US news website names Hanoi among 13 best places to visit in March

Vietnam plus ^ | VNA Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - 8:14:00

[cba123]

As winter's cold grip loosens on Hanoi, the city has been named one of the ideal travel destinations for March by American-based Business Insider.

(please see the link, for the full article)

[Cronos]

In a world that should be, the city would still be Saigon???

Hanoi was the name before the communists. Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh city

[PAR35]

In a world that should be, the city would still be Saigon.

Wrong. On both geography and history.

[To Hell With Poverty]

Very nice! My son’s best friend is Vietnamese (parents and grandma are recent immigrants). The boys are 3rd graders at our little Catholic school, even though his family are Buddhist. They are wonderful people and spoil my son rotten most weekends with trips to see movies and Chuck E Cheese. Their son is an only child so they treat our son like he’s theirs. It’s cute seeing the boys assert that they’re really “brothers” (my son is blonde, lol). I’m hoping that someday when they’re older they might take him to Vietnam with them for a visit.

[ThanhPhero]

You should go back for a visit. It is a great place for a vacation, whether you like to do tours or just travel about and talk to people. They all love Americans.

[ThanhPhero]

This year there are many more cars than there were even two years ago. The cars get bollixed up in traffic jams and the scoots just ride around them and keep going. Once upon a time the cars were categorically dangerous. That was when cars were all foreign diplomats and government officials. Now they are almost all ex scooter drivers and they fit into the traffic smoothly and safely, except for the part where they get frozen up and can’t move for 20 minutes. Even the buses have gotten easier to deal with. What helps is there is nothing like road rage. There is no competition. No one cuts anyone off or runs up past someone else just to be ahead of someone. The showoffs do it by gutting their mufflers and making their little scoots sound like there is something terribly wrong in the motor. Most scoots are very quiet.

[ThanhPhero]

The Vietnamese are different from other Asians from other southeast Asians. They are culturally individualistic and for 3000 years have insisted on their differences and their own culture vis-a-vis the Chinese who ruled Việt Nam for a millennium. The local Chinese officials and bureaucrats became after a couple of generations Vietnamese and were more trouble for the overlords. Communism is incompatible with Vietnamese chuture. It is a French import and very foreign. The Communists may last for a few more decades but they will either collapse eventually or just dissipate as the Communists become real indigenous Vietnamese. It is happening even now.That is part of the reason that capitalism is doing so well. Capitalism fits Vietnamese culture and when the Communists let it go it took off. It is not like China where the government, specifically the army, joined into the Capitalist venture and the Communists keep real control of the phenomenon. A lot of the internet controls and suchlike are in place in Việt Nam but are easily evaded by people and the government does not really seem to care.

The Vietnamese, even most of the government, are Americophiles. Clinton and Bush leaned constantly on Hà Nội to ease up on the controls and Hà Nội continually eased restrictions. Speech became pretty much free at street and coffeeshop level. The travel restrictions pretty much disappeared. They are still there "on paper" but are mostly ignored. Obama hates Việt Nam because of its affinity for America and Americans. He cold shouldered Việt Nam and the government backslid some. There came more conflict with the Catholicsand the Buddhists. speech was restricted political arrests became much more common. I see this year that things have become more relaxed again so Trump is either leaning on them properly a la Bush and Clinton or the Việts qre anticipating it and trying again to buddy uup to America.

[Cronos]

I fully agree with you that communism is incompatible with Vietnamese culture. the vietnamese here in Warsaw are very hard working and trustworthy and individualistic. Good people

[ThanhPhero]

If America had followed up on its tremendous victory in 1968, unification would have followed shortly and the Communists would all have fled to Russia and China. As it is the Vietnamese are naturally dealers and businessmen. The Catholics lead the new business attitude when the Government decided that collectivism doesn't work and tried something else as the Vietnamese, even the Việt Communists do, unlike the Russians and the East Europeans. The Catholics quickly became the Business Class because Christians and Jews are the only people on earth who can do trade and business outside of clans and families. If a Jew and a Christian make a deal each has a reasonable expectation that the other will keep his end of the bargain. They trust each other. That is almost purely a J-C characteristic. In every other culture that is not true. Everything is taken advantage of for the clan One does not tell true information to any outsider. Deals are cheated on or perverted for the immediate benefit of the clan.

The Buddhists, especially the Mahayana variety are practical people and when they see the Christians succeeding with Trust and Integrity they imitate and do it too. Việt Nam is visibly more prosperous every time I go back at short or long intervals. It is becoming t a Judaeo-Christian culture in some respects even while not having more than maybe 10 or 11 % Christians and almost no Jews.

