© Getty Images

Hanoi, French Quarter. Grand Hotel Métropole has been the finest address here since 1901. US presidents have stayed at the Métropole, Graham Greene, Charlie Chaplin, Mick Jagger, Angelina Jolie - and not to forget Jane Fonda in the middle of the Vietnam War.

© Getty Images

From the hotel's entrance, there are two ways to explore the city. One is the hotel's own beautiful, dark blue Citroën Traction Avant from the early 1950s, which guests can use for a city tour. The highly polished car looks like something out of an old French gangster movie or a Tintin story. The second option is Mr. Vui with his rickshaw bike, which seems to effortlessly transport two curious Europeans.

© Getty Images

Mr. Vui is probably in his 40s, very sporty, laughs a lot and tells us that "Vui" means nothing other than "the cheerful one". So we spend the next few hours driving through Hanoi with the cheerful one, past the replica of the Paris Opera, past old French villas, but above all through the old town. It has 36 streets that have been named after guilds and their products for centuries. For example, there's the street of mats, silver, jewelry and so on. That's what every travel guide says. In fact, the old quarter is a labyrinth of more than 70 streets, Mr. Vui knows and laughs again. And it's not the buildings that are old, but the traditions, the crafts and the way of life of the people here. But even that is constantly changing, because the Vietnamese are flexible.

© Getty Images

And because this is the case, Hang Son Street is no longer full of colors and terracotta as it used to be, but instead offers culinary delights for tourists: Cha ca (fried fish patties) and the ever-popular Pho Bo, the country's most famous soup. Of course, we try the North Vietnamese version of Pho. There's also the sweeter South Vietnamese version. Pho soup tells a piece of Vietnam's history with every spoonful. Originally, it was a hot broth made from water buffalo meat, which was eaten by poor farmers in northern Vietnam. Then came the French, who ruled their colonial empire of Indochine (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam) from Hanoi for almost a century and brought the Vietnamese coffee, the still very popular baguettes - and beef dishes such as pot au feu. Pot au Feu simply became Pho. You just have to be flexible.

Mango milk tea and pagodas

© Mauritius Images

We continue with Mr. Vui to Hoan Kiem Lake in the heart of Hanoi and walk across the red Sun Bridge to a small island with the Jade Mountain Pagoda. Everything here has very poetic names, but sightseeing also makes you tired and thirsty. And so we try the most popular drink in Vietnam, at least among the younger crowd, in a modern bar (think Starbucks!): milk tea, preferably mango milk tea. This may come as a surprise, as we were taught at school that milk was not for Asians - in fact, the refreshing drink only arrived in the country 20 years ago and was then popularized by Taiwanese Starbucks copies. There are now over 1,500 milk tea stores, which are particularly popular with young people.

© provided

Are there mountains in Vietnam? Of course there are! From the capital, for example, you can drive to the Tonkinese Alps and the "local Kitzbühel" called Sapa. The mountain range in the northwest of Vietnam on the border with China, which the French called Tonkinese, is now known as the Hoang Lien Mountains. Many minorities live there and you can marvel at their traditional costumes and markets: the Hmong, the Red Dao and the Giay. The best way to travel from Hanoi is on the elegant Victoria Express, which departs in the evening and arrives in the morning. There are good hotels in Sapa, and you can also go on trekking tours - and perhaps catch a glimpse of the 3145-metre-high Fansipan, the roof of Indochina, behind banks of mist.

The legend of the good dragons

© Getty Images

Another tourist stop you must visit is the world-famous Halong Bay, which used to take three hours to reach by bus - with toilet stops that wouldn't have received a seal of approval from the Swedish Institute of Hygiene. Today, you can fly comfortably and directly to the new Van Don Airport in Halong, but in return you have to share the fantastic island world of 1969 karst rocks with 6.8 million tourists a year. Halong Bay is one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world and almost became a film location for James Bond (The Man with the Golden Gun), but the producers were unable to obtain a filming permit at the time. According to legend, the karst rocks were spat into the sea by good dragons to help people against invaders. The dragons then disappeared back into the sea - we didn't see any.

© Getty Images

Vietnam has 3400 kilometers of coastline and many beautiful sandy beaches, especially in central and southern Vietnam. The most beautiful are near Hoi An (An Bang Beach), on the island of Phu Quoc (Sao Beach) in the far south in the Gulf of Thailand, and on the Cam Ranh peninsula near Nha Trang (the kilometer-long Bai Dai Beach).

© Unsplash

You'll also find a genuine Austrian hotel manager there, in an impressive five-star resort called Alma: Herbert Laubichler-Pichler, once General Manager at Schlosshotel Fuschl, has been working in Asia since 2008 and loves Vietnam. "It's an exciting country in every respect," says the Filzmoos native. "Europeans are just discovering it as a spa destination, as an alternative to Thailand."

Where to stay

Alma Resort

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Alma Resort Cam Ranh Viet Nam (@almaresortcamranh)

It's an Austrian-run five-star resort on the dream beach of Bai Dai.

Alma Resort
Nguyễn Tất Thành, Cam Hải Đông, Cam Lâm, Khánh Hòa, Vietnam
Tel: +84 258 399 1666
Web: alma-resort.com
Price: Doubles from € 160

Amanoi

© provided

This is a luxury resort on Vin Hy Bay in the middle of Nui Chua National Park. Ba Dien beach is a 13-minute walk away. 

Amanoi
Vinh Hy village Vinh, Hai commune, Ninh Hải, Ninh Thuận, Vietnam
Tel: +84 259 377 0777
Web: aman.com
Price: Villas from € 1115