A tour of the aromas of Vietnam

Upon arriving in the city of Ho Chi Minh, Antigu.

It is apparent chaos and life in the street.Motorcycles, about six million, bicycles and, to a lesser extent cars, invade all spaces, which throws a high percentage of accidents.

Sidewalks are housing appendices.They eat, they sell, negotiate.Crossing its streets is juggling, intuition and danger.But within that chaos the inhabitants of Saigon, of weak constitution, receive us with permanent kindness and smile.Nor do they insist on selling or overwhelming the visitor, but if you decide to buy.

Ho Chi Minh, a waste of history

Its streets fire multiple aromas of food prepared on sidewalks in street stalls that do not pay taxes - they tell us - nor have sanitary controls, so they are not advisable to tourists.

It is advisable to visit the reunification museum, where the end of the war with the US was agreed.UU.April 30, 1975.This visit will guide us for memories, because there are underground rooms in the form of bunkers, meeting rooms and the room where the treaty was agreed, among many other rooms and utensils.

In the center of the city we can visit the Plaza de la Concordia, with its cathedral of Notre Dame, Catholic Church built between the 1877-1880 in the time of French domination.Next to it is the Post Office, designed by Gustave Eiffel and also the oldest hotel, the continental, emblematic because they concentrated a large part of the correspondents that covered the war.

You can also see the War Museum, which was previously called the crime and that saw its name changed, after restoring relations with the United States.In it are images that were symbols, in addition to weapons, airplanes, torture rooms ...

With the US surrender.UU.The peace that the world asked, a world that saw its streets agitated thanks to the images that are still preserved in the subconscious of as many, like that of the children fleeing by a road burned by the Napalm, of photographer Nick Up, or theDel Vietcong receiving a head in the head that the police chief, from American photographer Eddie Adams unleashed him.

Those photos and many others were and continue to be symbols, some pressure symbols that accelerated peace.We can also see, two of the American senator Bob Kerry, who held the degree of lieutenant in the war and intervened in a great massacre.The work of Robert Capa is also present, who died by stepping on a mine in the Indochina War on May 25, 1954 in Thai Binh (Vietnam).

It is of great interest to visit the very central lake of the restored sword.There is the best nocturnal atmosphere, especially on weekends, which close their surroundings to the infernal traffic.

Hanói, aspiring to modernity

Hanói, with its 7 million inhabitants and 4 million motorcycles, is the capital of Vietnam.The Red River bathes.Suffers great rains in July and August.It is a city that aspires to modernity and that, in 15 years, has been able to change riceships for commercial areas.

The most typical of Hanói are its streets, with small and saturated homes that access for small and dark alleys and narrow stairs and with a degree of humidity of up to more than 90 percent.

In this capital we can visit the imposing mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), which was president from 1945 until his death in 1969, located in the Plaza Ba Dinh, a huge esplanade chaired by a large Vietnamese flag that helps make moreimpressive the monument.

Very close to the mausoleum is the yellow presidential palace.When we leave we can admire the page of the unique pillar or one column, and also approach the temple of literature, which was founded in the eleventh century dedicated to the confucio cult, becoming later the first university of the country of the country.

In Hanói we observe tradition and modernity.In it, many high buildings, its famous iron bridge, built by the French, as well as a wall of 4 kilometers in length, with paintings that tell the history of the country, and which is the longest in the world of these characteristics, and which is the longest in the world of these characteristics.

French prison in Hanói is another point of interest.It was used during the Vietnam War to house the captured American pilots.They called her ironically Hanó Hilton.Now it is a museum that keeps images and torture elements used in Hoai's prison.

In it was held Pete Peterson, who would be a US ambassador to Vietnam many years later, and John McCain’s, the US presidency candidate in 2008, who was captured after falling into Lake Truc Bach, on October 26, 1967.

One of the curiosities offered.

At first this celebration was dedicated only to the study of literature and explain that until 1900 they only spoke in Vietnam the Mandarin Chinese, so the current language only has just over a century.

In the so -called temple of literature, original statues of the eleventh century are preserved.Subsequently it became the National University of Vietnam.It was very damaged during the war for the attacks of the United States that used as a pretext the possible hiding places of the Vietcong (Vietnamese, and Cong, which means communist).

Recently the United States has collaborated in part of its restoration.Until 1945 92 percent of the population was illiterate.From this year, Ho Chi Minh established teaching for the people.

Of the Mekong and the Imperial Hué, to Halong's bay

Touring the country, Ben Tre should not be visited, a province composed of several islands in the immense Delta del Mekong, Rio 5.000 kilometers that bathe six countries.

Its inhabitants live mainly from fishing, artisanal earther.

Another place of interest is the city of Hoi An, which was in the past a prosperous port and meeting point between the East and West.It is essential to see the old part, which does not allow cars or motorcycles.

It has buildings declared a World Heritage, such as some private houses, temples, assemblies and museums.

It is worthy of praise La Pagoda de Phuoc Kien, which was built by Chinese sailors in the seventeenth century in honor of Thien Hau Thanh Mau, considered by them as the goddess of the sea and protector of sailors and fishermen.

One of the most valuable jewels of today is the Japanese covered bridge, which is 400 years old.

Hué, World Heritage

The imperial city of Hué, about 130 kilometers south of Hoi An, was declared a World Heritage by UNESCO in 1993.It was established as the capital of the Empire and a walled city was built in the likeness of the prohibited city of Peking.

He is worth visiting the Ngo Mono Gate, the nine sacred cannons, the Thai Hoa palace, the prohibited purple city, The Mieu temple, the RoyOne of the most beautiful works of real architecture of the Nguyen dynasty.

Another very curious city is Hoa Lu, chosen as the old capital of Dai Co Vietunforgettable images about their sanctuaries and tombs.

The ecotourism place of Trang An is a wild and very attractive area to make a boat tour, where silence is only broken by the sound of oars on transparent waters that lead us to the banks of where numerous caves, mountains and rivers are foundthat live in perfect harmony.

As culmination of the trip, the Asian company Travel proposes the population of Halong, where we must go aboard a traditional remodeled ship for tourist navigation.

Halong Bay is a magnificent set of 1.969 islands, islets and rocks disseminated on an area of 1.500 square kilometers throughout the Gulf of Tonkín.It has a special protection of UNESCO and is considered by many as one of the wonders of the world.

It is fantastic to be able to bathe in its waters and contemplate the dusk, a show of silence and peace while the sun hides gently, as well as seeing the sunrise in the area, where the paradisiacal landscape of rock islands and Emerald Green Agua are contrasted.

Wealth and curiosities

In transfers from one city to another we can observe the curious custom, extended throughout the country, to bury their dead in their own fields.Thus, the tombs, some of high color, stand out between rice fields and silence.

Vietnam is also a country of great wealth that exports Anacardos, to which more than 150 companies are dedicated.Also 40 percent of the world's pepper and is also the second export country of the world of coffee, high quality, variety and price.

You can drink good beer, such as 333 or Saigon, which they usually taste adding ice, something not very advisable to the visitor if the quality of the water with which it is made is unknown.

The sixty percent of the population lives in and the countryA very appreciated bite.

The ducks are raised with the excess rice in the rice fields after crop collections.They also consume dogs, which in many cases have tied in their homes and feed the litter, and then consume them.

Vietnamese live the present thinking about the future and forgetting and forgiving the past.They have a series of songs, declared by the Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage, and one of them, entitled "Quan Ho", says that, when someone visits a house when returning again, a new family will find there.Vietnam deserves to visit it and return.