Life in Vietnam

 Happy New Year!

Yes, I am saying it even though we are 11 Days into 2026.

I haven't had much to post about in the past couple of weeks.  We have simply been living, walking a whole lot, seeing sights on foot, and taking the bus from time to time. I've been posting pictures periodically on Facebook to document all that.

We did do a couple of tours in the past few days so I will talk about those first.

Ba Na Hills

We call this banana hills because sometimes you see it as Ba Na and others Ba Na Na.  It is very much a tourist sight with an amusement park.  The smart thing they did with the amusement park is some of it is inside and some is outside.  Since it gets really really hot here, I thought that was smart. But if it were me since I hate the heat so much, I would have shoved the whole thing inside.

What was not smart was choosing to pay for a tour to get there, which we did. The tour gave us 3 hours at the amusement park but the outside part was closed because of the fog.  But even if it was open, I'm not sure we would have spent 3 hours there.

What you really go there to do is to ride the longest cable car system in Asia and to see and walk on the Golden Bridge.  They had a beautiful garden up there too but you didn't really need a tour guide for this.

The Golden Bridge - the main reason we took this tour - it is said these are God's hands lifting us up

If we had to do it again, we would have taken a Grab up there and back for $14ish (one way, so $28 for the round-trip) and done it on our own.

As a result of this revelation, we are testing a new theory from here on out.  If there is no historical significance to the trip or special knowledge needed to either navigate or understand where we are going, we will not buy/do a tour - we will just get there on our own.

The views from the cable car once the fog lifted were stunning, the Golden Bridge was cool, and the garden was beautiful, so I would say the trip was worth it.  It's just that a tour guide can add no value to the trip.

The best picture I was able to take on the way down after the fog lifted.  The glare from the glass in the car was too much to get any really good pictures.

I really like this picture of us in the garden

Hue and the Imperial Palace

We took this tour yesterday.

Vietnam's last monarchy ranged from 1802 to 1945.  It was the Nguyen dynasty.  During this time the capital city was Hue (pronounced Way or Hway - with a little hhh at the beginning - I'm not sure which one - it's hard to tell).

The Imperial Castle is in Hue so we took a tour to see it.

Part of the tour was a train ride to Hue.  We chose this tour because we had heard the views from the train are beautiful and that proved to be true.  It was a comfortable train and the ride lasted about two and half hours.

A view from the train ride to Hue

We had a great tour guide who provided historical context for everything we saw.  We visited three sites:  the Imperial Palace, a Buddhist pagoda, and the 12th king's tomb/mausoleum. (There were 13 kings under the Nguyen dynasty.)

We learned about 50% of the people in Vietnam have the last name Nguyen because many people during the Nguyen dynasty took the last name of the king to show their allegiance. That is why it is such a common Vietnamese last name.  I did not know this.

Imperial Palace

The palace was gorgeous.  Every time I look at these palaces, I think of all the money it takes to create such a home and wonder what the living situation was for the common people of the country during that period of time. But it sure was purty.

Outside of the palace

13th Century Buddhist Pagoda

Us outside of the 13th century Buddhist pagoda

Our second visit was to a pagoda build in the 13th century.  It was amazing but the big story for this site was the blue car stored behind the pagoda. In 1963, a Buddhist monk from Hue, drove this blue car from Hue to Saigon and set himself on fire in front of the Cambodian embassy to protest President Ngo Dinh Diem's policies supporting only Catholicism and attempting to shut down Buddhists' ability to worship.  The monk traveled from Hue to Saigon because he believed if he set himself on fire in Hue, no one would report on it thus not bringing world attention to the problem.

I will not post the picture of him on fire - you can Google that and see it. It is fairly gruesome and maybe you have already seen the picture.  The house the actual car the monk drove from Hue to Saigon behind the pagoda for all to see and to remember his sacrifice for religious freedom in Vietnam.

The name of the monk was Thich Quang Duc.

The car driven from Hue to Saigon

King #12's Burial Site

Our last visit of the day was to King #12's mausoleum.  I say King #12 because that is what our tour guide called him.  It is a rather grand mausoleum built by the King who increased taxes by 30% just to pay for it.

It was most certainly grand - and this from a King who admitted he was a bad king.

Other things of note about this King:  He became a drug addict and died in 1926 of tuberculosis at a rather young age. While he preferred the company of men, he did have a wife with which he slept with only once solely to produce a male heir.

Overall, this was a great trip filled with Vietnam history pre-independence AND pre- what we call the Vietnam War.

There were multiple levels to this burial site.  This is from the bottom looking up to the first level.  The actual burial is at the top level.

Entrance at the top to where King #12 is buried

Finally! After all those steps and all those edifices, here is where he is buried.  Our tour guide is to the right in the picture.

Life in Vietnam

Here are some new observations of Vietnamese life and culture . . .

