The Rough Guide: Vietnam

This new guidebook will make a great travel companion for anyone who decides to take it along with them. Vietnam: The Rough Guide is Rough Guides' first edition on Vietnam. It's not only well-written, but also had to have been thoroughly researched to be so up-to-date. The book contains no photos, making it less weighty than other guidebooks of similar length. (Any effort to lighten a pack is appreciated!)

As a frequent traveler to Asia, I sometimes no longer carry a guidebook with me because I've been disappointed in recent years with the currency of information provided in "new editions" of travel guides. I'm not referring to accuracy in prices because they change so frequently in Southeast Asia. What I want from a new edition is information on what's happened over the last year or so that affects the foreign visitor in terms of, for example, where he/she is able to go or stay in such "up and coming" countries as Vietnam. Before deciding whether or not to buy a new guidebook, I scan it for new guesthouses, visa information on border crossings/restrictions, maps, available forms of transportation and perhaps cultural highlights I hadn't come across before. Then I compare this information with older guidebooks and my own notes on Vietnam. I have to say that The Rough Guide excels in all of these categories.

Actually, the first thing I looked up in this book was a guesthouse I had spotted in Hanoi last year whose name I thought I had written down in my journal. It turns out that I wrote down only the corner of the street where it was located, and I've been trying to remember the name of the place ever since because I planned to rendezvous with a friend there later this year. When I opened this new guide, I turned to the map of accommodations in Hanoi and I found my guesthouse on the corner of Cau Go and Hang Be! This is the only new guidebook I've seen with this listing and with those of several others that were recommended to me by travelers I met in Vietnam in 1996. While some recently published guidebooks also indicate that the Hoi An Hotel is basically one's only choice when staying in Hoi An, The Rough Guide's suggestions include ten places in Hoi An now open to foreigners. There are, of course, other aspects of this book that make it an excellent and practical guidebook aside from up-to-date information on guesthouses. It's just a pet peeve of mine that I use the listings of new places to stay to make a quick judgment about the currency of a guide I'm thinking of buying.

This book makes it easy for the traveler to access information because of its excellently conceived index. For example, you can look up Cambodia, Laos or China in the index and quickly find the pages on how to get to these countries via Vietnam, or you can look up "visas" and the index will refer you to these same pages because they also specify where in Vietnam to obtain visas to these neighboring countries. In fact, I've had no trouble finding anything I want to research by using this index.

There is only one piece of outdated information I discovered in this book, but it concerns travel in China. On page 384, The Rough Guide indicates that railroad service between Hekou, China (right next to Lao Cai, Vietnam) and Kunming, China has been suspended until further notice because of a 1995 flood. Actually, at least as of April 1996, trains between Kunming and Hekou were operating because this is how I traveled to Vietnam from China.

For major cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam: The Rough Guide has separate maps on accommodations, restaurants and other places of interest (such as foreign embassies, airline offices, markets, museums) and these maps are spread across several pages. I imagine that the publisher's idea was not to clutter up one small map with too much information. Fortunately, they have eliminated any possible inconvenience of having maps sometimes several pages away from the text describing what's on the maps. In italics, directly underneath each heading of text on "Hotels" or "Accommodations," the guide refers readers to the page they can find the corresponding maps. In almost every way, the authors have made this book user-friendly.

There are boxes of text throughout The Rough Guide that highlight specific historical and cultural information. There is also an entire section toward the back of the book entitled "Contexts" that contains more detailed information on history, religion, minority groups, environmental issues, language and books and films depicting Vietnam.

The book seems to have something for every sort of traveler, ranging from information on water puppetry to ethnic minorities to bird watching (or "bird-spotting" as the authors call it) to "bia hoi" (draft beer) bars. On page 335, readers with more eclectic and adventurous tastes are informed where to eat dogmeat in Hanoi. I really like the phrasing they use: "Fido comes served up as stew, steaks, sausages or soups, and actually tastes pretty good." On my way to Halong Bay from Hanoi in 1994, I passed many restaurants serving dog ("con cho"), even one that had a big sign of a dog's head in the front, but I've never come across a guidebook that highlights restaurants serving dogmeat!

All in all, Vietnam: The Rough Guide is a welcome addition to the growing number of travel guides on Vietnam. Let's hope Rough Guides, Ltd. have books on Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos in the works!

Rough Guides' Phrasebook

During my first trip to Vietnam in 1994, I met very few Vietnamese who spoke more than a few words of English, so a pocket-size language guide came in handy. Two years later, I found that a lot more Vietnamese could speak some English, but it still doesn't hurt to have a phrasebook with you. Even when you don't pronounce words correctly and people can't understand you--Vietnamese is a tonal language that has some sounds western mouths are unaccustomed to forming--you can show your book to locals who can read what you want to ask them. (Be aware, there is about a 90% literacy rate in Vietnam.)

Rough Guides' new Vietnamese Phrasebook is divided into four sections--basic rules of the language, an English-Vietnamese dictionary (the heart of the book), a Vietnamese-English dictionary, and a 'Menu Reader,' that lists typical food and beverages you'll find on menus in the country.

A pleasant feature of the English-Vietnamese dictionary is that after the Vietnamese translations of the English words, Rough Guides often includes dialogues using these words. For example, the word "bus" is first translated into Vietnamese, and then there are phrases such as "Does this bus go near...?" and "No, you need the bus that goes to...." Another nice feature is the boxes of practical information that appear throughout the book. In the case of the word "bus," you'll find a box underneath that discusses the quality and variety of bus service in Vietnam. The Vietnamese-English portion of the book seems most useful for looking up the meanings of various signs and billboards you'll encounter.

I particularly like the idea of the "Menu" section at the back of the book, which seems to list just about every dish available from beef to pigeon to snacks. In non-touristy places, menus are often written only in Vietnamese, so Rough Guides' translations can be very useful to those who wish to sample local fare. Under "Egg Dishes" there's an aside from the authors: "Duckling egg. Be warned! Duck fetus with hair and all, eaten with herbs and peppered salt." I have a feeling if I had known what was inside that hard-boiled egg given to me by a nice Vietnamese family on a train from Hanoi to Hue, I would have declined their offer.

One of the best features of this phrasebook is that each word in Vietnamese is also written phonetically making the job of pronunciation far easier than if only the Vietnamese spelling appeared.

My advice is to take the Vietnamese Phrasebook with you. It's small and easy to use and if you can learn a few words of the language, your experience in Vietnam will surely be enhanced.

Editors note:

Jan Dodd, co-author of the Rough Guide to Vietnam, e-mailed us (February, 1998) that the book is being updated for a second edition, due out in October 1998. Rough Guide to Vietnam is featured on the Rough Guide site at: http://www.roughguides.com/travel/vietnam/tbk_viet.html. Jan Dodd can be reached at jan@numa.com

Published on 8/1/97