After conclusion our visit to Vietnam, I will dedicate this post to a few thoughts of such a trip.


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Weather


The biggest surprise/disappointment of our trip was probably the weather/climate of North Vietnam. On Wikipedia, historical climate data shows January as one of the months with less precipitation, and it could get quite unpleasant to travel in rain. However, what we sort of missed and what climate data doesn't reveal is length of typical rainfall. Precipitation numbers of summer months could be daunting, but locals told us those were thunderstorms that come and go quickly and were usually followed by clear blue skies. By contrast, winter drizzles last for entire days and nights, which were frankly an even bigger hassle that unfortunately we had to deal with this time.
And skies never cleared during the most anticipated part of our trip afloat in Ha Long Bay, which, as we were told, was the norm of January there. Well, the rocks were still spectacular but they just required more efforts with Photoshop than what I'd like. Frankly, the other extreme of cloudless blue summer skies is also Photoshop-intensive. Oh, and we I would definitely miss a dive and bathe in those waters of summer.
Oh, and we happened to be visiting Hanoi in its coldest time of year, that's not what we enjoyed when the entire purpose of this trip was to escape winter cold farther North.
And this time of year Ba Na Hills resort of Da Nang was covered in mist most of the time, good thing this once summer retreat has got game arcades for winter visitors.

UnionPay


Conceived of state monopoly as pretty much the only payment gateway in China P.R., UnionPay attempted to expand globally by allowing most of its banks to charge no ATM fees worldwide. This worked pretty handy for the other countries we visited, but frankly not this time in Vietnam. After getting off the plane, we literally tried our card in every ATM in Hanoi Airport with no luck. The next day, we were doing the same to every bank and ATM we walked by in Hanoi, but still weren't able to withdraw money. Interestingly, our (credit) card under VISA worked on first attempt. So there's definitely something strange about this country's banks.

Food


As somebody that's not too much into cooking and food in my daily life, I sort of insouciantly equated Vietnam food to pho. And I believe the magical ingredient cilantro was the key to its taste. And since I couldn't care less about food, we ordered it almost everywhere we went.

Conclusion


Overall, I quite enjoyed this trip as I don't believe we could find another place to visit that fits in such a relatively short timeframe and wasn't beach oriented (as required by my mom's "allergy" to water). What's more, I believe another trip of South Vietnam from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh City could be fitted in a similar timeframe, which would definitely be on my destination list. I will just make sure I pick a different time of year for that.