I veered inland in Vietnam and saw a side few tourists see

A week ago, when I thought of Vietnam, my mind went to rattling gunfire and backpackers who landed there on their way to Thailand.

But today, Vietnam is more about looking forward than looking back.

As a relatively ‘young’ person who didn’t live through the first televised war, I enthusiastically signed up for the chance to see the modern side of Vietnam on the 50th anniversary of its independence.

Also, because I’ve always wanted to use the term ‘back in ‘Nam’ for myself, and because I was doing it on Vietnam Airlines’ dime. Or Dong, rather.

When booking a flight, I usually hit Economy faster than Liz Truss. It’s all I’ve known.

I take pride in being able to eat without much use of my elbows, and in being so quiet that I’d get a 5-star review if Plane Neighbours were an app (the best time to recline your seat is after the person BEHIND you does).

I’ve learnt to thrive in squalor. But now that I’ve flown business class for the first time, it’s hard to go back.

I ate myself into a 15-step food coma and, for once, had the wiggle room to deal with the cheeseboard-induced night terrors.

It’s converted me. I would genuinely pay for the experience of being able to sit in luxury and think, where emails can’t find me, without any need to step off the plane in a foreign land.

But we did, in fact, land as intended in Southeast Asia.

Da Lat: The road less travelled

There’s more to Vietnam than travelling its coastal cities, which is the most popular route taken to see the sprawling country from the capital Hanoi in the north, to the most populous Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly known as Saigon, in the south.

Inland destinations, rather unfairly, get bumped off the itinerary, as many Westerners take the night buses that follow the coastline and offer no option for detours.

The French developed the city of Da Lat (baking! architecture! looking particularly cool smoking!) and there’s a European sheen to this place with remarkably few European faces.

As well as being the flower capital of Vietnam, Da Lat is a big driver of the country’s bloom into the world’s second-largest coffee exporter, only behind Brazil.

To prove their caffeine supremacy, I’m taken to a farm and rewarded with a cup of weasel moka coffee, made from beans that get their rich flavour from being sh*t out by a weasel-looking thing, which is actually called ‘a civet’.

It’s one of the most expensive coffees in the world at around £950 per kilo, with only Indian elephant coffee costing double that.

My impression was that it tasted quite thin and subtle, at first.

But then it hit me like a truck. I knocked back a cup black, then quickly recycled the beans with another pour over to brew a second cup.

When I tell you I felt high five minutes later, it’s not an exaggeration. I was gurning. Heart pumping to a Berlin techno BPM that my brain couldn’t dance to.

In fairness, my serving did come with a ‘drink slowly’ advisory that I was wrong to ignore.

I was paranoid that my weasel had ingested herbs it shouldn’t have because my head was absolutely spinning. I had to do a ‘guys, anyone else feeling it as much as I am’ chat.

In short: Approach with caution.

Outside the farm, Da Lat is surrounded by rolling hills and rich agriculture, while still being a lively city with a bustling night market.

There’s no better place to enjoy the hilltop views than Cloud9, which feels like Vietnamese Hobbiton if the halflings were influencers.

Rather than mucking in on the hard ground, you are glamping above the clouds here with front row seats to Vietnam’s natural green splendour.

Ho Chi Minh City: A city with growing pains

Vietnam’s providence is as impressive as its landscapes, but it’s the country’s concrete jungles that draw most visitors.

Ho Chi Minh City’s (HCMC) central infrastructure is constantly shifting, month by month, to the point that it’s effectively a living city, growing in real-time.

It feels like everything is forever under construction as the financial capital strives to be bigger and better than it’s ever been.

With no real train or subway network, something as simple as crossing the road, weaving between 9.7 million scooters, can feel like the last level of Frogger.

I don’t have much advice, but I will say: Try to lock eyes with drivers, raising an arm helps and, most importantly, never step backwards.

The city certainly doesn’t, continuing to make new strides onwards.

Over the last 10 years, tourist numbers in Vietnam have more than doubled, rising from 7.9 million in 2015 to 17.5 million in 2024 following a significant recovery period after the pandemic.

Tan Son Nhat Airport has built and opened a new domestic Terminal 3 to deal with the surge in visitors. A new international airport, Long Thanh, is currently under construction. It’s Vietnam’s biggest ever infrastructure project, and will serve as one of the largest transport hubs in the world when it’s completed around 2035.

This is a place that has pulled itself from deep poverty in the early 1980s to become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

HCMC is known as the cradle of street food, which is as good a reason to visit as any.

Most popular are its Banh Mi (a life-changing sandwich on pillow soft bread, ft pork floss), Pho (which is not a soup in the same way that Frankenstein is not the monster. Pho is the noodle and doesn’t have to sit in a brothy dish at all), and speciality coffees within its vibrant cafe culture (try Egg Coffee and Salt Coffee and thank me later).

Heavy rain: When to visit Vietnam

I’ve never felt heavier rain than in HCMC in June.

The kind of hot wet where, in the end, you don’t know what’s rain and what’s sweat.

But there was a beauty in the neon signs refracting off the splashes and seeing a near-megacity retreat inside cafes for a short caffeine fix.

The climate in south Vietnam is split simply into two seasons: wet (May-early November) and dry (November-early May) with average temperatures 25C-35C year-round, although the inflated RealFeel temperatures tickling 40C should be factored in.

It’s one of the few places you step out the door sporting shorts, sandals, packed raincoat and a wide-brimmed hat that can serve both scenarios.

I’ve also never sat on such low furniture as I did in HCMC, which sometimes can feel like being pranked.

The public parks are packed full of residents, old and younger, during morning commute times with group exercise the probable key to their collective sprightliness and pleasantness.

Resting on haunches should be the new downward-facing dog.

The HCMC experience is a London sized-equivalent rat race that feels more like a communal group jog and without the individual arrogances and overriding disdain for anyone caught still on the left-hand side of an escalator.

HCMC still caters for war tourism, of course, with nearby Cu Chi Tunnels (an absolute must) where you can learn first-hand how the Viet Cong won the civil war with Home Alone tactics, and will entertain nightlife debauchery on its Bui Vien Walking Street (an amusement park for sex pests) but its greatest trick is adapting to become a very capitalist communist country open to the rest of the world queueing up to see its victory lap.