[ThanhPhero]

Most of the folks where I stay, midway between Nha Trang and Cam Ranh call it Sài Gòn. They use HCM for what are now the outskirts of Sài Gòn and thus not Sài Gòn proper. HCM is ever so much larger than just Sài Gòn and includes several what once were separate cities with miles of rice land between them. TPHCM is organized as a tỉnh- a province- rather than as just a city. I remember great expanses of rice land and marsh stretching to the north of the very definite edge of Thủ Đức on the north side of Sài Gòn. All that emptiness is streets and factories and large buildings now.

[ThanhPhero]

Việt Nam has already had some massive Catholic demonstrations in Hà Nội itself. They were repressed but without nearly the violence of Tien An Men. Some people went to jail and the people were horrified that two or three individuals died, at least one of them accidentally. The government said little about it and individual officials apologized quietly. They are Vietnamese, not Chinese, a very different thing. If you are intnerested watch the you tube Lecture series on the History of Việt Nam by Professor Stephen Young HERE. you will find out who the Vietnamese really are. They in some respects are much more like Americans in cultural attitudes than are any other Asians. They are individualists.

[ThanhPhero]

Việt Nam is the safest place in the world for a young American woman to travel alone. I took my daughter with me twice in 03 and 07 and she traveled all over the south From Huế to Ben Trê by herself on buses and trains or as pickup rides on the back seats of motorbikes. She was amazed. She felt much safer than she would have in Massachusetts. If she needed directions she would approach someone maybe on the street. If that someone had no English his immediate necessity became finding someone who spoke some English, maybe a cảnh sát (police) and they would put her on the right street or get her to the train station, probably after stopping at a quán cà phê for coffee..

[ThanhPhero]

Take him there yourself when he is ten. You will love it. That is old enough for him to notice and enjoy the differences. Cut his school for a month in January and go.If you can arrange to go with the friends that would be exceptional, perhaps, if you can, pay for the friends to go. They have all the family connections there to make it easy and very pleasant.

[going hot]

Thanks for the update.

It was a beautiful area in 1969.

Flew in there twice while moving troops and stuff for the SF camp located there.

If memory serves, there was a french owned bar downtown, actually went in and had a 33.

Really curious, there was a small base px there, where I purchased the Abbey Road album!

If I ever go back for a visit, it will likely be my destination.

[Rebelbase]

I want to visit there just for the food alone.

[ThanhPhero]

The Viêtnamese see the Communists very much as they saw the Chinese way back when. Some say they are waiting for a new Triêu Âu or Hai Bà Trưng, the ladies who twice in history led revolts that temporarily ran off the Chinese overlords.

[ThanhPhero]

GO! Go in January or February when the weather is very pleasant or if you like summer go then. I love Vi39t Nam, in small part because a month there always feels like two or three months or more and I love every minute of it. At my age it is like God gives me back some time. When I go for a month or two I try to take around three thousand dollars. You don’t need that much unless you stick to Western or Japanese lux hotels which is foolish. I found way back when that a little bit of money can do worlds of good for people in VN and I rarely have even a dollar left in my pocket when I get back on that airplane. I am determined to leave it all there. I admit that part of the joy in being in VN is that I am a rich man among peoople who love Americans for a month and when I go back to Florida I am a less than prosperous old fart security guard at a beach resort.

[ThanhPhero]

33 is now 333 and it is a standard Bud type beer that is quite consistent from can to can or bottle to bottle, not like it was in 69. I was at TSN and Pleiku in 68-69. My friends always insist on stocking up on Tiger beer when I come. I hate that. It is indistinguishable, at least to me, from Saigon beer or 333 and costs a lot more. I don’t like them spending money on me but it is bad form altogether to protest and I give it all back in one form or another, anyway.

[going hot]

In 69, I as stationed at Phu Hiep. Our range was from Tuy Hoa up To Qui Nhon, up route 19 to Anh Ke, then Pleiku, then south to Banme Thuet, then back across to Tuy Hoa. Did visit Nha Trang once, and Kontum.

There was a place west of Tuy Hoa, up the river, where there was a literally a waterfall of orchids over a cliff where the water flowed.

Some of the most beautiful scenery and views, from sea shores at small fishing villages to high mountain scenery.

It was sad so many died, on all three sides.

[To Hell With Poverty]

That would be a great goal. It has always struck me as an amazingly beautiful place, both in terrain and people.

Does anyone there speak French? I know it’s the old colonial language but if it is still understood in some areas, or used in signs or menus, that would make it a little easier for us, since I did very very well with it back in high school. At least as another option if there were no English speakers around. :)

[redcatcherb412]

That would be a great goal. It has always struck me as an amazingly beautiful place

It was difficult to see any beauty in the land or the people as you were being fired on and calling in arty to blow the hell out of the people shooting at you. The millions that served over there from 63 to 73 probably didn't get to the beautiful views.