Who is to blame for disappointing Vietnam trips?

When your trip to Vietnam ends up as an unsatisfying and disappointing journey, should you blame the country for its troubled tourism, or yourself for lacking adequate planning while having too many unrealistic expectations?

Lani Nguyen argued in a piece recently published by Tuoi Tre News that travelers should blame themselves, provoking both for and against feedback from other readers.

Here are excerpts, edited for clarity purposes, from a few of the comments we have received.

MANUEL M.

I agree with the author about the rewarding experiences if you put more time and effort into your Vietnam trip.

I too have had the best experiences off the beaten track, and unlike many other visitors, I think Vietnam is still my favorite country in Southeast Asia. I'd gladly return any time with my experience.

But it can't be denied that in comparison with neighboring ASEAN countries, Vietnam has some grave issues in terms of scams and a lack of action on the part of tourism authorities.

Of course these issues need time to be resolved, but bear in mind that even Myanmar, which only opened itself a few years ago for mass tourism, already has a better reputation among tourists and backpackers.

CHUCK

The problem with tourism in Vietnam is not the tourist...

Yes, your first experience when you arrive at the airport are cheating taxis and bus drivers trying to scam as much money from tourists as possible. (Yeah that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.)

Ho Chi Minh City is full of tourist traps. But don't get me wrong – I love Vietnam, yet tourism is not one of its strengths.

You get everything, from meters not working on taxis to over the top pushy salespeople selling China’s low quality products (especially in Ben Thanh Market). If you are a tourist in the city, you pretty much have a big red bullseye on your back.

Vietnam is a welcoming country for the most part, but scams are one of the problems.

The others are that Vietnam is not a hub of technology and definitely not a place for luxuries.

Tourists visit the country to see and experience the history that does not get a terrible rendition of a top-tier luxury destination.

TUNG DANG

How about letting tourists walk safely through sidewalks without being run into by a bunch of mopeds?

It was nearly impossible to traverse the cities without mopeds running and honking behind you on the sidewalk as well as from all directions when crossing the street.

I could not even hold my wife's hand when walking.

And all of this occurs even though traffic cops are on every corner (Is that too hard to use traffic fine revenue to fix broken sidewalks?).

No wonder no tourist wants to come back, it is impossible to look at the scenery when you have to look in all directions just for safety.

Is it too hard to enforce traffic laws, educate locals on keeping order, or keep the streets clean?

If the country wants to improve tourism, just look at the environment in which these tourists have to go through first.

Clean that up and you'll have tourists give good ratings. Nevertheless, this may all be bad ideas for me, as I enjoy traveling when there're not too many tourists around.

JAKE

It is easy to blame the tourists, but it is impossible to change the tourists.

It is more useful to look at what can be changed inside Vietnam.

What really matters is that those same tourists will go to Thailand, Europe, Australia, and the Americas with the same mindset that they had in Vietnam and have a great time.

I think one of the biggest issues is the tour groups.

Vietnam's tourist industry is heavily geared towards putting people into tour groups and then trying to get as much money as they can from those groups without focusing on the quality of the tours.

There is a complete lack of innovation in the tour groups and no one seems to focus on quality.

The tour companies use the same techniques with foreigners as they do to Vietnamese, even though their cultural expectations about customer service and tourism are very different.

Ripping tourists off and trying to overcharge them for things are also a major issue that is not being adequately addressed.

When a tourist's very first experience with Vietnam is getting ripped off by a taxi driver at the airport, you can't expect that not to have an impact on their trip in Vietnam.

Travel tips for your trip to Vietnam

Choose your destination depend on time of year you want to travel to Vietnam

Stretching over 2500 km along the coast, weather in Vietnam varies from the North to the South. Travelling between November and February is the great time to visit all the places along the country as it is winter in Vietnam. During this time, the weather in the North is colder than the rest of the year, with the temperature similar to autumn in the Western countries while dry season with warm sunshine starts in the South. In addition, there are many special festivals and celebrations during this time such as Christmas, Lunar New Year and others interesting folk activities which add more color and excitement to the cities. However, the festival time also means that the price of transportation tickets, hotels, and others services at this time often go up dramatically. Southern Vietnam, in the opposite side, does not have winter. This part of the country enjoys a warm climate all year around, with temperature ranging from 22 to 34 Celsius Degrees. From March to June, you had better choose to visit Vietnam beaches in the Centre and South Vietnam to enjoy the clear sky, shining sunshine and gentle sea wave. Storm season in the Centre and rainy season in Mekong Delta starts in July and last until October. Be prepared for heavy rain and flood if you are planning to travel during this time.

