Vietnam - 2025 — Jon's Photoblog

Welcome back!

I spent most of February in Vietnam, and it was an intense, eye-opening experience. The main point was to visit my son who is currently living there. We had a really awesome time, and he and his wife are excellent hosts and guides ❤️ I really appreciated the food I was treated to, the sites they took me to, and their ability to provide historical context. …And to let me retreat when it was all too intense.

As for the country itself, I didn’t really know what to expect. What few expectations I had were pretty much wrong…but mostly in a good way. I was left with an impression of a dynamic and vibrant country with immense national pride, undergoing change on a massive scale, and for the most part becoming increasingly and rapidly prosperous. It is constantly busy, but when you look even at the remote landscape, and the terracing on the mountains and hills, you realize this is not new: it’s been “busy” with human activity for thousands of years. It’s impressive, but of course there are some cons, such as the infrastructure hasn’t kept up with the increase in consumption so there is a lot of plastic trash. I don’t think I saw a single wild animal other than a few birds.

I took a LOT of pictures, but the vast majority were documentarian/travel/snapshots. Since this is a photography blog, and not a travel blog, I’ll focus only on the photos that I feel are “worthy”, and try to provide a bit of context.

Photographically there were plenty of interesting subjects, of course. However, there were three challenges: first, when you’re bouncing from location to location, it’s more difficult to explore optimum angles, viewpoints, times of day, etc.

Second, from a technical point of view, I wasn’t always able to get to my main camera. This meant I relied on my iPhone quite a bit, and I have to say, even my old iPhone XS still cuts the mustard… (isn’t that a saying?). It’s something worth remembering next time I dream about “upgrading” my equipment.

Third, there was almost no direct light: the whole time i was there, I think I got maybe 4 hours of sunlight, since it was mostly cloudy, and either misting or raining. My first glimpse of the sun for a couple weeks was in Vancouver of all places, on my way back home.

Personally, that was all fine with me, I’m in my element in the gloom. I just say all this to manage your expectations: this blog definitely won’t be a travel brochure. That said, if you’re ever on the fence about going to Vietnam, just go! It’s clean, well run, and pretty easy to make your way around. It will be well worth it!

With all that out of the way, I’ll break this up into the regions I spent time in, saving Hanoi, which I visited during the first and last week of my time there, for the last.

Tam Chúc and Ninh Binh

Tam Chúc is a very large and impressive pagoda complex about two hours south east of Hanoi. Once there, you need to take a boat across a lake, to a series of massive pagodas, each higher up the mountain than the previous. It’s very colourful, even on a cloudy day:

View from the first level, and the lake we crossed:

Driving a little further south and east brought us to Ninh Binh, a site famous for its Dragon Mountain, and river tours. This is from the top of Dragon Mountain, viewing a lower peak, and the rich rice paddies below:

I saw this colour scheme a lot on my trip, with the grey rocks, dark green foliage, and bright red flag. The flag is everywhere:

Looking out the other side of Dragon Mountain, down on the river tour we would take the next day:

At this time of year, the rice seedlings have been growing under greenhouse plastic, and are being prepared into small bundles for replanting in larger fields:

Sa Pa

Sa Pa is a city west and a bit north of Hanoi, a 6 hour bus ride, and very high up in the extremely rugged mountains. During a hike to a nearby village, I got my first glimpse of sun in a week. Oddly, the mist and clouds in the distance make it better in black and white, since the colour versions are very “blue”:

This one is also in black and white, because it’s all about the shapes:

I generally refrain from “people” shots, but I was able to fake where I was looking on this one, and caught a candid of a local woman who was hiking to her village with us:

Ha Giang

Ha Giang is a city north of Sa Pa. I took a “night bus” to get there, arriving at 1am. From there you can do the famous “Ha Giang Loop”, which is a motorbike tour through the north, near the Chinese border, stopping at various towns and villages along the way. Unfortunately I had come down with a terrible cold, so I hunkered down in a small village, and tried not to scare everyone with my constant coughing. Once I had it mostly under control I did a shorter version of the loop.

The terrain, as in Sa Pa, is extremely rugged. The road is narrow, with frequent hair pin curves and all kinds of traffic, including large buses and trucks. Almost all the foreigners had a personal driver, locally known as the “easy rider” option. You end up perched on the back of a small 150cc motorcycle, while the driver navigates the terrain and all the other traffic, which sometimes reached “Hanoi” levels of busyness. It’s a bit terrifying at first, but the drivers are very good, and after a while you acclimatize. It was also wet and cold, and everyone dresses in plastic pants and ponchos. I had waterproof gear, but the plastic was welcome because eventually the road spray made everything filthy. My tour mates and I, don’t we look just faaaabulous??

Our rides:

The road:

One of the towns we visited was Dong Van, which provided some great colour:

A common scene in the mountains, with a lonely farmhouse perched on a hillside:

A traditional village house. In previous times, the animals would be under the main building, for safety and warmth. Now, it’s motorbikes:

Paddies freshly planted with rice seedlings:

Hanoi

I spent the first and last weeks in Hanoi. It’s intensely busy, and at first it’s overwhelming, but after a while it really starts to grow on you. There are coffee shops everywhere (this one is 3 stories):

It’s tempting to want to retreat to your hotel, but there are also a lot of lakes, and parks around them, and it’s not difficult to find some refuge. My first day in Hanoi was a preview for the rest:

Sometimes the building decorations are too vibrant to ignore:

Hanoi is host to many historical and cultural sites. I got to visit only a fraction of them, all of which were well run. Here is the 1000 year old university:

And of course you can’t go to Hanoi without visiting the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum:

Unfortunately it was closed both times I went, so I wasn’t able to actually get in.

I’ll cap this off with a few shots from around West Lake, and what started off as a very foggy morning, making for some minimalist shots:

Finally, this looked festive:

And with that I’ll wrap it up. I can’t begin to do justice, in this short format, to my time there or Vietnam itself. I met quite a few interesting people, learned a tiny sliver of the language and history, and would happily go again.

Now I look out my window and it’s -10C, with that patchy “end of winter” look to the streets, and I’ll have to really work at getting motivated :) Stay tuned, and stay warm!

Mar 11 Vietnam - 2025

Tam Chúc and Ninh Binh

Sa Pa

Ha Giang

Hanoi

Jan 31 Mist ery

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