Finding adventure, friendship on a women-only trip in Vietnam

By Lori Rackl, Tribune News Service

Light brown floodwaters lapped at the entrance to Vy’s, a restaurant, market and cooking school in Hoi An.

Spill-off from the nearby river continued to rise while we spent the afternoon at this popular tourist spot, learning how to make spring rolls and the sizzling Vietnamese crepes known as banh xeo. By the time class ended, the streets looked like they were covered in iced coffee throughout Hoi An’s Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We would have to leave Vy’s by boat.

“This is definitely an adventure,” quipped Cheryl from Cleveland as we gingerly stepped into a wooden vessel festooned with silk lanterns and fake flowers.

Cleveland Cheryl and I, along with 15 others, were on a Vietnam and Cambodia trip with AdventureWomen, a pioneer in the rapidly expanding world of female-only travel. The U.S.-based company has been running tours exclusively for women since 1982. More recently, many of the big names in active travel — Intrepid, Backroads, Butterfield & Robinson— also launched trips solely for females. They’re responding to women’s growing demand for small-group travel that promises elements of both safety and sisterhood.

“I like the camaraderie of traveling with other women,” said Peggy from California. She’d been on two other AdventureWomen trips before this one. “I still keep in touch with the Galapagos girls.”

Our group ranged in age from 45 to 72, plus a younger AdventureWomen employee — Emily from Pittsburgh — who was there to make sure things went smoothly. Depending on the destination, local female guides usually lead AdventureWomen trips. We had a man. Mr. Nam. This unflappable father of two looked after us like we were his children but treated us like adults.

“Ladies, stay close together like sticky rice,” Mr. Nam would say when it was time to usher us across the frenetic streets of Hanoi, where swarms of cars and motorbikes can rattle even the boldest pedestrians.

“Traffic in Vietnam isn’t about waiting in line,” he warned. “It’s fill-in-the-blank.”

The buzzing capital city marked the jumping-off point for our 11-day trip, which called for using planes, motor coaches and a boat to hopscotch across Vietnam. Our journey would end with a two-night stay in neighboring Cambodia, where we’d be blessed by Buddhist monks and visit Angkor Wat, a sprawling religious site on many travelers’ bucket list. But there was a lot of game to be played between that first, sensory-overloaded November day in Hanoi and our tranquil sunrise visit to the most famous temple complex on the planet.

A cup of Hanoi’s legendary egg coffee helped shake off some of my jet-lag stupor as Mr. Nam shepherded us through the Old Quarter, where shops flanking the crowded streets sold everything from wedding cakes to tombstones. On the sidewalk, people sat in kindergartner-sized plastic chairs, eating bowls of mung bean sticky rice and fragrant pho, the national dish of Vietnam. Motorbikes whizzed by, the meep-meep honk of their horns ingrained in the city’s soundtrack.

It felt good to escape the cacophony the next day on a 13-mile bicycle ride through nearby rice fields. Women working in the paddy put down their machetes to come over, say hi and offer us snacks and tea. We took turns snapping photos of each other, with them in their conical hats made of palm leaves and bamboo and us sporting bike helmets.

The chaos of Hanoi faded even further when we boarded our private boat in Ha Long Bay, a watery maze made up of more than 1,000 limestone islands. The UNESCO site has evolved into a magnet for traditional wooden “junk” boats full of day-tripping tourists.

Our two-night cruise ventured beyond this crowded playground to the equally dramatic Bai Tu Long Bay, where we kayaked and bonded over sunsets and the ship’s happy-hour drink specials. A few of the women in our group were friends back home. Most of us had never met. Having a 12-cabin ship all to ourselves, we got to know each other quickly. Days started with morning tai chi on the top deck. They culminated with fishing for tiny squid near the stern of the boat, under the stars.

Back on land, we clung to the coast as Mr. Nam led us south, hitting highlights like the Imperial City of Hue (more UNESCO) and Hoi An, an ancient trading port brimming with colorful lanterns, illuminated boats and countless silk shops hawking quick-turnaround, bespoke clothing. The latter led to some spirited communal shopping as we hit each other up for fashion advice.

We mostly managed to avoid the punishing rain that’s become more common in this flood-prone nation. In Hue, we had dinner at a woman’s home where hundreds of her books were piled high on a top shelf. She put them there to protect them from a recent flood. She left them there because more storms were on the way.

The woman, Dr. Phan Thuan Thao, is a single mom, music scholar and descendant of one of Vietnam’s last emperors. She showed us an upper section of the house where she was trapped for days as a child, waiting for floodwaters to recede. Her 86-year-old mother helped cook our multicourse feast, garnished in typical Vietnamese fashion with intricately carved carrots, cucumbers and other veggies.

Getting a glimpse into the lives of local women and hearing their stories adds a special element to female-only trips. At Vy’s cooking school in Hoi An, our instructor, Lulu, talked about the challenges of raising a teenage daughter and the stress of dealing with major floods for the fourth time that year — more than she’s ever seen in such a short span. The adjoining restaurant’s heavy freezers had to be carried up flights of stairs. Reservations canceled.

The water level outside was already ankle-deep when we arrived at Vy’s. Mr. Nam bought all of us plastic sandals at the market so we wouldn’t ruin our shoes.

On the top-floor cooking studio, where it was dry, Lulu guided us through the steps of making mango and prawn salad. The 45-year-old chef shared a story about leaving her poor village in the mountains and coming to Hoi An at age 13. The owner of Vy’s, cookbook author and restaurateur Trinh Diem Vy, took the young Lulu under her wing. She gave her a job. Later, when Lulu got married, she gave her a house.

“She saved me,” Lulu said, getting a little choked up. She soon snapped back into work mode, beckoning us to the front of the kitchen classroom so we could get a closer look at how to prep and pour the batter for the sizzling crepes.

Lulu surveyed our faces as we gathered around her cooking station.

“You family?” she asked.

We laughed and shook our heads no.

“Friends?” she asked again, trying to understand what brought 17 women from the U.S. to her corner of Southeast Asia.

The silence lasted a couple seconds before Jill from Minnesota swooped in with the perfect response: “New friends.”

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