Prepare Vietnam visa prior to the trip

There is no visa on arrival to Vietnam. You need to apply from Vietnamese Embassy in your country or contact with authorized online agent to get “letter of approval” before taking the flight to Vietnam. With the first option, you need to go to the nearest Embassy or Consulate or send your passport by post to them. The process may take a month and if approved, visa will be stamped on your passport. The advantage of this option is that you do not have to queue at their VOA counter when arriving airports. The disadvantages for me are the inconvenience of travelling to the Vietnamese Embassy which located in capital and the fear of losing my passport when it is sent by post. The second option is to use service of a travel agent in Vietnam, fill some forms and get the approval letter in one or two days. With this letter, you need to queue and present it to VOA counter and they will stamp Vietnam visa on your passport. I find this option is safer and easier for me as every step I can do online, no worrisome of losing my passport and shorter time to get my visa. I use and get what I want. The only annoying thing is the long queue at the custom window. My advice is that depend on your situation; choose the option that better suit you.

Consider whether you want to travel alone or book a tour

With the boom of tourist stream to Vietnam in the last 10 years, there are hundreds of travel companies in Vietnam. My advice to first-time travelers is to travel as part of a tour to avoid common tourist traps, such as being scammed, being overcharged, or even getting lost. A realizable travel agent also can help you arrange your flights, accommodations and tell you the history/ specialties of the place you visit. Do not choose randomly. Contact a number of tour providers, read reviews on travel websites about them, and rely on the speed and helpfulness of their replies to evaluate standard of their service quality. “Better safe than sorry”!

If you decide to travel alone, make a detail plan before you go. Vietnam is a safe country, however, like everywhere in the world, tourists are vulnerable to pickpocket, rip off, … Just keep important things (wallet, passport, travelling tickets,… ) close to you like you do at home and accept that most of the time, you will have to pay higher price than the local. Sometimes the difference will be nominal, other times it will not. Before using any service, ask for price first and try to bargain. It is your right, your choice! Be prepared that things will go wrong. Vietnam is not a developed country like ours. Trains and planes normally never depart and arrive on time. Traffics are crazy. But come on, isn’t it what you expect when visiting an Asian country? Come there with a smile and an open mind, it will be ok at the end.

20 Items Every Girl Should Bring When Traveling

No matter on  what kind of trip you are going, and whether it is you’re going for a weekend, a week, a month or a year.. there are some items a girl is just allowed to bring with her, wherever it is you’re going and whenever you are going!
The Amity Smile Travel suggest 20 items girls shouldn’t forget to bring with her when going away, so after reading this article you won’t get the chance to ever.. ever forget any of these items anymore!
1. Daycream – to avoid dry skin in airplanes and take care of your skin when you are away
2. Good shampoo and conditioner – even while traveling we can’t afford bad-hair days!
3. A pocketknife – when there is no man with us to save the day we should bring a pocketknife with us.. always comes in handy!
4. Tv series – to keep up with everything we follow at home
5. Lipstick – for a night out or during the days, don’t forget to pack up at least one pair of lipstick!
6. Sunglasses – you always need them when you forget them, so to prevent moments like this you better pack up your sunglasses too
7. Good walking shoes – I know those boots look amazing with that outfit – but you’re going to regret if you don’t bring good walking shoes with you, trust me
8. Razors  – I’m that girl who always forget to pack a razor and I always end up thinking ‘god, I wish I packed that!’
9. Make-up remover – again something you easily forget!
10. Tampons – you know why.. better bring them
11. A notebook & pen – always useful
12. A good book – during flights, during hotel nights and during (when traveling solo) dinner.. a good book is your friend
13. Lip balm – I also tend to forget this a lot but I always end up needing it!
14. Portable battery charger – you don’t want to end up alone in a foreign country with a dead phone battery
15. Flip-flops – useful when sleeping in a hostel or hotel with shared bathrooms, useful when you have painful blisters, useful when the weather is good.. actually flip-flops are always useful!
16. Magazine – catch up on the latest trends while waiting for your flight at the airport
17. Activewear – you never know when you end up on a beautiful location where you feel like jogging
18. Travel-size straightener, curling iron, or hairdryer – again; no need for bad hair days
19. One dress outfit – you never know if you end up going out, having fancy dinners or maybe end up having a date!
20. The usuals – and of course we know to bring our camera, phone, chargers, daily make-up items, clothes, underwear and maybe our laptop

