Three months in Vietnam

We had incredible three months in Vietnam. When we entered Vietnam, we had no idea what we were going to see and experience in this country, but looking back, we made amazing memories, saw wonderful places, and met very nice people. We already wrote about our first two months of the journey in our previous blog posts and here is the rest.

One other thing about Vietnam that we observed during these three months was their religion. Compared to the other three countries (Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia) that we visited before coming to Vietnam, we saw that people here are a lot less religious. More than 70% of Vietnamese people identify themselves as non-religious and just a little over 12% identify themselves as Buddhist which is very small compared to the neighbouring countries where it is over 90%. Somehow this aspect of absence of religion and spirituality showed up in our interactions with people. Most of the people we met were driven by materialistic things and money was a big part of their lives. We also found that some homes that were offered to us on Airbnb were a bit off from what was advertised. It did not change the way we looked at people of this country, but we realised that tourism has been a major part of people's lives here. Just like any other touristy hot spot in the world, the character of touristy places in this country were also influenced by a money making mindset of locals.

After spending six weeks in a village in Central Vietnam, we slowly made our way up towards the capital city Hanoi. We took an overnight train from central Vietnam and went to a small city called Hue and spent a few days there. It was a nice little town with their own unique cuisine and few nice places to explore nearby. In general, people ate early lunch and had a snack around 4 or 5pm. There were many varieties of snacks that were sold during this time. We frequently went for a walk during this time and tried out different snacks. The other place we spent a lot of time was at Le Loi Park which was just a few minutes away from our stay and we went there every evening during our stay in Hue. Nora loved spending time there surrounded by greenery, water, and people and we loved it too. The other big touristy thing we did here was going to the Tomb of Khai Dinh who was the twelfth emperor of Vietnam. We felt a bit adventurous and decided to walk back from the Tomb of Khai Dinh, which was a bit over 7km (4.3 miles) from our stay. We walked through the villages and fields towards our stay and we enjoyed it a lot. We stopped by in a small village to have lunch and they opened their kitchen for us and made delicious soup. They were happy to see Nora and offered a few pieces of local variety of Durian for her to eat. It was wonderful to eat from a local family restaurant and spend some time talking to them, sort of talking to them :)

After a nice time in Hue, we took an overnight train and went to Hanoi, our last stop in Vietnam. We stayed here for two weeks. We did some administrative work for our onward travels and spend a bit of time outside the city center planning for our next travel destinations. Hanoi is the capital city of Vietnam, and it is a very busy city; however, it was a lot calmer than Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). The food was also a bit less oily compared to other parts of the country. We were lucky to find a nicely furnished apartment in Hanoi where we experimented with a few more food projects we had on our mind like, making soy milk, pizzas and other meals. Another thing we did here was getting rid of our torn and unusable clothes and replaced them with second hand clothes. We found a very large second hand market in Hanoi where they had almost all clothing options we were looking for. A nice place to visit if you are in Hanoi.

Overall, Vietnam was a very diverse country with a variety of options for food, culture, and many other things to offer across the country. We loved our stay here and we are looking forward to moving on to our next destination, Malaysia!!