Vietnam is an amazing place to visit. Let’s discuss the things to do in Vietnam.
The Crazy House of Da Lat
Da lat is the capital of Lâm Ðồng province in the central highlands of Vietnam. This city has two nicknames, the first: “the City of Eternal Spring” comes from the fact that the temperature in this region remains stable and never goes below 13 and rarely goes above 27. The second date of the French occupation, when the colonial buildings were built, which still today make it nicknamed “Le Petit Paris”.
A former resting city for the French, Dalat knew what kitsch meant. You will observe on the facades of the hotel’s false ice cubes, a decoration intended to evoke Swiss ski chalets.
In this context, “Hang Nga Guesthouse and gallery” seems almost out of place!
It’s a place everyone here calls “La Maison Folle” or “Crazy House”, and as soon as you see it, you’ll understand why!
Daughter of a former minister of Ho Chi Minh, who later became the second President of Vietnam, Ms. Hang Nga, who became an architect in the Soviet Union, designed her projects for the State for a very long time. And one day, she decides to let her imagination run wild and she brings her dream of creating a villa inspired by nature. To be strange, this house can offer you guest rooms with Crazy shapes, bridges, walkways spanning sculpted branches, giant trees, cobwebs like bed skies, concrete mushrooms, giant and colorful animals, vines, and flowers.
It is both Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit-hole and Hansel and Gretel’s quirky witch houses, with the sleeping princess’ bedroom. In short, a house of fairy tales! Initially, its owner saw it as a personal artistic project, but it quickly became a tourist attraction, thanks to its unconventional design.
To access the rooms you will need to pass under a spider’s web, or cross the neck of a giraffe. Anyway, nothing is “normal”, the windows warp, the ceilings leak, the walls have strange undulations. As for the stairs, you can not understand if you are going up or down. Nothing is rectilinear, everything is rounded, without sharp and brittle right angles. Ant, tiger, pheasant, kangaroo? it’s up to you to choose who you want to spend the night with, even the beds will make you a dream. Each room has a unique decor and, it must be said, crazy.
The Crazy House is open for visits every day but the ultimate experience is obviously to sleep there, the room will be offered to you for around sixty dollars per night.
Ha Long Bay: as in a dream …
Not far from two thousand islands stand out against a backdrop of turquoise water: this enchanting view makes Ha Long Bay one of the top tourist spots in Vietnam.
Located in the north of the country, near the Chinese border, its peculiarity and beauty have earned it a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Rocky outcrops, creeks, caves, all planted with saxifrage, floating fishing villages, with their boats of woven bamboo and their dollhouses in bright colors, set on a smooth sea with changing shades, ranging from deep blue to emerald green according to time and light. The sunsets over Ha Long Bay are particularly spectacular and will leave you with fascinating memories.
The meaning of Ha Long in Vietnamese is the “descent of the dragon”: it is explained by a legend which wants that the dragon, supernatural and beneficent character of this country, descended from the sky that tries to control the sea and, in the battle which he then waged, with his tail tore the mountain into pieces which now level with the surface of the sea which has since risen considerably. Another legend claims that this dragon threw pearls into the sea to defend the country from foreign ships, and these pearls turned into thousands of small islands to prevent the progress of ships.
It is advisable not to visit Ha Long Bay between February and September, in order to avoid the grayness and the rains that envelop it. Many tour operators organize tours over two days aboard a luxury junk, with the discovery of the main places like the islands Ba Trai Dao, Doi Moi and Con Coc, the Sung Sot cave, Thien Cung Cave and Dau Go caves, and Tuan Chau, Minh Chau and Ba Trai Dao beaches. The caves of Sung Sot in particular presents amazing geological formations: limestone formations that the waters have modeled and sculpted in an unexpected way, they are also staged by the projection of multicolored neon lights with surprising effects.
However, you will be surprised by the dozens of boats that circulate on the bay, carrying tourists, and you will probably not be able to prevent you from feeling a certain concern in front of the embankments which come to support the shore of the city of Ha Long in order to allow you to new constructions facing the influx of more and more visitors. It seems that Vietnam is managing this tourist windfall correctly for the moment and that UNESCO is taking care to preserve this extraordinary place.
For now, surrender yourself to the magic of these sumptuous landscapes: steep cliffs, mysterious arches, inland lakes, magnificent flora and fauna, rocks with dreamlike shapes, like those of the “cocks in combat”, or that of the “rock du Chien ”, villages on the water, where children go to school by boat… And enjoy this strange feeling of living a daydream.
Along the Mekong, the magic of a river
The Mekong originates in the Tibetan highlands at an altitude of 5,000 meters, then crosses China, Laos on the border with Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, over a distance of almost 5,000 kilometers. Its name varies according to the countries traveled: Turbulent Waters, Mer des Eaux, Grandes Eaux, Nine Dragons finally when it deviates at the end of the race a delta with nine arms. The nature of its course varies, from a peaceful expanse to spectacular waterfalls in some places. But all along, the river constitutes a kind of red thread allowing to immerse oneself in Asian culture, by listening to the thrilling life that shakes its banks, bathing in the magical atmosphere of ancient Indochina, by listening to the secular legends transported by the waves of the liquid serpent.
Several tour operators, therefore, offer cruises along the Mekong. Whether visiting two or three countries (mostly Vietnam and Cambodia), cruises are on boats with all modern comforts. Departures from Siem Reap to Cambodia are the most frequent. You will obviously have the opportunity to visit the magnificence of Angkor, before embarking to cross the Tonlé Sap lake, the largest in Southeast Asia, then to stroll in small boats in its floating village, before to make a stopover in Phnom Penh, a city full of charm where several sites are to be discovered.
The rest of the trip will take you to the island of Koh Dek Chau, a Khmer village still preserved from modern civilization, then to the gigantic delta with the floating farms of Chau Doc, the immense rice fields of My Tho, and finally the ancient Saigon, where you will meet a smiling and very diverse population, exploring its grand bazaar and its often remarkable monuments.
But for the regions concerned, the Mekong represents much more than a path taken by travelers eager for a change of scenery: it occupies a primordial place in the life of the countries it crosses. A place for fishing and fish farming, a source of irrigation and electricity production, a transport route, welcoming homes, and floating markets, it plays an essential role in the economy. However, this does not detract from its beauty and its strange atmosphere: sometimes as calm as a lake with tea-colored waters, sometimes rugged with gorges and rushing rapids, populated in some places by giant catfishes and other freshwater dolphins, it ends in an immense and fertile delta, where the tides are powerful as if it were a real sea. And it also carries, besides gold in its mud approaching Luang Prabang.