7 Ways to extend your trip when the money runs out

Backpacking overseas is the dream of many 20-something females. Truth is that you’ll fall in love with all that you see and want to do nothing more than stay longer and longer, and to see more and more. Other truth is that your credit-card probably has a limit just as your savings. We all want to travel as long as we can, and as much as we can but sometimes it is just not possible. However: obviously there are a few tricks you should know so you can travel more. Amity Smile Travel would like to suggest 7 ways to you as below!

1,Volunteer – I never heard of this (form of volunteering) before, but it was a big thing at the hostel I stayed at in Budapest: you volunteer in a hostel and work during the pub-crawls the hostel organizes. For doing that you can stay at the hostel for free. Fun, easy and cheap! Other forms of volunteering that will save you money: animal care in Costa Rica, building houses in Africa, cleaning in hostels and hotels and teaching English in Asia. The best thing about volunteering (and working; see below) is that you are able to stay longer in one specific destination and learn much more about it!

2, Work – Obviously you can also just work for your money so you can travel longer. However, you do need to know whether you are going to work before leaving on a road trip, because that requires you to have another visa. So, be careful with working when you don’t have a work-visa. You could seriously get in trouble for that.  You can basically work in a lot of places. Like on a farm, as a cleaning lady or in a restaurant. The more fun things are the seasonal jobs like a summer camp in the USA, working in an apres-ski bar in Switzerland or Austria or working on a ski resort in Canada or work in tourism during summer in New Zealand.

3, Budget – Obviously. As fun as it is to eat out every night, to do everything imaginable and to splurge on hotels, it isn’t the best thing to do when you want to travel longer. So keep the budget: stay in hostels, couch surf, or stay at a friends house and prepare meals at home, make choices in what you want to do and what not and fly with budget airlines only or go by train and bus.

Set a budget as well. This is basically the best thing to do when you travel. It makes it so much more easy to stick with a budget and to make choices in what you want to and don’t want to do.

4, Work from your laptop – Accept freelancing jobs, maintain a blog or fill in surveys to make money. It all are small amounts of money but hey.. everything helps if you want to travel! This is also easier said than done, but the earlier you start looking for freelancing jobs the more you will earn in a year time.

5, Find promotions and discounts – A lot of museums have free opening hours. For example, museums in New York are free at Friday morning or Friday night and museums in Budapest are free to enter every third Saturday of the month – every city has benefits like this and they will save you a lot of money if you know these free opening hours! Also, check your hotel for free city maps, folders and city guides. These are mostly filled with promotional discounts for restaurants, hotels and entree fees! Google also knows a lot of discounts;-)

6, Get rid of monthly payments – Already traveling for 6 months and still have your mobile phone subscription? Get rid of it! You probably don’t call anyone anyway because of the additional fees with oversees calls. As long as you have a phone number and wifi you are ok! Also: choose the cheapest deal for travel insurance, lend your car to someone or sell it, or even rent out your house!

7, Ask locals and other backpackers – 1+1 = 3 and every local and every backpacker has tips on how to save money and travel longer. Learn from each other and find out how you can lengthen your own stay!

