We didn’t plan to go to Hoi An, a beachy town in central Vietnam, but we needed to get to Laos via Hue, not far from Hoi An. So it made us think, before skipping out on Vietnam, maybe some due diligence on Vietnam was needed. After all, we had seen only the north.

Why the hesitation to visit the most-touristed city in the country, the one that people describe as the most beautiful and romantic? Well, after everything we read, the place sounded fake. And as it turns out, the old town, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, kind of is. It’s lit up with lanterns everywhere, which is pretty but also cheesy once you learn that shops are mandated to hang them. And when you stroll around at night, music plays as if from nowhere. It felt like Disneyland.

Lanterns aside, the main draw is the plethora of tailors who can fashion you a fine suit or dress for cheap. But I have no room for more clothes in my backpack, so that was a no-go. A second draw are the cooking classes. But with every single restaurant offering one, it seemed less special. And frankly, we found the food in Hanoi to be far more flavorful and exciting than Hoi An’s, despite the coastal town’s culinary rep.

But on we went. We were going all that way anyway.

Luckily, we knew well enough to stay outside the center at Sunflower Hotel, located midway between the town and Cua Dai beach. Once we were removed from the kitschiness, we finally got a taste for Hoi An’s relaxed, beach bum feel. (That said, the beach is nice, but don’t expect emerald green, clear waters. Don’t expect much breathing room on the sands either.)

We also took a day trip to the ruins of My Son, a plot of temples built by the Champa Kingdom with (now crumbling) statues of Hindu gods. It’s worth checking out in the morning (we left at 5 am) for cooler temps and to avoid crowds. (We were the only group at that time.) Though miniscule compared to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, what My Son lacks in size, it makes up with a remote, shaded, beautifully lush setting.

But the best thing we did in Hoi An? Something as simple as rent bicycles and veer off the main strip (that heads to the beach) to explore a village. We were the only tourists, so fishermen were happy to show us their loot and when we began to overheat, an old lady let us sit in her home with a fan. I’m consistently amazed by how friendly the locals are. It’s really been the best part of our Asian adventure.

In Argentina, we (mostly Eaman) were excited for the steak. In Asia, we (again, mostly Eaman) were excited for the street food. Besides being mostly vegetarian, I generally err on the safe/boring side thanks to a sensitive stomach, but there was no better way to build immunity for the remainder of Asia than with street food stalls. And it was a good thing because in Vietnam, it was the cheapeast, tastiest and most authentic introduction to the country.

We looked for high turnover to make sure food was fresh and dishes that were hot, hot, hot, avoiding anything uncooked that might’ve been washed with tap water. Other than that, we picked up chopsticks, settled into the child-size plastic furniture — that’s how all the seating works there — and chowed down.

1. For pure taste, my favorite was the bun bao at Bun Bo Nam Bo at 47 Hang Dieu. (Most street food stalls are nameless and go only by address or meal offering.) It’s a noodle based dish with beef, crushed peanuts and herbs for $2.50. That’s all they serve, so you just tell them how many and wait for Vietnam’s best street food offering. We knew we did good when our Mai
Chau tour guide told us he eats there, too.

Our most enduring memory from Vietnam was, hands down, a three-day trip to Mai Chau, a mountain village town southwest of Hanoi known for its ethnic minorities, rice farming, bamboo production (lots of chopsticks!) and most crucial to us, an experience similar to the popular Sapa trekking in the northwest without the commercialism.

Mai Chau was much more relaxed.

We came prepared with the Vietnamese translation of, “Can we stay your home?” — homestays are common in the SE Asian villages — but to our luck, our tour guide was actually from Mai Chau, so we stayed at his family’s place. It was, in fact, an official homestay with lodging set-up for tourists, but that didn’t take away the charm. And once the tour left, we felt like, and were treated like, family. They gave us snacks, invited us to a community party and, with some broken English, even cracked some jokes. Being in this place was exactly what we needed after feeling shell-shocked and frustrated in big city Hanoi.

We spent our days bicycling the stunning countryside — made up of rolling green hills, geometric-shaped rice field paddies, villagers working tirelessly, adorable babies — and feasted like kings with all the food our guide’s sister cooked for us. (Few people in the village understood English, but we got on just fine.)

There were two particular highlights*.

The first was motorbiking through the country. We didn’t have a plan, or even a map; we just drove. (Well, Eaman drove; I played passenger.) Every corner would reveal another huge mountain that made us feel like ants on a dirt road. It was wonderful to have the independence to stop wherever we felt like, and in the process, we met some rascal boys from another village, who were way too ready to play model for Eaman’s camera. (One was particularly tricky and kept pointing to the vague outline of a wallet in Eaman’s pocket. He was so insistent that, in the end, we gave him a couple of small bills.)

