YOU ARE INVITED during the coming few weeks to join us on this website on our recent tour of the Best of Vietnam, courtesy of Helen Wong’s Tours. Find out what is so captivating about this S-shaped country which has withstood centuries of conflict with grace and dignity.

An early flight (well, we think 7.35am is early!) from Sydney Airport and most of the day in a Cathay Pacific A330 airbus had us landing in Hong Kong, dashing across the terminal (rather, up and down escalators, through checks and via – at one point - can’t remember how and where,  on a fast underground train link) to just connect with a shortish flight to Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon.

By the time we arrived (around 5pm-ish) Vietnam time, three hours before Sydney’s EST, we were ready to stop travelling. Just 40 minutes later we reached our hotel, the Northern Hotel, in the delightful French quarter of HCM city. As we travelled, our guide, Tuan (means ‘handsome boy’, he tell us with a grin) explains some of the nuances of visiting Vietnam.

Day One in Vietnam

Up early the next morning and off to Tay Ninh, a suburb of Ho Chi Minh City, 39km northwest, to see the Cu Chi Tunnels constructed and used by the Viet Cong during the war which in Vietnam is called the American War. This extensive network of over 300 kilometres included all facilities, allowing soldiers to live underground for long periods of time. The Vietnamese people are fine-boned and it was only with difficulty that large western soldiers (or these days, tourists) could fit into the tiny and well-camouflaged holes and pass through the cramped tunnels. It’s easy to gloss over the terror and danger of those years at war, but Tuan shared with us some of his family’s stories which were truly saddening.

Day one in any new place your senses seem to be on high alert. The sights, the sounds, the smells of Ho Chi Minh City had us all agog.

The constant trill of motorcycle horns and the endless crowds of cycles clogging the road at lights or intersections - a sea of helmets punctuated only occasionally by trucks, buses and the rare car. Many cycles carry an entire family with smaller children wedged between parents, presumably for safety. Most riders wear facemasks so as not to inhale the fumes and dust. After all they can usually only travel around 15 kilometres in an hour. Rush hour, we were told is between 7am and 9pm!

On the roadside we sighted French bakeries, a reminder of the many years of French colonisation, piles of durian (that amazing thorny, smelly fruit) women squatting selling noodles on the roadside, children dressed neatly for school.

For English-speakers, the roadside signs on shop fronts are incomprehensible. The signs are all in Vietnamese, of course, and you just have to figure it out by seeing what is on offer. Mostly it’s stacked on the footpath – toilet bowls, tyres, wardrobes, hubcaps, saucepans, birdcages, cane chairs.

After the sadness of the tunnels and memories of war we visited the Cao Dai temple, a place of ecumenical beauty where several major religions – Buddhist, Taoist, Confucianist and Catholic beliefs – are fused and come together in Vietnam’s largest place of worship.

It was difficult to grasp the order of service or what the various leaders or worshippers were doing, but it was a cool and beautiful, peaceful place.

Then, back again to the mayhem of afternoon in HCM City, as we soon abbreviated it, a rest and then dinner in a local restaurant where we had our first of many wonderful Vietnamese meals. We were to become connoisseurs of spring rolls in all their forms, get to appreciate local beers from every city, and understand that once the rice appeared, the long and complex meal was soon to finish - usually topped off only by some fresh fruit.

After a day in which our emotions and senses had been stretched to bursting and we thankfully headed back to our hotel through the still-busy city streets, gasping at the beautiful and gracious floodlit Opera House and Rex Hotel near to our hotel.