Let's Go!
Travel, tours and fun itinerary ideas around southeast asia Written by and photography by Meg Sine April is Songkran in Thailand, the Buddhist New Year Festival also celebrated in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. While young people (and tourists) engage in friendly water-throwing battles, their elders go to temple to make offerings and gently sprinkle water as a blessing. However, if getting alternately sunburned and soaked is not your thing, April is a great month to visit Vietnam. This vibrant slice of Southeast Asia has rebuilt itself from a divided country and decades of war into a thriving tourist economy in one generation. Today, visas are electronic, airline connections are numerous and English is widely spoken. Vietnam is nearby, a great value for the dollar and a great holiday destination.
phò and fresh baguette? Our first meal was a bowl of richly flavored broth, fresh herbs and satisfying beef. This iconic Vietnamese meal is truly the best of East meets West! My favorite place in Hue was the XQ Embroidery Museum. Impossibly delicate silk thread and the finest of stitches make the museum’s embroideries look like the brush strokes of a painting. It’s not uncommon for this kind of artistry, a 700-year old tradition, to take six to eight embroiderers several months to finish one masterpiece.
Having already made several trips to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, my husband and I decided to visit the central part of Vietnam. We were eager to try more fantastic food, witness some recent history, tour imperial tombs and temples, relax at a beach and find places without an endless tide of motor scooters!
A pho-tastic typical Vietnamese meal
Meg and a local woman at Tien Mu Pagoda
If you haven’t experienced Vietnam outside of the two main cities, consider this itinerary: Hue and Hoi An via Da Nang.
We took a dragon boat tour down the Perfume River to Tien Mu Pagoda, a 17th century, seventiered Buddhist temple. While there, I met a local woman who wore a red ao dai to pay homage to the celestial lady for whom the pagoda is named.
Hue, Vietnam’s ancient imperial capital, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We flew into Da Nang, central Vietnam’s modern gateway, and connected to Hue by train. We stayed at the Saigon Morin Hotel, a charming and stately colonial era building on the south bank of Hue’s Perfume River. The hotel offers a full menu of local tours. Peaceful lanes of shops, many restaurants and genuinely friendly local people lie within walking distance. What could be better than a breakfast or lunch of -- 14 --
Tien Mu Pagoda also contains an unusual modern relic – the car a local monk drove to Saigon in 1963 to call international attention to government oppression of Buddhists. The monk set himself on fire, and a photo of his body encased in flames next to the car instantly became iconic. A short distance from Hue are the royal tombs of the emperors who built Hue’s massive, 19th century Bamboo Telegraph - Mar/Apr 2020
