Honeymooning Off-Road in Vietnam

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Jauntsetter editor Dorothy McGivney! I happen to know that you traveled through Vietnam last year and visited a bunch of wonderful, authentic, under-the-radar parts of the country — in contrast with some of its more manufactured, touristy areas. What inspired you to do this?

Vietnam’s at a uniquely interesting place in its development: its middle class is growing at an exceptional rate, and its cities and beach resorts are suddenly awash with tourists (like me!) drawn to the buzz and energy of a country that’s coming into its own market economy. Still, when I visited solo back in 2008, I knew I wanted to return with my now-husband to explore beyond the main tourist attractions, and see a quieter side of the country in action.

About 10% of Vietnam’s population actually consists of over 53 “tribes” who speak dialects of 8 different languages. They also have their own special style of dress (with specific colors), foods, religious practices, etc., and because they’re pretty isolated, economically and geographically, these minorities have managed to keep their cultures very much intact. Many of these tribes can be found in the mountainous North Central region, so we decided to spend part of our honeymoon exploring the area.

How did you figure out where to go and stay?

After lots of research, we booked a private moped tour with Offroad Vietnam, and man, am I glad we did — there was no way we’d have found our way through that part of Vietnam without a Vietnamese tour guide. Most people don’t speak English in the parts we visited, and many had never interacted with Westerners before.

But our private tour wasn’t “fancy,” though; we slept on the floor for a few of the nights. With that said, the hospitality, culture, and adventure were the most luxurious parts of our entire honeymoon. And the food — don’t get me started on the food!

What made this food great? Feel free to just list foods. Food lists!

Hmm. Vietnamese food is generally amazing — I actually think it’s the best food in the world — and it’s hard to go wrong whether you’re having a banh xao in the south or fried spring rolls in the north — but as mentioned we were traveling in the North Center of Vietnam, venturing up to the hills with the Hmong and Dao tribes, so we got a combo of, like, Vietnamese roadside food stall foods (pho, etc.) on the road, and ethnic minority fare when we stayed with families in their traditional stilt homes. And that was the best.

Did any one dish or meal stand out?

In this photo of one of our last meals on our tour during a home stay, you can see the many varieties of food we had. I wish it were in better focus, but there was rice, of course (the area is basically mountains interspersed with rice fields), a few types of meat, including lots of stir fried pork, tiny fried fishes from a nearby lake, a few types of bitter greens, some dipping sauces, and, actually, homemade potato chips! That was absolutely my favorite meal.

We ate with our local host family, and then for this last dinner, some sort of really over-the-top serious local “official” came to eat with us in a governmental uniform. I’m not sure what was going on there (I kept expecting him to demand our passports at any given second), but he loosened up after our 100th shot of rice wine.

Needless to say, the food was amazing, but I also really, really loved the genuine warmth and hospitality we experienced during our stay. We had a great time together and our tour guide, Chung, did a wonderful job of translating for us, and drinking and eating with us, too.

Who made the food, for the most part?

Luc Yen, where the aforementioned meal took place, had a description online that got me really excited to bring my husband there during our first week of marriage:

This village has a matrilineal culture — don’t be surprised to see the men care for the children while the women drink rice wine!

Newsflash: WOMEN CAN HAVE IT ALL. IN THE FOOTHILLS OF VIETNAM.

But in all seriousness (but I’m not kidding?!), I also didn’t see our host — this woman — lift a finger to prepare or serve our meal. Mostly she was just awesome and drank shot after shot of rice wine during dinner. Seriously, I could not keep up with her, and her toasts — always the same, always with vigor — a hearty “Bottoms up!,” were contagious. Needless to say, she didn’t have the demeanor of someone who’d been slaving away in the “kitchen” (or the open area below our stilt house where food was prepared) all day.

Older women like her in her village also chewed betel nuts, and I was told this was a sign of leisure, as it also gives you a high of sorts. I didn’t try it but again, only the women had stained teeth from enjoying the pastime … maybe the men were too busy cooking to indulge? I’m not sure — I was too busy eating to find out.

Did you have any mangosteens? It is my life goal to have a satisfying career, marry someone I love, reproduce eat a mangosteen!

Oh my god Edith. I did not have a mangosteen. I didn’t even consider it.

WHAT. What was it like doing a “home stay” on your honeymoon?

Well, we really stayed in this family’s home, which is an open plan home, no walls or anything — just one big floor that’s kind of a loft with curtained off areas. I’m sure they heard me snoring at night! In other words, a pretty intimate place. Maybe don’t stay there the first night of your honeymoon or anything. But anyway, the areas we visited were hardly overrun with tourists (unlike, say, Sapa, which has a train that goes to it from Hanoi and is very popular with Westerners), and because it is so economically poor, this is one way for families to keep their traditional ways of life intact while making some money.

On that note, our stay didn’t really feel transactional — it really felt more like we were staying with someone’s family as friends than at a B+B as guests. I think that’s because of how welcoming our family was, and how rare it is, at least right now, for the specific area we were in to see tourists. Perhaps I’m kidding myself but I definitely felt like we were more a novelty than an annoyance.

