually, the driving itself generally isn’t bad at all, but the traffic is something else!

We’re not exactly experts, but having survived two trips to Vietnam now, we think we’ve at least mastered enough to write a beginners’ guide! All I can say is that the following tips might sound obvious, but they’re easier said than done when faced with an unrelenting wall of motorbikes merrily weaving across the road 😬

Step 1: Take a deep breath and step off the kerb

You’re waiting for a gap, aren’t you? You’ll be there forever if so! So really, pick a moment when there are more motorbikes than cars (since they are more manouverable) and step out into the road.

Step 2: Walk slowly and deliberately across the road

The key is to maintain a predictable pace so that people can steer around you. Don’t run, try not to stop, and whatever you do, don’t backtrack. There’ll be a terrifying but very satisfying moment when all the traffic stops passing in front of you, starts to head straight toward you, and then begins to pass behind your back as you move across the road. Nearly there!

Bonus points if you manage not to even look at the traffic. This is a real power move and will earn you instant respect from drivers (honestly)! I’ve never managed this, though – apparently I like advance notice of when I’m about to be flattened…

Step 3: Hop back up on the opposite kerb but keep watching for motorbikes

You did it! Now don’t drop your guard, since there are normally about as many motorcycles travelling up and down the pavements as there are in the road 😉