The other was being the honored guests at a traditional dance party. (Bear with me, as the unabridged version paints the best picture.) The village hosts a dance performance a few times a week and on our first night in Mai Chau, we heard the drums across the street and ventured over. It certainly wasn’t anything fancy — just a dining area cleared of chairs and tables.

The night started with traditional Thai village dance, but there was a group of rowdy (a.k.a. drunk) Vietnamese men and women eager to get this party started. And so began this weird alternation between traditional dance (from the villagers) and live singing (from the rowdy bunch). Pretty soon, the party music won out. Singers would change, the power would go out (as it happens a few times a night in Mai Chau), the back-up generators would turn on and the music would get less ballad-y, more dance-y.

Being the only tourists at the performance, we stood out. Next thing we knew, we were dragged up to the “stage” and forced to dance. We didn’t know how to dance to songs we didn’t recognize, but we just clapped, jumped and made it work.

As the night went on, there was can-can, congo lines, bamboo dancing and, the marquee of any traditional village performance, the communal rice wine jug. We were prodded to take swigs of the liquor via bamboo straws in a ceramic pot. That stuff is crazy strong and I hate liquor, so I took one sip for memory’s sake and faked the others.

Once the song and dance time was over, it was time to eat — and they wouldn’t let us go without food. Over spoonfuls of chicken rice soup, we communicated as best we could — that is to say, not very much. What we gleaned from our chat was they were from Danang (another city in central Vietnam), they were on vacation, and Eaman and I had good bodies. It was priceless.

I didn’t have my camera and my phone somehow deleted the blurry pictures I did take, but that’s how it works, doesn’t it? It’s when you don’t prepare that the magic happens. And this was a night crazier than any club party in Buenos Aires or rave in Hong Kong could ever be.

But that’s not the only reason we fell in love with Mai Chau. We loved the scenery, we loved the silence and, most of all, we loved the spirited, hard-working people, who were so friendly that the heavy language barrier melted away with their friendly smiles. Funnily enough, it was easier speaking to them than it was to the locals in the city who knew more English.

This is why we love the country — so much more heart.

*There was another memory from this trip that wasn’t so much a highlight as it was a really strange incident. While we were motorbiking, I noticed a woman in a small ditch in front of someone’s house. We back-tracked and couldn’t tell if she was dead or just passed out. The people in the house noticed us and came outside, so we did our best hand-gesturing to alert them about the woman. One of the young men replied, “I will call the police,” and without skipping a beat, “Would you like something to drink?” We said no and left, thinking maybe it was best not to interfere. When we came back around on our way back to Mai Chau, the woman was gone. Hopefully, we did the right thing.

I aspire to travel like Anthony Bourdain on No Reservations, eating as the locals do, visiting anything but the touristy spots and doing it all with a fixer, a local who can navigate us across language barriers and through the inner workings of a place. And finally, in Hanoi, we founds ours.

Meet Daisy.

Daisy is a 25-year-old Vietnam native, who grew up in the nearby town of Hung Yen and has since moved to Hanoi, got married and works as a travel agent. We met her during our hunt for a Halong Bay trip. Like I said, she was the only one who understood that we wanted to see the real Vietnam.

We took the local bus; no-frills all the way. We waited at the stop, ran to the bus when we saw it pull up and edged our way through the door, hoping for a seat. No seats. So we stood. And it was hot. And I dripped sweat. Our fellow riders, Vietnamese locals, wore sweatshirts and jeans — as they always do because the heat ain’t no thang to them — so you can imagine how they looked at me when I whipped out my hand fan. I hate standing out, but this was a dire situation. Two different men, who noticed me shvitzing, said, “Hot!” While wiping my face, I smiled and said, “Yes.”

After an hour ride through the suburbs and country, we arrived in Bat Trang, and not a minute before we had a chance to buy a bottle of water, a vendor had already come to sell her ceramics studio. Bat Trang has a few studios open to the public to make their own pottery and paint. It’s Color Me Mine, Asia-style. Daisy negotiated for us, while Eaman and I stood to the side, not sure what either Vietnamese woman was saying. In the end, the deal was $1.43 to sculpt and paint our own pottery. Yeah, I though, that’ll be juuust fine.

The studio.

But before we left, we had a chance to explore the town itself, which is basically just the ceramics market. It’s a great place to get gifts, just know that most people don’t know much English.

The items in the market run from beautiful to slightly weird to hilarious.

