One month as Nomads in Vietnam: How was the experience while travelling to 5 different cities?
So, after spending October (well, most of it, we traveled on the 28th of October), we flew to Vietnam. We decided to fly to the North, to Hanoi, so we would leave for Cambodia from the South.
How we planned our stay in Vietnam
Vietnam is one of the countries in the areas that have not yet had a standard visa system with a visa on arrival of up to 90 days (Well, after Covid, only Singapore and Malaysia quickly came back to it), and the VOA in Vietnam is of only 15 days. To get thirty days, you need to apply online, pay a fee, and they take 72h to answer.
And, Vietnam is a large country, with a lot of history and things to see. As for myself, I wanted to go to Ha Long Bay, and I wanted to go to the Mekong Delta. And, friends had counseled us to go to Hue, about midway between Hanoi and Ho Chih Minh (ex-Saigon), the two main cities of the country.
We planned our trip with 5 stops in Vietnam, plus a weekend on the water from Cat Ba to go and see Ha Long bay. We planned 28 days in the country, as we already had planes rescheduled in Indonesia, and wanted a little bit of margin in case this scenario happens.
So, we would stay for 11 days (including our weekend in Ha Long Bay) in Hanoi, the capital of the country, and the capital of the North during the Vietnam war. Then, we will fly to Hue for 3 days, which hosts the imperial city of the last Vietnamese emperors before colonization. From there, we will take the train to Da Nang, where we will stay for 6 days, and hopefully rest a little bit, then fly for a long weekend in Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta, and finally take a bus to Ho Chih Ming City, and spend our last week there, and from there, fly to Cambodia.
Our internal flights are operated by VietJet, and all of them have been rescheduled. They do offer three flights a day even on lines like Da Nang — Can Tho, but they do practically seem to operate only a fraction of these flights. We planned our flights in the middle of the day, so as to not be stressed and need to wake up early or sleep late. The rescheduled flights were all early in the morning.
Here’s how the stay is planned, let’s see how it went in each city, how we managed to make our routine so as to work and discover the area at the same time and see how we felt at the end of it.
How we organized ourselves during this very active month
In Hanoi, we stayed at the Posh Boutique Hotel, on the north side of the old town just by train. The hotel has large rooms, and as we stayed longer, we were given a larger room after our first night, with two beds and a large table that allowed us to install both our computers and work from there. The room had many windows, but most of them could not really open themselves and the shutters were closed. The room door was not really working, as only the lock was keeping it closed. The lock looked like it had been worked on… But, everything was fine during our stay, and there was a night attendant who slept in the hotel hall all night.
We tried several places to eat, and Hanoi has a large food scene, with several stalls and small restaurants mainly frequented by locals, and finer and more formal restaurants too. We settled for bami bread for breakfast, and after trying various, we remained with Ba Mi Hoi An as our daily option, as they were the best fit between price and good, and found a nice little cafe held by a grandma and her granddaughter for diner, Thang Trần Quán, which made good and fresh classical Vietnamese dishes and accepted card payments. For lunch, we would try different things. Usually, we would work 1 or 2 hours in the morning, and go out for lunch and visit things before going back to the hotel to finish our day there.
In Hue, we stayed too few days to really establish a routine. We stayed in Hue Lovely Homestay, which is more of a homestay than a formal hotel, and our room was large, with a large table too, so it was a good place to go as nomads as it was easy to make space for both of us to work there. Lien, the host, offered us breakfasts, so that part was tackled. Since we stayed only a few days, we did wander heavily in the city and around, and we usually walked in the morning before working at the end of the day. At that point, we started to be tired.
In Da Nang, we stayed in Sapphire Boutique, and we got here one of our cheapest accommodations per night, even if staying for only a few days and being in a modern hotel. Da Nang is organized in two parts, one in front of Da Nang Bay, and one west of the Han River, where we did not go much, but where you can find the historical city. The other being between the sea and the Han River, and our hotel was there. This area has all the feel of a major beach complex but keeps an easygoing vibe. Many hotels are being built along the coastline, and it will probably become a heavily frequented beach complex, but as of last November, it was very calm despite all the modern buildings. It does seem like it will be oriented towards Korean tourism as it was full of Korean restaurants.
Our hotel room was nice, and once again we were lucky and had lots of space to accommodate two working people. The hotel had closed its restaurant because of the pandemic, so we found a nice little vegetarian restaurant and grocery two blocks away, Bao An Macrobiotic, and usually had our breakfasts there. We tried several places for lunch, but hardly found places within our weekly budget. And, for dinner, we settled for bami bread (Vietnamese sandwiches) bought through Grab.
After we spent a weekend in Can Tho, which I will talk about in a separate article, we traveled to Saigon, and our arrival was a bit chaotic. When going out of the bus, taxi drivers rushed at us, and every other passenger, taking my phone from my hands to see where we would go even before we could get our bags from the trunk. It is not the only time it happened in Vietnam, but this time was the most aggressive we had to cope with.
In Ho Chih Minh City, we settled in Lharmonie Hotel, a standard city hotel. We stayed there because the price was low, and it was close to the main things to see. The room was a standard hotel room and had a small window, and a table large enough for one person to work. The hotel had a buffet breakfast, so it was one of the meals settled for the day. We did not maintain a routine for lunch, as we usually went wandering in the city, whether for tourism or for phone repair. For dinner, we usually asked for sandwiches for Grab or noticed that many people were eating inside the small supermarkets, 7-eleven or equivalent, and decided to try it once. It seemed to be a viable cheap option for many locals. They have decent meals and can warn them up, including buns and soups. So, it was ok considering the price.
My conclusion: We moved too much
Overall, our stay in Vietnam was quite exhausting. We did many outside activities, had two intensive weekends, and kept little time to rest as we moved a lot and wanted to see things in every place. When we started to travel this year, we knew that FOMO (fear of missing out) would be one of our worst enemies. As we tried to combine traveling with work, we defined our experience as experimenting the life for one month in different cities. With our will to travel and see different things, we did change the experience. Yet, changing 5 times of locations in one month was too much. As for the experience of working in hotels, I’d say I do prefer a hostel. Most of the time, you don’t have enough room to settle in the rooms, especially if you are traveling for the long term, and you need to leave your stuff in the bags, and it will get messy. Hotels usually don’t really have a place for people to live together, and working isolated from the same room in which you have all your stuff can be mentally hard. So, as of now, I would say it is not an experience I’d like to repeat. It is not because these places, in particular, were bad, but mainly because it is not the best for this travel style. We ended this month really tired and had several moments of extreme tiredness in middle. Nevertheless, I do have a lot to write about tourism. And, as you may notice, I didn’t really talk about food, I think it will be a subject for another article, as we tried a bunch of things.
