I flew to Hanoi as part of a strategy I didn’t want to execute. My original plan had been to travel by road – bus and train – northward from Ho Chi Minh City, hitting all the interesting spots I remembered like Nha Trang, Dalat, Hue, and so on, until I reached Hanoi. I wanted to see if the old memories were still intact, and I also wanted to see some new places I had missed like Hoi An. But the weather changed all that.

Rainy season, at least in the south, begins around May or June and intensifies toward September. My experience in Thailand, where I lived for three years, taught me that rain doesn’t stop things like travel, it just makes them a little more uncomfortable. You get wet, but you can still go places. And rarely does it rain all day long, or rain for two or three weeks solid. But in 2007, everything got turned upside down.

This was a year that saw a series of late season typhoons hit central Vietnam, and late in the season, October and November. Just a case of bad timing, I guess: my vacation coincided with the worst flooding in several years. Hue and Hoi An were flooded. The famous Citadel in Hue was partly under water. It goes to show that nothing is certain, and that you should have a sense of humor when you travel.

Hearing this news while still in Saigon, I despaired at first: how could I crawl up the coast the way I had wanted when it was all flooded? Some roads were almost impassable, from what I was reading on the Internet. The easiest thing to do, if I wanted to stay in Vietnam at all but not be stuck on one city, was to fly over the whole mess to Hanoi. There, they were having sunny weather, as if the central part of the country was in another hemisphere. The weather in the south, Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, was perfectly fine. It was just the central coast that was the problem. But, that was exactly where I wanted to go.

I spent about a week in Hanoi, and found it to be a much more interesting and lively city than I remembered from 1995. Maybe that is because I was recovering from food poisoning when I arrived in Hanoi, so I wasn’t up for any late nights or arduous city tours. This time, I stayed in a guesthouse in the old quarter, an area I had not spent much time in before, and practiced my Vietnamese with the couple that ran the place. By the end of the week, we had become like old friends, and it was a great feeling.

Hanoi, I noticed, was almost overrun by backpackers – there were tons of places to stay, whereas in 1995, you really had to look and there were only a few choices. Now, it was adventurers from the richer countries, carrying their backpack and (usually) accompanied by their buddy, spouse, or partner. I was kind of different, being completely on my own.

This time I enjoyed Hanoi, going on long walks around the old quarter, the lake, and visiting several museums. I also booked a couple of tours outside the city, including one to Halong Bay, where I stayed overnight on the boat. But by the time my week was up, I was ready to move on. I was hoping the storms had blown through and that the flood waters had had time to recede a little. I bought an overnight bus ticket to Hue, departed about 6 pm, and arrived in Hue the next morning.

But my calculated strategy didn’t pay off. The first day there, it rained on and off the entire day. The second day, I went on a tour of the DMZ with a single guide on his motorbike, and on the way back there was a cloudburst, and we both got soaked. I had just done my laundry, and now everything was soaked and muddy. Furthermore, my next stop was to be Danang, from which I would visit Hoi An. I really wanted to go to Hoi An – sure, I had heard about the tailors, but I also just wanted to see the city. But when I inquired at a travel agency, I found that all the bus tickets going from Da Nang southward were booked – by people trying to get out of Hoi An because it was flooded. Did I want to go to a place that everyone was trying to leave?

I fumed and fretted for half a day, then decided to throw in the towel. Even returning to Ho Chi Minh City was iffy, if I went by bus. Regretfully, I purchased another plane ticket, and flew from Hue back to Saigon.

All in all, I had a good time in Hanoi, and I got to re-experience Hue, albeit in very different weather than my first visit, which had been mostly sunny. Now, I was back in Saigon, a week earlier than planned – what could I do? I could visit more museums, go for more walks, do more shopping… But I felt like I was spending too much time in one place. Finally, I booked a boat to Vung Tau, out near the coast.

Vung Tau is a city that foreign tourists usually don’t see. It’s a popular resort for Vietnamese, but there isn’t a lot to do there, no museums, no ruins; only the proximity to the ocean recommends it. I relaxed on the beach by day, went out to lunch, went for walks in the afternoon, went out to dinner, went out for drinks afterward, and went home, for the next two and a half days.

Vung Tau wasn’t the greatest destination, but I did feel at least that I was getting away from the tourist path, and I was happy for that. Travel is about escaping our day-to-day reality, but it is also about adventure and seeing new things. Sometimes these things are not comfortable or even pleasant, but they do give us memories. I’m so glad I have some memories that don’t include looking at the back of another tourist’s head on the bus or the boat.

And if you are planning a trip to Vietnam, I seriously recommend going from January to April. That was when I went in 1995, and I have only good memories of the weather then. But, at least I got to see the country again. That part was important to me.

That's all for now - check back in for more of John's writings about southeast Asia