British newspaper gives tips on exploring Vietnam

Express, a UK newspaper, has given some pieces of advice for travelers what to do in Vietnam and how to crossing the road in Vietnam to enjoy the beauty of this country.

“You pick your moment then step out into the non-stop traffic and keep moving at a steady pace until you reach the other side. The cars and hundreds of mopeds with riders carrying anything from shopping to livestock, chairs and even trees, simply drive around you,” Deborah Stone wrote for Express.

The writer advises travelers that the most important meal of the day in Vietnam is breakfast. You don’t skip breakfast here; even if you work in an office you go in to switch on the computer then go to eat.

It’s lunch time, the first course came at Huong Lien, a bun cha restaurant (bun means noodles, cha is grilled pork) made famous by a visit from the former US President Barack Obama in 2016. The multi-storey canteen serves the Hanoi specialty dish bun cha - a broth with grilled pork to which you add cooked noodles and aromatic herbs.

According to the writer, on the second day in Vietnam, you may want to visit another destination and check out the Ha Long Bay in Quang Ninh province, where visitors can spend two days on a ship among the limestone stacks and small islands of this UNESCO-listed archipelago.

In Hue, the former imperial capital, holidaymakers may choose cyclo - Vietnamese rickshaw - over the Perfume River to the Citadel, where the Imperial City is being restored.

Copied from Beijing's Forbidden City, these palaces were badly damaged during wars with France, then America but are now rising from the ashes - like the phoenix that decorates the buildings along with dragons and Oriental unicorns.

Meanwhile, with Hoi An, visitors can experience Vietnam’s culinary culture hands-on. On riverside fish stalls, visitors can saw vivid blue crabs and piles of fish landed that morning and being taken to hotels and restaurants.

Hoi An itself is an old trading town with lanterns strung across the streets and UNESCO-listed buildings including a Japanese covered bridge and timber houses in ancient Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese styles. It's a world away from Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as most people still call it.

Ho Chi Minh City retains more French cultural references than elsewhere, particularly when it comes to food. Ho Chi Minh City baguettes - banh mi - stuffed with grilled pork, bean sprouts and coriander, perfect for anybody with noodle-fatigue.

Vietnam welcomed some 11.616 million foreign visitors in the first nine months of 2018, a 22.9% increase from the same period last year, the General Statistics Office (GSO) has said in a monthly report.