Vietnam has been one of my favorite places to visit for a long time now, hence why I’m made 3 trips to the country. To me it has everything – amazing food, super friendly people, awesome culture and a bit of a sense of adventure when you visit. We’ve traveled there on three separate occasions – with and without kids, and each trip has been unique as we’ve been at different stages in life each time.
2007
Our first trip back in 2007 was a true backpacking experience where we bussed and trained our way from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City in the south experiencing amazing food, people, culture and sights along the way. Accommodation and eating out were on the budget side with money spent towards some amazing excursions.
A highlight of this first trip was 3 days of awesome mountain biking through the villages in the northern mountains of Vietnam with a really well renowned tour operator – www.handspan.com. After getting the overnight train from Hanoi to Sapa, we arrived ready to explore. The locals were just incredibly hospitable as we biked through the area and we got a bit of a sense of rural life in the north. This was more than 20 years ago and there was a sense from everyone that we met along the way that they hadn’t encountered too many westerners. It felt like a true remote experience. Accommodation was basic but clean. I must admit, I struggled with the food a little after seeing a skinned dog in a bowl in a restaurant kitchen ready for the cooking pot. And so we stuck to some very basic rice and veggies for the remainder of the 3 days.
The bike ride was mountainous but we had a 4WD that would follow along behind and put the bikes in the back if we wanted a rest. Our guide stopped us lots along the way too so we could plant some rice with the farmers, taste some delicious homemade rice wine from a lovely family in their stilted home, and meet the local school children. We were young at the time and slightly irresponsible and instigated a mass exodus from the school playground to the local store over the road where we bought them all sweets and lollies. Quite rightly the teachers were not happy with us!
It was such an epic trip that I can clearly remember lots of the small details all this time later. After our truly memorable bike trip, we headed East for two nights/three days around Halong Bay for a once in a lifetime experience. We stayed one night on the boat and one night on one of the islands, did some kayaking around the bay and visited some caves on one of the outer islands.
Next, we rested up a little in Hanoi to explore its charming Old Quarter, beautiful temples, delicious street food and to do a cooking course. Then we made our way south on noisy train trips and long bus rides to the Imperial city of Hue, the beaches and old town of Hoi An, the nightlife and Cham Towers of Nha Trang and on to Ho Chi Minh City. The Imperial Palace, War Remnants Museum and a side trip to the Cu Chi tunnels and Cao Dai Temple were on our to do list when we hit the south.
2017
We then returned to Vietnam in 2017 with our 5 and 7 year old kids. We kept this trip a little more simple, with easier travel so we could have fun as a family. Exploring Ho Chi Minh, the Mekong Delta and then flying directly up to Danang/Hoi An for a relaxing week of beaches, food tours, exploring on mopeds and time in the swimming pool.
We started with the fantastic cooking school run by Luke Nyugen in HCMC, Grain, which was a great experience for us all. And after a couple of days of exploring Saigon, we hired a car to take us down to the Mekong Delta, starting in Ben Tre. Our accommodation ran boat tours of the river and also had bikes we could borrow to explore the area, meet the locals and find the locally made coconut candy stores. After this we moved on a couple of hours to Can Tho and a full day tour out to the floating markets and surrounding countryside where we got to make rice paper wraps, and buy fruit and Vietnamese coffee from the floating market stalls.
After a direct flight from Can Tho to Danang, we spent a week in the beautiful, historic UNESCO listed town of Hoi An. Our choice of accommodation in Hoi An (https://ttchospitality.vn/ttc–hotel/TTC-HOTEL–HOI-AN) was definitely less budget than when it had just been the two of us, and having a pool was a priority as it’s a great way to spend the afternoon as a family after a morning of sightseeing. Also having an included breakfast was super convenient and not something that we’d ever considered before. But the kids are just not up for wandering around starving at 10am looking for food options. We were probably slightly more careful with our food choices overall too, trying to avoid upset stomachs for the little ones.
But while we pulled back a little on the exploration, we still took part in cooking classes, an awesome food tour around Hoi An (http://www.tasteofhoian.com/), hired mopeds to explore some of the surrounding area, took a trip to explore the cave temples of Marble Mountain and another day out to see the Cham Towers of My Son UNESCO World Heritage site – https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/949/. This was all balanced with pool and beach time.
We also switched long bus rides during our backpacking days for internal flights, from moving every couple of days to limiting ourselves to three destinations in this trip, and just generally chilled out more and tried to not push the pace too much, wanting our kids to fall in love with Vietnam and with travel just as much as we have. This was their first trip to South East Asia and we were keen to balance them experiencing a totally new culture with taking it easy and holidaying a little. Luckily the Vietnamese, as with many Asian cultures, just love the kids and they got so much attention and could not have felt more welcomed.
2023
In our latest trip, during December 2023, we again chose just three destinations for our 10 day trip before heading then to Siem Reap and Thailand – acclimatising in Ho Chi Minh, training to Mui Ne and then driving to Dalat. Our kids were 10 and 12 at this point so, again it’s a slightly different trip from when we were backpacking or when they were young. They’d seen quite a bit of South East Asia at this point and so everything was a little more familiar to them, and they had more opinions about what they wanted to see and do. Swimming pool – always a priority. They also like their holiday to have a balance of culture and just pure out and out fun activities.
Mui Ne fell across Christmas so we felt a local resort was in order as a bit of a treat and we stayed at the lovely Pandanus Resort (https://www.pandanusresort.com/). We don’t normally travel this way but we fully took advantage of the on-site restaurant, spa facilities, gym, morning yoga classes and spent a lot of time enjoying the pool. Truly relaxing. We didn’t venture far but were recommended to go to the Dong Vui Food Court in town for dinner, which was awesome – https://www.facebook.com/DongVuiMuiNe/ and then when we were ready to move on the local private car company was great value, easy to deal with and punctual (https://muineprivatecar.net/).
Dalat was just 4 hours away by car and a cute town – lots of great family things to do and awesome places to eat. We took a fantastic mountain bike ride tour with Phat Tyre as recommended in the Lonely Planet guide (https://www.ptv-vietnam.com/), rode the swan boats and Datanla Alpine coaster roller coaster through the forest and generally ate and drank our way through the city. Our daughter loved the night market to buy herself cute souvenirs and our son loved the street food on offer, especially the local “pizza” Banh Trang Nuong. It was then a short 30 minute Grab ride from Dalat city centre to the airport for our flight on to Siem Reap to experience Cambodia for the first time.
So across our three trips, we’ve adjusted how we travel as it’s just way more fun if the whole group is having fun. I don’t think we’ll ever do the two week resort holiday with kids club as we still want to feel like we’re traveling and adventuring a little rather than just holidaying. We also want our kids to grow up with an appreciation for other parts of the world, which means getting out and exploring in it, rather than sitting at the pool side at an international chain hotel where it’s hard to identify what country you’re in. And hopefully in the future there’ll be a fourth trip to this amazing country. Perhaps we’ll have teenagers, or perhaps we’ll be retired and it’ll be back to just the two of us. Who knows but either way, I’m sure it’ll be another awesome experience.
Also, check out our blog here on our favourite Vietnamese food.
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