Vietnam: what things disappointed us vs. what made us want to come back for more!

Before going to Vietnam we kind of couldn’t wait for this experience counting the days until we got there. We heard a lot about Vietnamese cuisine considered to be one of the best in Asia, we heard about friendly and hospitable people we were going to meet there and we hoped that it would be less touristy than Thailand. We got a little disappointed by some situations and people and we thought that at some point Vietnam turned out to be jinxed in our case (especially we had the impression that we had bad luck with people that we were coming across during our journey). Later we changed our minds a little bit and found some pluses in regards to people, tourism and Vietnamese cuisine.

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Why was Hoa Lo Prison called ”Hanoi Hilton Hotel” by its American inmates?

Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi was built by the French in 1896 in Phu Khanh village. The building was one of the largest prisons built by French colonialists in Indochina. They jailed political revolutionists and patriots there. Many leaders of the government and the Vietnamese Communist Party were imprisoned there. From 1964 to 1973 Hoa Lo Prison confined American pilots shot down or arrested during the bombing of northern Vietnam. The most shocking for us was the fact that the prison got named ‘’Hanoi Hilton Hotel’’ by its American inmates. Sharing with you our feelings about it in a moment.

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