1.    We still find the people here so very welcoming.  We have had multiple people thank us for visiting their country.  The kids are the best!  The kids will come up to you, ask you your name and where you are from - all in English.  We have found if people speak English, they want to talk to you in English.  If they don't speak English, they never seem put out at all by your inability to speak their language.  Many will pull out their phones and Google translate.  They WANT to interact with us and really go out of their way to make us feel welcome here.  Sometimes it feels like we are kind of a show because we look so different  - being white, Western, and tall.  There is some staring that happens. But it doesn't bother me. They are in no way rude about it. To be fair, I am tall at home.  I can only imagine how I must look to them - most Vietnamese are fairly short compared to me.

2.    We have taken the bus many times and they are always clean and not nearly as crowded as buses in Italy.  In Italy, buses are often crowded and you have to stand.  We have never had to stand on a bus here.  Sometimes the buses have just a bus driver but other times, they have a bus driver and a conductor.  If there is a conductor, he or she takes your money and if there isn't one, the bus driver has to take your money.  In any case, the bus driver, conductor, AND the passengers are so very friendly and helpful.  I really can't say enough about how welcoming the Vietnamese are.

The only downside about the buses is sometimes you may have to wait a while for the bus to show up. Today we waited 30 minutes for bus #16. Finally bus #13 stopped and we were told to get on when we told them we were waiting for #16.  I'm not sure what that was about but the bus took us right to where we wanted to be dropped off.

3.    We have found that many services of the same variety congregate on the same street.  We have what I call the produce street.  Then there is the laundry street, the barber street, and the pig street - where you see whole pigs roasting.

Here is one of the pigs on pig street.  I think part of him is already missing.

4.    Crossing any street here when there is no traffic light is a whole thing.  You can't do like you do at home and wait for a break in the traffic.  You have to Frogger across. Rush and stop. Rush and stop.  Sometimes a car or motorcycle will yield to you. Eventually you will get across unscathed.  The more you do it, the easier it is.  I think one of the big differences here is people are not driving distracted like they are at home. I certainly wouldn't try this in the U.S.  I don't think drivers pay enough attention to the road for you not to get hit.

5.    The words in Vietnamese are short.  I am not sure I have seen a word more than 5 or 6 letters long.  Six letters would be a really long word here.  I think they can have such short words because they have lots of symbols that go above letters.  Compare this to Thailand, where the words are SOOOOO long.  And someone told us they don't have breaks between words and sentences in Thai.

6.    I am not impressed with the cleanliness of the streets in Da Nang.  Especially after seeing Hue yesterday.  Hue was so very clean but Da Nang needs to do something about their trash pickup.  People litter here and the trash on the sides of the road pile up.  The trash is grouped up together like it is waiting to be picked up.  Some people are really good about sweeping and cleaning up in front of their establishments and others are not.  Contrast the streets of Da Nang with the beach here. The beach is very clean.

7.    Even the people from the U.S. here will start talking to you.  We met a woman who looked like she was in here 20's from California who had been living here for several years.  Her parents were immigrants from Vietnam so she was of Vietnamese heritage.  We were just sitting on a bench resting before our walk home.  She was walking her dog and stopped to ask us where we were from, in perfect Americanized English.  Her dog was a husky, Nala, and was 12 years old. Yep, we got to pet Nala! We got the impression she was here with her parents although she never said.  She works for an American company who has an office here in Da Nang.

The other day at our usual morning coffee shop, we met a man from Abilene, Texas. He and his wife own a salon in Abilene but are from here.  He was here because his father passed away so he came back to pay his respects.  You could tell the death was weighing on him but he really wanted to talk to us.

We also met a guy from Detroit and Houston.  He claimed them both.  He is living here with his Vietnamese wife that he met here.

All of these conversations were initiated by the other person, not us.  It is not like we are unfriendly but we just don't go around talking to everyone.

8.    They are really stingy here with their napkins.  We have found this to be the case almost everywhere since we landed in Tokyo.  When they do have napkins, you are lucky if they are as big as a cocktail napkin.  Conversely, they are quite generous with plastic bags.  Americans are not going to save the world from the woes of plastic and styrofoam so long as this part of the world uses and discards as much as they do.

Stomach Problems

On New Year's Day, I got sick again.  I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible stomach cramps and was sick for about 2 days.  The only thing Blaise and I can come up with is that the night before, when we shared a dish at a restaurant, I had ice for my drink and he did not.  I'm thinking the restaurant used tap water for their ice.  If that is the case, I don't think that is a common practice here since we get ice in our coffee drinks all the time and nothing happens.

Weather

The weather here continues to be wonderful.  We have had some rainy days here and there but nothing too bad.  The day we went to Ba Na Hills was one of the yucky days and the first time I really felt chilly here. The low temps are normally in the mid 60's and the highs are anywhere from 70-75.  Absolutely lovely!

Next Steps

Friday we leave Da Nang and fly to Hanoi.  We are staying at another AirBnB there.  We will be there for a month after which we head to Cambodia for 2 weeks solely to see Angkor Wat. Yes, I know it won't take us 2 weeks to see Angkor Wat but we do want to get a feel for the culture there before we leave.

We have nothing booked beyond there but we think we will spend a month after that in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, heading on after that to Japan for the cherry blossoms, then to South Korea.  Our cruise back to the states is our hard out - it leaves May 9 from Tokyo.