Goodbye Vietnam!
Our last morning in Vietnam was spent, of all places, at an ex-pat restaurant in Tay Ho (West Lake) called Maison De Tet, eating fresh salad, drinking cold-pressed green juice, and working/reading before our afternoon flight to Siem Reap. I figured I would pull together a list of stats and resources we found helpful as reference in case anyone asks in the future.
568km
BY BUS
1,049km
BY AIR
2,200km
BY MOTO
Resources We Used
Vietnam Back Roads Facebook Group
Other Thoughts
- Tripadvisor mostly sucks for restaurants. We found that restaurants with less than about 300 ratings and 4.5+ stars were the best.
- Even better was just finding hole-in-the-wall places or eating street food. A general rule of thumb we followed was: if there are lots of locals eating there, it's probably delicious.
- Tripadvisor was decent for finding hotels, as is Booking. Generally speaking, we "splurged" for $30/night hotels and found those to be much, much nicer than the $10-15/night ones.
- I usually really like Fodor's guidebooks, but the Vietnam one feels very out of date. It was still useful for history and orientation.
Not exactly the route we took, as Google would only allow 10 stops and didn't acknowledge ferries to/from Cat Ba, but close enough for government work! Our two bus rides were Hue --> Dong Hoi and Phong Nha Ke Bang --> Ninh Binh.