The best suggestion for perfect trip to Vietnam

From the island-studded seas of the north to the meandering waterways of the south, Vietnam is a country defined by the diversity of its land and the resilience and generosity of its people. Amity Smile Travel shows you how to take the perfect trip to Vietnam.

1. Hanoi: best for city life

                                  Fruit seller heading to market.

It’s rush hour in Hanoi, and the streets of the city’s Old Quarter throng with hundreds of scooters. The pavement and the central reservation are fair game in the chaos; zebra crossings exist more as a personal challenge than a guarantee of safe passage. Hanoi is a city that refuses to grow old gracefully – a millennium-old capital of crumbling pagodas and labyrinthine streets, now undergoing a werewolf-like transformation into a 21st-century Asian metropolis. In the Old Quarter, ancient temples now neighbour karaoke joints, and dynasties of artisans ply their trade next to shops selling cuddly toys the size of grizzly bears.

2. Halong Bay: best for coast

The mystical landscape of Halong Bay, where over 2000 limestone islets rise from the Gulf of Tonkin.

Once upon a time, a friendly dragon lived in the heavens above Halong Bay. With invaders from the seas threatening Vietnam, the gods asked the dragon to create a natural barrier to protect its people. The dragon kindly obliged, performing a spectacular crash landing along the coast – digging up chunks of rock with its flailing tail and spitting out pearls – before grinding to a halt. This scene of devastation is now known as Halong Bay – Halong literally translates as ‘where the dragon descends into the sea’.

Less exciting explanations of this landscape involve eons of erosion by winds and waves – but nobody disputes the splendor of the end result. Rising from the shallows of the Gulf of Tonkinare thousands of limestone islands – towering monoliths lined up like dominoes, some teetering at worrying angles. The islands’ names testify to the overactive  imaginations of sailors who’ve spent too long at sea – Fighting Cock Island, Finger Island, Virgin Grotto. Having largely resisted human settlement, the islands have become home to other creatures. From above, sea eagles swoop down to pluck fish from the waters, carrying their prey – still flapping – high into the air, and squawking congratulations to each other from their nests

3. Sapa: best for walking

                                           Ripening paddies near Sapa

An evening fog hangs over Sapa. Clouds sporadically open up a bit to reveal a village, a chunk of a mountain, a patch of jungle, before obscuring them from view again, like stage scenery sliding into the wings. Eventually the clouds lift, and the Hoang Lien mountain range emerges. It is a landscape of extraordinary beauty – the Asian highlands half-remembered from childhood picture books and martial-arts films. Above are peaks thick to their summits with greenery. Below, rice terraces run down the hillsides at right angles, as neatly as the folds in origami paper.

Sapa is a town where the weather seems to operate on random rotation – switching between brilliant sunshine, thick fog, driving rain and occasionally a dusting of snow, before coming full circle to brilliant sunshine, often all within the space of a few minutes. A hill station settled by Vietnam’s French colonists, Sapa now serves as a trailhead for hikers happy to run the meteorological lottery of a walk in these mountains. 

4. Hoi An: best for food

                                            A demonstration Cooking Class

Hoi An is a small town that likes a big breakfast. As dawn musters strength on the horizon, a small army of chefs sets to work on Thai Phien street – firing up gas cookers and arranging plastic furniture on the pavements. Soon, the city awakes to sweet porridges; coffee that sends a lightning bolt of caffeine to sleepy heads; sizzling steaks; broths that swim with turmeric, chilli and ginger. In Vietnam, street food is a serious business – a single dish prepared day after day by the same cook, perfected and honed by a lifetime’s craft.

‘Food in Hoi An is about yin and yang,’ explains Le Hanh, a young female chef scrutinising vegetables at the morning market. ‘It’s about balancing hot with cool, sweet with sour, salty with spicy.’ True to Hanh’s philosophy, cooking in Hoi An goes big on contrasting flavours; food that plays good cop/bad cop with the palate. The sharpness of fish sauce blends with the subtlety of fresh herbs; cool lemongrass makes way for the eye-watering panic of accidentally chomping on a red chilli.

5 Mekong Delta: best for river life

             Watermelons being offloaded at Cai Rang floating market.

