Undecided where to holiday next December…

Vietnam is next up for discussion.

anyone been? beach type holiday required though.

Or, alternatively:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTsXHXMkJA[/video]

Cambodia is awesomes ^ To the max. But fully depends on what interests you.

Spent a few weeks in the South of Vietnam. Saigon (noisy), Mui Ne (excellently quiet beach resort, though there was a lot of building work going on, so might be like Blackpool now. Sod all else there other than sand and water), and Nha Trang (Big town, big beach, cool islands).

I went there several years ago. It was… interesting.

Went to Nha Trang for the beach part of things an it was pretty rubbish to be fair. Had to avoid the occasional needle in the sand, the reefs had been dynamited by the local fishermen and it rained enough that my ex-wife wanted to buy a flight back to Thailand.

I liked it, but I was raised on Apocalypse Now.

Saigon was exciting, but dangerous.

One of my favourite places. Search on here I posted previously in responce to another query.

My personal comments. North (Ha Noi, Ha Long, Sapa) and Central (Hoi An) best. Doubling this up with a trip to Cambodia and Angor Wat (Siem Riep) would make a great 2/3 weeks. Access to North easiest via HK.

I’m a little bit of “it’s not as good as it used to be” snob as I first went 10 years ago and it’s changing a lot but I’d still recommend it.

Loas is where the vietnamise go for a cheap holiday.

I have been to Siagon for a long weekend and loved it but think any longer would have dragged . My inlaws have travelled more extensively and enjoyed the coast. Anthony Bourdain’s book cooks tour had a good chapter on vietnam

I spent most of November in Vietnam, (Saigon, Phu Quoc, Hanoi, Halong, Hue, Hoi An, with stop offs at others in between)

I hate sand, so probably not best placed to give advice re a beach holiday, but for what it’s worth, I had one of the best few weeks of my life there in November. We just arrived, met some mates who live in Saigon and took it from there, bought/rented motorbikes a few times and lots of flights hours before we were due to depart, basically just made it up as we went along. I’m not sure I’d travel all that way for a “cheap” beach holiday though, especially when neighbouring counties do that better, but you can’t beat Vietnam for an adventure….

Incidentally, of those beach “resorts” that we saw (eg Nha Trang, Da Nang and to some extent parts of Phu Quoc), we thought looked like someone had dumped Magaluf in Vietnam and then gave free tickets to anyone with a Russian passport. My idea of hell, but others seemed to love it. Just didn’t seem like Vietnam to me)

As per @peterfile’s comment IMO you don’t go to Vietnam for a beach holiday (although I have done that for a week on the deserted beaches at Mui Nee in South but it was only a 2hr flight from Singapore). Na Trang is known to be a bit rubbish, Hoi An is a lovely historic town a couple of km frm the beach so that’s the place to do that if you wish. Vietnam is copying the Asian model of building 5 star beach resorts which are ruining a lot of the previously unspoilt coastline and yes they sadly do dynamite the fish killing the reefs – very short sighted.

We did Hoi An/An Bang and Mue Ne last year & they are worlds apart…

Hoi An is a Unesco World Heritage site surrounded by rivers & fields & looooong stretches of beach. No motorised traffic in Hoi An itself (which was amazing after travelling through the rest of the country & everyone seems to use their horn for everything every 30 seconds) so its a quiet & relaxed town. An Bang is a few ks outside & is pretty much (the bit we saw) a long stretch of beach with a few shacks bar/restaurants & fishermen using coracles. Amazing

Mui Ne is heavily developed (resorts all along the frontage) with all of the associated beach tourist tat. IIRC it was very popular with Russians at the time & most of the singage was in English & Russian. Its v windy there so great for windsurfing/parasailing etc & there were indeed lots of wind water based activities but when not in the rough sea it felt like you were being sandblasted.

All in all we’d go back to Hoi An/An Bang tomorrow but wouldn’t go anywhere near Mui Ne again. Hoi An/An Bang felt like (I imagine) what Vietnam used to be whereas Mui Ne was just like a lot of other anonymous overdeveloped beach destinations anywhere else.

That’s a shame. Mui Ne was really quiet when we were there. Cost us I think less than £10 for a room shared between 4 of us, about 20ft from the beach. Can’t even remember seeing any other tourists really, apart from the odd one or two. But like I say, was a lot of building work going on at the time.

Thoroughly recommend you visit Vietnam…..but not if you’re after a top notch beach holiday. Asia has far better destinations for that.

By international standards, Nah trang is a bit…..cr@p, IMO. I’d be looking at Thailand, Malaysia or philipines if you’re after a good beach holiday in Asia

Just to add to/echo stuf above…Hoi An is just fantastic if you want a lovely town + access to great beach. Hoi An is right up there in my top 5 on earth. We arrived planning to stay 2 nights and didn’t leave for almost a week.

Sitting in a cabana overlooking the sea at night in Soul Kitchen on An Bamg beach, with that awesome tropical wind and crashing waves, it’s easy to feel like the luckiest person on the planet.

recommendation – yea, don’t go there.

Would you care to expand Lordmerchant?

Holiday in Vietnam – recommendations please

Never get out of the boat.