What were the costs like?

While group tours are much cheaper, it was our honeymoon, so I was happy to splurge for a private tour, which was still really affordable. I mean, it was $695 a person for 5 days and 4 nights, which included EVERYTHING: bike, fuel, tour guide, accommodations, food, even rice wine.

How did you find your tour guide?

There are other cheaper tours in Vietnam but after doing research, Offroad Vietnam, the one we chose, seemed like the best, if not the cheapest. And even though their website looks insane (and the over-the-top reviews seem made up; they’re not), we booked them, and I’m so glad we did.

I loved our tour guide, Chung, who was 27 and adorable. He took such good care of me when I was sick, and would often stop us on our ride to gather flowers from fields and have us stand in really carefully constructed poses holding a bouquet for honeymoon photos. After he would take them he’d always say, “Very sentimental.”

One of my greatest disappointments of my trip is that on the last night, Chung got my stomach flu (see below), and he’d wanted to take us out to karaoke, but was too sick to go.

Uh oh. I was going to ask you if you got sick or if anything bad happened!

Yes! I got sick on my first HOUR of the moped tour. It was some sort of stomach flu with a fever and a very upset GI tract, and I had to stop and use the bathroom every hour or so — at least. Once we were past an hour out of Hanoi, the area became pretty rural, so Chung had to stop and ask random strangers if I could use their homes’ bathrooms, and by bathrooms, I mean outhouses with pits in the ground and often no doors. I lost most of my dignity that day pooping and making eye contact with cats and roosters while Chung likely explained to total strangers that the American woman who ran into their backyard unannounced had the runs. (God, what is it with me and The Hairpin and pooping stories?)

By the time we got to our first homestay, I had a fever and just felt utterly awful. Sadly, that night there was some kind of amazing dinner followed by a traditional dance and concert for us to watch, but I couldn’t bear to stay up. I slept upstairs while the loudest concert/celebration happened below me — I was in a stilt house — and slept right through it in some kind of feverish daze. The next morning, a Vietnamese woman who must have been at least 90 gave me a green and bitter tonic to drink to help settle my stomach. I have no idea if it worked — or whether it was the anti-diarrhea pills that Chung was able to score for me — but I felt better within a few hours, so I had both Western and Eastern medicine on my side.

But Dorothy, mopeds are terrifying! Yes/yes?

Actually, riding mopeds in the countryside of Vietnam was so FUN. Most people ride mopeds, not cars, so there’s an awareness of moped riders that doesn’t exist here in NYC … what I mean by that is riding mopeds in rural Vietnam is as normal as driving cars here. With that said, if I could go back in time, I would take a lesson here before I left, because within an hour of learning how to drive a moped (they gave me a quick lesson before we left on our tour) I was riding on a highway out of Hanoi with tons of traffic.

For the most part, it all worked out, even though we were riding semi-automatic models that necessitated shifting gears with one foot. The first night of our trip, however, was pretty awful. Because I’d been sick and stopping all the time, I slowed us down, and we got to the most mountainous part of our trip as it became dark. Offroad Vietnam plans its itineraries specifically so you don’t drive in the dark, but in this case, there was no other option — we were in an area with nowhere to stop — just mountains upon mountains and had to press on for an hour or so to even get anywhere with buildings. (And I don’t know if this is interesting but here is a map of everywhere we went on our tour.)

The roads at this time of night were only used by 18-wheeler trucks, and, mind you, were twisty. Oh yes, have I mentioned I’d just learned to ride a moped the same day? Sharing a two-lane road on mountains with major trucks while feverishly ill … I honestly thought I was going to die at a certain point, and wondered if my husband would divorce me for planning a honeymoon that had basically turned into a crazy obstacle course.

Dorothy!!!

Well, we made it alive, and the next morning I felt better, and the rest of the time we rode in daylight and I felt perfectly, perfectly safe. Still, I felt pretty stupid and scared that first night, and I’m pretty sure my husband (who was actually an experienced rider) did, too. But isn’t being frightened together supposed to be good for your endorphins or relationship synapses or something?

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want us to feel like we were almost going to die just after getting married. And we did the fancy resort/lying by the pool/fruity cocktails with umbrellas thing after this. But it was unforgettable to see the values of food, family, and community in action on our moped tour, and while I don’t want to romanticize it — the ethnic minorities are politically marginalized in Vietnam, and they are exceedingly poor compared to the rest of the country — I am so grateful I got to experience it.

I know that I can speak for both of us and say our “off road” tour was the absolute best part of our honeymoon, and probably one of the best trips — better than any fancy hotel or unexpected first class upgrade — we’ll have ever experienced together in our lives. The only thing I would change is if I went again, instead of picking a pre-arranged itinerary, I’d let Chung plan our trip for us. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change a thing.

(Photos via Offroad Vietnam.)

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