You can’t really talk about Hanoi without mentioning Halong Bay. And you can’t really walk around Hanoi’s Old Quarter without seeing a tour ad for it.

It may seem completely boring to tell you the details of how we decided to go about seeing the islands, but the process ranks high on my — and many others’ — travel annoyances list, so hopefully it’s helpful to some of you.

After much back and forth between ourselves and Travelfish — the best SE Asia guide out there — that it’s touristy but still worth it, we thought, let’s do this. Ideally, we wanted to visit the Bay on our own since we both hate being herded like cattle from stop to stop, being told when to eat and when to take pictures. But that trailblazer attitude was short-lived beacuse as it turns out, doing it independently meant more freedom, but also more stress in figuring out how to get from point A to point B and, in the end, the same cost. And take it from me, just do a tour. Your brain will thank you for it.

We shopped around with a few agents and after a frustrating day of not knowing what to do, we went with our gut and the agent we trusted most. She was a lovely Vietnamese girl, who was the only one who “got” us and understood our hesitation in seeing a sight so visited.

Then we had to pick a package.

Since we were never wed to the idea of Halong Bay, we took it as a sign that two days was more than enough. (The drive from Hanoi to Halong City, the port town to the bay, is about four hours, making a day trip much too rushed.) There are so many options to go along with it, like spending a night on Cat Ba Island or taking a cooking class on the boat. We’ve done the island thing but not the overnight boat thing, so we decided to keep it simple: a three-star boat with a private double room, sleeping onboard with all meals, no drinks, included. (I got vegetarian, no problem.) All in all, $70 after a little bargaining. We were OK with the price until we learned that some people on our boat paid $50. Groan.

Wasted money aside, the trip was lovely and I’m so glad we went because even though it’s the most-touted excursion in Vietnam, once you’re in the Bay, at least on a weekday, you feel totally alone.

But it wasn’t just that. It was the great mix of people on our tour, 14 in total, the food, the swim in the Bay, the kayaking and the crazy thunderstorm.

I mean, who DOESN’T smile like a freak when he/she is reading?

Also, Eaman was clearly working hard during the kayaking.

Things locals in Hanoi like: Riding motorbikes, street food, drinking Bia Ha Noi (the local draft beer), sunflower seeds and Apple products.

These are the concrete observations I’ve made after about a week in Vietnam’s capital. They’re random and scattered, much like the city itself. Hanoi is a wild place, and it’s much different than I expected. (If you follow me on Instagram, then you’ve seen plenty of daily streets snaps.)

People we talked to about Hanoi seemed so charmed by it all — the French influence, the street-lined cafes, the food stalls. But upon arriving, I felt completely overwhelmed.

It wasn’t the quaint cafe city I had expected. It was a tiny metropolis, swirling with constant activity, and it took me a few days of zig-zagging through motorbikes and cyclos (manual rickshaws) to get used to it. I can’t say I’m as won over by the city as some other people have been, but since we had time to take it in, I can say that I appreciate its little urban culture. The food is amazing, it’s one of the more green cities I’ve seen and you can get by on about $15 per day.

Locals congregating on the sidewalk for a mid-day snack.

We stayed in Hanoi Guesthouse, a nice mini-hotel in the heart of Old Quarter, which was convenient for getting around the city and a good spot to try the famous street food stalls.

The deluxe room we were upgraded to, free of charge, after a couple nights in the standard room. That said, after we chose not to book any tours with their in-house agency, they turned down the friendliness level from exuberant to normal:

There are, of course, the sights that everyone is meant to see, but we’re less interested in these kinds of things nowadays. We skipped the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and One Pillar Pagoda but saw the Temple of Literature, a beautiful five-courtyard-long Confucian sanctuary. If it weren’t 400 degrees that day, we would’ve loved to have spent more time there.

If nightlife is what you’re after, Hanoi isn’t the place. It’s pretty sleepy on that front and places tend to close around 11pm or midnight anyway. The better way to knock back a few is by pulling up one of the kid-size plastic stools in the afternoon, when you’ll see plenty of Vietnamese men taking a break with bia hoi, a local lager-like draught.

We’re making an effort to learn some Vietnamese, but as we’ve found out, the language is friggin’ hard. There are different intonations and when we’ve spoken to someone using our handbook, we’re incorrect 99% of the time. But the locals seems rather impressed — after some initial giggling — at our efforts. I know Vietnamese are stereoptyed by backpackers as being a bit frosty, but apart from taxi drivers and a couple waiters, we’ve been shown a lot of love. You just have to get away from the tourist scene. Walk a little further, find a cafe in a different neighborhood, strike up a conversation with someone who has a decent handle of English. I keep hearing that the people of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos are some of the nicest. Vietnamese people can be, too. They just make you work for it.

