Truthfully, the year 2019 was never meant to be the year of Vietnam, even if I did badly need to update my Vietnam travel photos.
The first of my three trips to the country last year, to be sure, arose perfunctorily. I’d scored an incredible business class fare out of Da Nang in mid-June and, not wanting to go to all the trouble of flying from Bangkok just to transit (especially since I was on the cusp of leaving the Thai capital after more than two years) decided to make a long weekend of it, re-visiting Hoi An and Hue in the process.
When I exited Vietnam through Da Nang’s hot mess of an international airport at the end of said weekend, I assumed that would be it for Vietnam, at least for a while.
However, as you’ll see scrolling through these pictures of Vietnam, it didn’t end there. A few weeks after arriving in Taipei (where I relocated after my departure from Bangkok), I became madly infatuated with a malignant narcissist, to the extent to I agreed to stop in Hanoi on my way back from my tying-up-loose-ends trip to Thailand in late September; the idea was that we’d fly back to Taiwan from Vietnam’s capital together.
Said idea did end up playing out, albeit after three of days of groveling humiliation. People always talk about watching a train wreck in slow–motion, but did you know that you can watch it and lose your life in it simultaneously?
It took more than six weeks back in Taiwan for me to fully detach myself from he-who-shall-not-be-named, by which point a third trip to Vietnam was the farthest thing from my mind. It was December by this point, how would I even have time?
Well, as you’ll see in the remainder of the photos of Vietnam I’m about to share, it ended up happening. The third time, which wasn’t a particularly charmed affair I’m sad to say, I headed south to Saigon.
Well, it was sort of charmed. I’d traveled to Vietnam, once again, in order to meet up with someone I know I could never be with, only this time I was in the driver’s seat.
I won’t bore you with more details about my personal life, or with more words at all. A picture is worth a thousand of them, after all; by that measure, this post should be worth 30,000.
I hope these Vietnam travel photos inspire you to take your own trip. And I hope you travel for a better reason than mine for the three I took last year!
Robert Schrader is a travel writer and photographer who’s been roaming the world independently since 2005, writing for publications such as “CNNGo” and “Shanghaiist” along the way. His blog, Leave Your Daily Hell, provides a mix of travel advice, destination guides and personal essays covering the more esoteric aspects of life as a traveler.
