Three Reasons to Fall in Love With Vietnam

Planning your Vietnam holidays is something you might well decide to do years after your first trip. If you’re an avid traveller it’s likely you’ve been to more countries than you can count on both hands. You’re counting aren’t you? If you’re from the UK, discount European countries. They’re easy to get to without too much adventure. If you’re from continental Europe, your neighbours and the UK don’t count. Got it? So now some of you will have digits left. And while you might not hit the goal of seeing every country on the planet in your lifetime, you can at least make it to ten far from home.

While some see travelling as a way to escape from their lives for a while and see the things they’ve always wanted to see, for others it’s a way to find the places you love in the world and hold on to them. There are cities people fall in love with all the time. Buenos Aires, Berlin, New York, Amsterdam, London. Or sometimes they meet the person they love elsewhere or work moves them away and they stay. Travel broadens our horizons. It’s clichéd but it’s true. And Vietnam is one of those places that is easy to fall in love with.

Here are three reasons why:

Vietnam is a very fertile place.

Lush green rice paddies line the Mekong Delta and Red River Delta and cover most of the land. You only have to get a little way out of the main cities to get a spectacular view of them.

Paddies are fields with plants that require vast amounts of water to grow, such as rice. Paddies can be quite labour intensive to maintain and require a lot of water for irrigation. As South East Asian countries are humid and have long monsoon seasons, there is often a lot of (sometimes too much) water available.

It has one of the greatest unsung train journeys in the world.

It is possible to take a train from end to end of the country. You can go from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi on a sleeper train. The berths are clean and as comfortable as a bunk bed on a moving train can be. The best way to experience the journey is to hop off at the beautiful places along the way (not Danang). Hue and Hoi An are particularly worthy of a visit.

Hue rests on the perfume river, so called because of the scent that rises from the water after thousands of flowers have fallen in to it. Hoi An is famous for its tailors, who can cobble together any item of clothing (or pair of shoes) you could wish for, in an incredibly short amount of time.

Food that will knock your socks off (and clear your sinuses).

Vietnam is known for its spicy cuisine, much like Thailand. The most famous dish is probably spicy beef noodle soup, which originated in Hue. A lot of dishes are noodle based and feature meat as well as fish and vegetables.

John Hutchinson has enjoyed travelling since he was a young boy when his parents first took him to visit family overseas. Since leaving home, John has tracked down family all over the world and regularly jets off to faraway lands to see distant relatives.