There was the time we took a rather torturous cab ride to Tea Talk Cafe, located near the university far from central Hanoi, because we had read on a Couchsurfing forum that students there are eager to speak with foreigners. They were MIA when we went, but the waitstaff so sweetly offered us homemade ice cream — avocado and passionfruit — gratis.

We also found Acoustic Cafe, a great live music venue that showed us a different side of the city. These two guys played loads of Eric Clapton and even took requests, learned the chords and let the requester sing the tunes. We left just as it was turning into a live karaoke game amongst all the customers. Probably best to spare them my tone-deafness.

Before I delve into stories about our Vietnam adventures — FYI we have had some really rad ones so far — I have to admit something: Adjusting to Asia has been hard.

Asia is much rougher around the edges than South America, and as it turns out, I’m having a little more trouble getting into the swing of things than I anticipated. In fact, I find myself less mentally and physically prepared than when we left back in September of last year. Maybe it has something to do with coming off three months of “normal” life in Hawaii. Maybe it’s that Vietnam isn’t as easy of a place to travel as, say, Thailand. Maybe it’s that some of the novelty of travel has worn off in month nine. But probably, it’s all three.

I find it strange and surprising to admit I’m having trouble in Asia, considering I’m Indian and have witnessed/been a part of life in a Third World country, and I’m not saying I don’t feel really lucky to be here, experiencing things some people never see, but I’d be lying if I said everything was beautiful and romantic and just lovely all the time. And I’d be shocked if other long-term travelers never felt the feelings I’m about to describe.

Hong Kong was a nice transition because we stayed with a friend, but now we’re fending for ourselves. And it can be exhausting here in Vietnam — sidestepping speedy motorbikes, haggling like it’s a physical sport, figuring out the most effective way to say NO and the heat. My god, the heat.

I knew we were coming to SE Asia in the humid monsoon season, but seriously, who can cope with this? True, I sweat more than the average person, but here, I wilt. My hand fan helps but not much considering it’s just waving sheets of moisture-soaked air at me. It doesn’t help that the altogether dirtier air and streets make me feel that much worse. I find myself wishing for rain, since it’s the only way to keep temps down. (Post-rain days are actually quite pleasant.)

I may sound like a princess right now, but I’m just being honest. I feel gross all.the.time. and having a bit of an allergy problem makes it worse because the humidity makes my skin so itchy and uncomfortable. My favorite part of the day is coming home after dinner, knowing I won’t be going back out, and basking in AC, my new best friend. (I’m so thankful that accommodation is cheaper in Asia than it is in South America so we can come home to a comfortable private double room in clean guesthouses.) I was never this prissy in South America but I wasn’t battling such severe elements there.

But that’s just one side of our rough start. The other is that somewhere between South America and Asia, we got jaded — just a little. Not to sound like a brat, but now it takes a lot to impress us, and unfortunately, that’s one of the side effects of long-term travel. We saw so many beautiful things prior to Asia that going to the tourist spots X, Y and Z isn’t good enough anymore. As a way to keep things fresh, we now crave great experiences, not great sights. We want to interact with locals more and travelers less. (But we still love you, fellow travelers! It’s me, not you.)

But with this region’s procilivity for tour packages or perhaps the proclivity to be up in our faces (more than South America, in my opinion) and with the language barrier in Vietnam, it’s been a challenge to get them. From what I’ve heard, SE Asia is a backpacker’s dream because of well-oiled routes for travelers and English as the common denominator.

Well, we don’t want well-oiled routes and Vietnam is the exception to the English rule. To avoid the tourist scene, we ask locals where they like to go, eat and play, but, at least in Vietnam, they can’t comprehend going off the well-worn path. Most reply with tours, big cities and much-frequented monuments.

We have to work really hard here to get what we’re looking for. That said, after very persistent questioning and befriending a travel agent in Hanoi, we’ve been lucky to have already had a few really enriching local experiences. It’s just that it’s exhausting to get to that point and once one successful mini-trip is over, the thought of researching another is exhausting. We feel a bit burnt out, yet not ready to end things just yet. I don’t want to be jaded.

I’m thinking this is just a hump we have to get over; I’m already feeling better about it after getting out of busy Hanoi and away to the northwest mountains in Vietnam. But this is definitely not a feeling I anticipated. I guess it’s just the reality of long-term travel. This isn’t really a vacation anymore. (I mean, sometimes it definitely feels that way.) This is day-to-day life.