RTW Weeks 47-50: Vietnam

Hi friends! In the interest of catching up on these posts and wrapping up the trip (sad!), this “weekly” wrap-up is actually going to cover almost a month: our entire time in Vietnam. We’ll still be sharing more travel guides and stories on this blog in the coming weeks and months (if you want to see anything specific, please let us know in the comments!), but for now, here are some quick highlights from the final country of our RTW trip.

This (multi-)weekly wrap-up covers our journey from February 25 to March 18. (Thanks for giving us an extra day on this trip, Leap Day!) We arrived in Vietnam on February 25 and spent a few days in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) before taking another bus (our first semi-sleeper!) to the mountain town of Da Lat on Friday, Feb. 28. After a week drinking coffee and enjoying cooler weather in Da Lat, we headed to Hoi An on the central coast on March 6, then met Jonathan’s parents in Da Nang on March 12. We split our time with Jonathan’s parents between Da Nang and Hoi An until March 18, when we all left Vietnam via air.

Jonathan’s parents flew straight back to California, as planned before COVID-19 disrupted everyone’s travel plans, but we (Jonathan & Megan) didn’t actually arrive back in the United States until March 21 (!). That’s a long story, so we’ll share it in a future post. In the meantime, here are our quick highlights from Vietnam:

Favorite thing we ate: Jonathan really enjoyed the whole fried tilapia with spicy mango we ate as part of our food tour in Da Nang [above left]. Megan loved the bánh căn we had for breakfast on our last morning in Da Lat: small rice pancakes with fried quail eggs inside, served with a bowl of green onion broth [above right].

Favorite thing we drank: We both could not get enough Vietnamese iced coffee! All over the country, the cold Vietnamese coffee is iced coffee with condensed milk, but the sweetness varies depending on where you are. It was all delicious, in our humble opinion. We also enjoyed egg coffee, which originated in the 1940s when a barista made coffee with whipped egg whites instead of milk because of wartime supply shortages. [Above left: Brunch with iced coffee at The Old Compass Cafe and Bar in Ho Chi Minh City; above right: egg coffee and iced coffee at Still Cafe in Da Lat.]

Favorite thing we did: Continuing the coffee theme, Megan loved exploring so many charming coffeeshops in Da Lat [and drinking coffee at all of them, including Delycious by Cent pictured above left]. Honestly, we probably visited two to four coffeeshops every day. (Yes, there will be a dedicated guide to Da Lat cafes coming soon at some point!) Jonathan’s favorite part of visiting Vietnam was meeting up with his parents in Da Nang and Hoi An. [Above right, he’s holding (some of) the snacks they brought for us! Haha.] Luckily we were able to get their trip in before borders started closing! (His parents were literally in the air when the WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic, which was quickly followed by closing borders all over the world.)

Biggest splurge: As with so many places we’ve visited this year, our “splurges” in Vietnam were relative: Yes, they were big-ticket items, but they were also amazing value, especially compared to California standards. Most of our splurges were in Hoi An and included ordering custom-made clothes (a button-up men’s shirt or a casual women’s dress cost around $25 USD, as an example), enjoying a four-hour spa treatment at La Spa for Megan’s birthday ($107 each), and staying at La Siesta Hoi An Resort & Spa (one of our favorite hotels of the entire trip; it was $60/night and they upgraded us to a sweet junior suite, which runs $300+ in high season).

Best deal: Vietnam is pretty affordable overall (as seen from the great deals on our “splurge” items above), but some of our cheapest meals were thanks to the delicious street food in Da Lat, including our bánh căn [breakfast for two was 84k VND ~ $3.61, above left] and bánh mì xíu mại [meatball soup for two was only $1.20, above right].

What we’re reading: Jonathan finished Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, listened to We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled by Wendy Pearlman, read The Dilemma by B.A. Paris with Megan (publishes June 30), and started My Lovely Wife. Megan finished listening to How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir by Saeed Jones and started A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross. This post covers almost an entire month, so here’s a list of all the other books Megan read on her Kindle:
• Lakewood by Megan Giddings (which made it onto her list of top 10 anticipated spring reads)
• Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai (a sweet middle-grade novel about a Vietnamese girl who relocates to the United States during the war)
• Sea Wife by Amity Gaige (about a family who leaves their home to live on a sailboat for a year, publishes April 28)
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (so good! even better than Bennett’s debut, which Megan also loved; publishes June 2)
• The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian (partially set in Vietnam, had an unexpected medical storyline that was kind of creepy to read in current times!)
• Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (one of the best short story collections Megan has ever read; she liked every story!)
• Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption edited by Daniel Jones (collection of NYT columns, read for Megan’s virtual book club)
• Finally, Megan started Severance by Ling Ma (about a pandemic that starts in China and decimates the entire world) because she likes making poor reading choices

What we’re watching: We binged Harlan Coben’s The Stranger on Netflix while in Da Lat and loved it.

Total walking distance: 94.29 miles (average 28.7 miles/week; we walked a lot in HCMC & Da Lat, and not much at all in Hoi An & Da Nang)

Up next: The end! We’ll be sharing the full story of our return to the United States (hopefully) soon, but if you can’t wait, check out Megan’s Instagram story highlight in the meantime.

Featured image: Colorful street in the Ancient Town of Hoi An, Vietnam