Vietnam is a popular destination for backpackers, but also a very different country from Western ones. After travelling from the north to the south we have gained both good and bad experiences and found 7 reasons to visit Vietnam, or maybe go somewhere else.

1. It is cheap

The three expense types we have seen substantially cheaper than elsewhere is food, transportation and accommodation. What else do you really need? As an example we bought dinner at a restaurant for less than $1, travelled by a nice night bus with sleeping seats for 670 km for $8,50 and stayed in a hotel with our own room, private bathroom, bottle water, Internet and breakfast included for a mere $9/night –  for two people. Other expenses are not this cheap, but the typical travel expenses are, making Vietnam an economically good destination (excluding flights).

If you prefer a bit of quality many nice hotels are available at prices way below European prices. A 5 star hotel can be booked for less than $100/night and good restaurants are also way cheaper than in for instance Europe.

2. Many tourist scams

Unfortunately many Vietnamese have a despicable view on tourism. Western people have plenty of money, therefore it is OK to scam them. That’s the attitude of many locals in Vietnam. Taking a taxi unfolds a plethora of scamming possibilities: meters being imported from China running at double speed, people agreeing on a price like 80 (meaning 80 000 VND or $4), but having the taxi driver demand $80 at the destination and people showing the address of the destination on their phone to the driver, only to have the driver – and their phone – run off while they are standing on the sidewalk with nothing. There are numerous scams like this, not only with this, but other means of transportation, “helpful” people and all other scenarios where people see an opportunity to make some dishonest money. That being said, there are plenty of nice, honest and helpful people in Vietnam, but there are still so many touts and scammers that you cannot trust people and hope that this nice person you met is actually nice.

Based on what we have heard from other travellers it is not uncommon that restaurant staff, buss drivers and others say in Vietnamese to others that they are about to scam tourists and use this as entertainment. “I served only half a portion, but I am about to charge double the price!“. Tourist scams are often seen as fun, both by the touts and the other locals and we experienced that some times other locals are in on the scams. On a local bus we were told to pay 60 000 VND for two people, although we knew that the price was only 40 000 VND. After 10 minutes of arguing with the bus driver he walked over to a local lady and asked her to pay. She payed 100 000 and got 40 000 in return. The bus driver showed us this as “proof” that the price was 60 000. We knew that this still was wrong, no way in hell this criminal piece of s%^$ should get our money (that of course will go straight into his pockets and not back to the country). Therefore we stood up and walked towards the exit and opened the door while the bus was moving, indicating that we were tired of this scam and wanted to get off the bus now. All of a sudden 40 000 was an acceptable price. The lady that had paid 60 000? She got 20 000 back immediately and laughed by the fact that they almost managed to scam us. What a despicable attitude.

This problem we felt as so common in Vietnam that we simply do not wish to return here and support a culture this terrible. We are also not the only ones having this view. In Thailand the tourist return rate is 50 %. That is, every second tourist to enter the country comes back some time later in life. How high is this number in Vietnam? 5 %. That is 19 out of 20 tourists never return to Vietnam. Ever. If tourists accept the scams they can keep on as long as they want. The only way to change this is to read up on all the scams and refuse to give in to touts and scammers, as well as avoiding the country until they change their culture to get the tourism back.

3. Food is really good

Food is as already mentioned cheap, but it is also very good. Even in hotels costing a few bucks per night the breakfast may contain noodle soup with pork, fresh fruit and salad or fried eggs (this is far from the best food in Vietnam, but still a lot better than the slices of bread we paid $17 in Svalbard!). If you go on a guided tour with included lunch this is very often a proper lunch with plenty of food, maybe as much as 3-5 different courses served after one another. On a biking trip in Hoi An we were provided lunch at no additional cost. What we got was first salad with shrimps, then spring rolls, followed by pork and finally fruit. In addition to this we got different sauces, water and snacks to each course.

4. Toilets are questionable

As in a large part of the world toilet are ehh… different… from Europe. Most hotels have toilets that Europeans are used to, but the paper is still thrown in bins instead of the toilet. Fair enough, but if you travel outside the cities the toilets are most likely a whole in the ground (known as squatty toilet or squatty potty). If you are in luck you might find some toilet paper, but don’t count on it. Most places have a bin to throw the paper in, but don’t take that for granted either. Last time of cleaning can probably be stated by year some places. There are many good toilets in Vietnam, but if you are the kind of person that panics at the sight of a bad toilet Vietnam will sooner or later give you a rather unpleasant experience.

5. Transportation is super easy – between cities

Vietnam is a long country and requires some travelling to get around. Luckily there are a plethora of busses driving between the largest and most visited cities. You will always find a bus to your next destination and there is an almost unlimited amount of travel agencies that can book you a bus ticket. Almost all hotels and hostels also fix this, even a few restaurants we visited offered this service. “I would like a noodle soup and a flight to Hanoi, please“.

It is worth mentioning that you can usually get a bette price by booking the bus tickets directly from the bus station. Businesses marked with “Tourism Office” or similar are in most cases just places that sell regular bus tickets with an added service charge. Some do however manage the buses themselves, like The Sinh Tourist. We travelled a lot with them in Vietnam and were very happy with the service.