A heavy rain is falling on the Mekong Delta, flooding the footpaths, swilling in the gutters, turning riverbank mud from light tan to a rich coffee colour. A tangled network of rivers, tributaries and canals, the waters of the delta criss-cross the lowlands of southern Vietnam, before emptying out into the South China Sea through mighty, yawning estuaries. For centuries, life here has ebbed and flowed in tandem with the current of the Mekong – an all-in-one launderette, bathtub, highway, toilet, dishwasher, larder, social club and workplace for the communities surrounded by its waters.

‘If you live on a river island with twenty other people you have to learn to get along with everyone,’ explains Mrs Nguyen, beckoning strangers to shelter in her bungalow beside the Cai Chanh canal. ‘That’s the reason why people in the Mekong are so friendly!’ A 77-year-old who attributes her longevity to a lifetime avoiding doctors, Mrs Nguyen wistfully reflects on the delta of old – in days when the only artificial light came from peanut oil lamps dotted along the riverbanks; an age long before roads had reached the villages. Times have changed. However, human life still instinctively congregates on the water’s edge. Lining the riverbank nearby are grocers’ shops, cafés, a gym, a billiards club and a blacksmith’s. Floating markets, too, are still held every morning at nearby Cai Rang – with creaking barges from across the delta bashing into each other as they offload cargoes of watermelons, pineapples and turnips.

13 Things we tend to forget to pack for our trips

‘God, how I wish I brought … with me.’ Is a sentence that crosses my mind far too many times when I go abroad. Situations like this follow up with a shopping trip to buy everything I forgot, which results in having loads of unnecessary items when I return back home. I have bottles and bottles of sunscreen, bug-sprays and small shampoos I bought at trips because I needed them. Bad thing is that I used all of that stuff for just one or two days and never again after that moment – as I forget to pack it for next trips and buy them again and again. As a budget traveler this shouldn't happen so often, and that is why Amity Smile Travel made this list, for you and for me.

1,Umbrella: I have like 6 umbrellas at home – all bought at locations I traveled to. An umbrella is something you can’t do without when you need it; especially when you are planning to spend the complete day outside. So make sure to check for rain before you leave your home, so you know if to pack an umbrella or not.

2,Laundry bag: For a short weekend trip a laundry bag can be forgotten, but when you are going away for longer than three days you’ll definitely need one to separate clean from dirty in your suitcase

3,Band aids: After you got your first blister or scratch you know you wished you brought band aids – always pack them.. even if it are only one or two!

4,Flip-flops: How easy are flip-flops while traveling? I always forget these, but after entering a hostel with shared bathrooms I always wish I’d brought them with me. Never again.

5,Bug-spray: No explanation needed, you know why and when you want bug-spray

6,Sunscreen: You also know why;-)

7,Tampons: Yes ladies, there are countries (and area’s in some countries) where you can’t buy tampons – so you know why you need to bring them yourself!

8,Universal plug adapter: Buying them at home is way cheaper than buying them at the airport or at your hotel – they know you need one so why not make it expensive? And when you can’t find or buy them at your destination.. you’re basically screwed.

9,Medicins: How about painkillers, or maybe pills for car / flight / sea sickness? Know what you need (or the person you are traveling with), and bring a few… just in case.

10,A copy of your travel documents: Always, always, always bring a copy of your travel documents with you. In case you’re wallet got stolen or you loose your flight tickets you praise yourself lucky that you brought a copy of everything. Include copies from: passport, drivers license, insurances, bookings and flight tickets, your birth certificate, credit cards, and visa.

11,A pen and notebook: I bring my handbag with me that I always use. For some reason I don’t have a pen in that handbag, so I tend to forget to pack it when I go traveling. A pen and a notebook are always easy to have with you so don’t forget them!

12,Sunglasses: Sometimes you don’t think about bringing your sunglasses and sometimes you just forget them. Don’t! You’ll never know when you might need them!

13,Extra memory cards: How bad would you feel when you see something you MUST photograph, but your camera is full? I know you would be bummed out and that is why you should always bring enough memory cards with you.