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Vietnam Travel guide

THE CO TU MINORITY

Around Hoi An

Thanh Ha This small village has long been known for its pottery industry. Most villagers have gradually switched from making bricks and tiles to making pots and souvenirs for the tourist trade. The artisans employed in this hot, sweaty and painstaking work don’t mind if you come for a gander and a chat, though they’re [...]

Hoi An

Hoi An

Graceful, historic Hoi An is Vietnam’s most atmospheric and delightful town. Once a major port, it boasts the grand architecture and beguiling riverside setting that befits its heritage, but the 21st-century curses of traffic and pollution are almost entirely absent. Whether you’ve as little as a day or as long as a month in the [...]

Around Danang

Nui Son Tra (Monkey Mountain) Jutting out into the sea like a giant pair of Mickey Mouse ears, the Son Tra peninsula is crowned by the mountain that the American soldiers called Monkey. Grandly overlooking Danang to the south and the Hai Van Pass to the north, it was a prized radar and communications base [...]

Danang

Nowhere in Vietnam is changing as fast as Danang. For decades it had a reputation as a provincial backwater, but big changes are ongoing. Stroll along the Han riverfront and you’ll find gleaming new modernist hotels, apartments and restaurants are emerging. Spectacular new bridges now span the Han river and in the north of the [...]

Ba Na Hill Station

A hill resort inherited from the French, lush Ba Na (per person 10,000d, per motorbike/car 5000/10,000d) has refreshingly cool weather and gorgeous countryside views. Established in 1919, the resort area once held 200-odd villas, but only a few ruins remain. Until WWII the French were carried up the last 20km of rough mountain road by [...]

Hai Van Pass

Hai Van Pass & Tunnel

The Hai Van (Sea Cloud) Pass crosses over a spur of the Truong Son mountain range that juts into the sea. About 30km north of Danang, the road climbs to an elevation of 496m, passing south of the Ai Van Son peak (1172m). It’s an incredibly mountainous stretch of highway – you may have seen [...]

lang co hue

Lang Co Beach

Lang Co is an attractive island-like stretch of palm-shaded white sand, with a crystal-clear, turquoise lagoon on one side and 10km of beachfront on the other. As a beach resort it’s more geared to Vietnamese day trippers than Western travellers, but if the weather’s nice the ocean is certainly inviting (if you stay away from [...]

vuon quoc gia bach ma

Bach Ma National Park

A French-era hill station, this national park (Vuon Quoc Gia Bach Ma;  054-387 1330; www.bachma.vnn.vn; adult/child/under 6yr 40,000/20,000d/free) reaches a peak of 1450m at Bach Ma mountain, only 18km from the coast. The cool climate attracted the French, who built over a hundred villas here. Not surprisingly the Viet Minh tried hard to spoil the [...]

Thua Thien Hue

Around Hue

South of Hue are the extravagant mausoleums of the rulers of the Nguyen dynasty (1802–1945), spread out along the banks of the Perfume River between 2km and 16km south of the city. There also some fine pagodas and other sights. Almost all royal tombs were planned by the emperors during their lifetimes, and some were [...]

Hue

Palaces and pagodas, tombs and temples, culture and cuisine, history and heartbreak, there’s no shortage of poetic pairings to describe Hue (pronounced ‘hway’). A Unesco World Heritage site, this deeply evocative capital of the Nguyen emperors still resonates with the glories of imperial Vietnam, even though many of its finest buildings were destroyed during the [...]

Quang Tri

Quang Tri

Quang Tri once boasted an important citadel, but little of its old glory remains. In the Easter Offensive of 1972, North Vietnamese forces laid siege to and then captured the town. This provoked carpet bombing and artillery shelling by the USA and South Vietnamese forces, which all but destroyed Quang Tri. Remnants of the ancient [...]

Bao Tang Quang Tri

Dong Ha

Dong Ha is an important transport hub that sits at the intersection of Hwys 1 and 9. Its dusty, traffic-plagued main drag looks pretty dismal – this is because the town was completely flattened during the American War. However the town does have its attractive aspects, with a string of riverside seafood restaurants. Dong Ha [...]

South-Central Vietnam

Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) Most of the bases and bunkers have long vanished, but this 5km strip of land on either side of the Ben Hai River is still known by its American War moniker: the DMZ. From 1954 to 1975 it acted as a buffer between the North and the South. Ironically, the DMZ became [...]

Dong Hoi

Dong Hoi & Around

Pleasantly untouristed, Dong Hoi is a port and seaside town with no souvenir shops and a lack of hassle. It enjoys an attractive location, clinging to the banks of the Nhat Le River, and has beaches to the north and south. As the main staging area for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), Dong Hoi suffered [...]

Phong Nha cave

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park

Riddled with hundreds of cave systems – many of extraordinary scale and length – and spectacular underground rivers, Phong Nha is a speleologists’ heaven on earth. Its collection of stunning dry caves, terraced caves, towering stalagmites and glistening crystal-edged stalactites represent nature on a very grand scale indeed, and are beginning to create a real [...]