This of course applies to intra-city travel, but getting from street to street within the same city is something very different. The majority of people drive mopeds and they are everywhere. In Hanoi there are 7.5 million people and 3 million mopeds. Subtract the number of people being too young or old to drive a moped and the moped to people ratio is very high. The problem with this is that the Vietnamese do not only drive on the roads, but also on the sidewalk (where they also park) and seem to be especially attracted to going the wrong way on a one-way street. It is impossible to walk on the sidewalk in major cities and even if you walk on the edge of the road you will constantly be met by people trying to get from the road to the sidewalk. Being used to civilised traffic rules this is an insane chaos. It is beyond our understanding why traffic accidents are not happening constantly.

If you make the daring choice of crossing the road the “proper” way of doing this is to just walk into the road and let the mopeds drive by you. They will avoid you, but never stop to let you pass safely. In rush hour traffic this is a very special experience! Although most aspects of Vietnamese driving is utter madness it is truly an experience worth gaining.

All this traffic means that you are never more than a few meters from the nearest taxi. That is practical, given that you are not ripped off, which is the reason why we avoided any form of paid transportation in the cities as often as we could…

6. Backpackerization

Yes, we just invented a new word. Due to the prices Vietnam is a very popular destination for backpackers. That makes a lot of things very practical because everything is made for travellers. However, this also brings along all the downsides of a “well” developed travel destination. Taxi drivers, touts and street vendors constantly bother you with “amazing” offers and creates a very noisy and annoying atmosphere. Sure, it is common to ask if you want to buy something or need a taxi, but when there are 10 taxies parked in a row and they all ask you if you need a ride. No, that’s just stupid. Major cities like Hanoi and Saigon are a bit more “washed out” and provide a more normal feeling than other cities, but you are still regularly asked where you are going (to provide a taxi) and given “amazing” offers.

As an example we visited Hoi An, a city in the center of Vietnam. It is a beautiful city on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list well worth a visit, but the noise and annoyance from the locals was absolutely terrible. We do understand that people want to sell their stuff to make a living, but when politely saying no, they should take that as a no and not a “please give me 15 more offers just in case I change my mind”. After some time we did find a solution to this. The locals might find it funny to scam tourists, but we found it funny to challenge their broken English. Where are we going? To Saigon, of course (was asked in Nha Trang). But we do not need a taxi, we are walking (for those that are not geography nerds, that’s a distance of 434 km and will according to Google take 86 hours to walk non-stop). People who said “I have a room” we politely replied “Good for you, enjoy it!”. It is of course important to be polite and nice when asked by locals, but if they do not take a no for an answer, have some fun with them instead of being angry and annoyed.

7. The culture is different

This time we are talking about positive culture, not scams. Vietnam is located more than 12 000 km from Norway and that made lots of things different for us. It can be for better or worse, but the most important to us was that it was different and fun to experience. It is always fun to arrive at a new place and realise that something you never though about doing in another way is done entirely different. Some of the experiences we had in Vietnam was:

• Food in restaurants are often shared by people in the same group. When Tora and I ordered separate meals we were often supplied additional plates so that we could take food from both meals and put on our plates. This also seems common when ordering a pizza made for one person.
• It is possible to have something that can only be described as transport anarchy without 100 % mortality (27 people die every day in road accidents in Vietnam, but based on the driving we would expect the number to be closer to 90 millions).
• Many cities are influenced by previous history or special groups of visitors from foreign countries. Dalat is a town in the mountains around 1500 meters above sea level, filled with French villas. Nah Trang is a costal town where a huge portion of the tourists are Russian. Many signs are also in Russian (or Russian only) and because we are blond and white we were on numerous occasions addressed in Russian because people assumed that we were Russian…
• Cone hats are not gimmicks, they are dead seriously being used. We do not know what the official name of these cone shaped straw hats are, but we quickly discovered that a large proportion of the locals used the hats during their daily work.
• The money is monopoly money! Remember the game Monopoly and your great success as a millionaire? Well, we got a bar tap of 60 000 and withdrew 3 millions from an ATM. However, $1 is roughly 20 000 VND, so our huge bill at the bar was barely $3 and our millions were only worth $150. At some point you will be confused by the number of zeros on the notes and many prices are written with a big number first, followed by three smaller zeros. Even the locals find the currency ridiculous. Why can’t they just dropp three zeros? Anyway, it is an interesting experience to be in a country where inflation at some point went crazy and see prices that for most people seems absurd.
• It is not compulsory to tip in Vietnam. It is of course not frowned upon to add some money to the bill; however, it is not expected wither. This isn’t different from Norway and some other European countries, but it is different from what we expect when going abroad.
• Many shops have names or street signs in English, but the employees don’t speak a single word English themselves. The English on the signs are also often of the… ehh… interesting kind. As an example the fast food chain Lotteria had this slogan written on their wall (written with letters that looked expensive to produce, obviously putting some money into this): Delicious. Any time, any where in Lotteria. Eating fun. What makes you so happy”. Anyone getting this one?
• Small kids ride the scooters with their parents, but have their own child seats where your legs usually are.

So, in the end, is Vietnam worth visiting? The country offers a lot if you have never been there before and we do really recommend a visit. However, after two weeks we really felt that we were ready to move on. Vietnam does of course have more to see than what we had time for, but why come back when there are so many other counties that we have never visited?