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three principals have known Vietnam for a long time and they love it. They each have unique experiences and personal understandings of Vietnam. It is this rich vein they draw on to take their passengers into the Real Vietnam.
Vietnam is not just a nice holiday experience. Nor is it pretty pastoral scenes of paddy fields and two-dimensional conical-hatted workers, or superficial exchanges with delightful shop keepers, or cute young women in ao dais riding bicycles. Vietnam’s history is not simply 200 years of a weak country battling western colonialism and imperialism.
live an enduring and legendary story stretching back 4000 years with heroes and events that are celebrated as if they happened only yesterday. To them Vietnam is a nation and culture where real people with real personalities lead real lives of toil, love, loss and celebration. They have seen how dynamic shifts of people have left a rich story on the face of the land and peopled by characters, big and small, who have real dimension and depth. Their Vietnam is a land of spiritual and commercial dynamism where the culture combines old subtleties and nuances with modern innovations and efficiencies. This is the unknown face of Vietnam that Monkey Bridge Tours helps travellers to experience.
and often-crowded places that most tourists visit, but does them differently. Drop in for a few hours but then stay up the road away from the crowd the vendors and the hawkers. But with so much more to see in Vietnam -- and now with the improved transport and hotel infrastructure to do so – MBT actively ventures to places that few overseas tourists see. Constantly innovative and well-researched, every tour is a shared adventure of exploration and endless surprises, even for the principals who personally lead them.
both ancient and contemporary. As their knowledge expands, MBT’s principals constantly revise and refine their itineraries. There is always a previously unvisited place to see, a new hotel and restaurant to try out, or even a new road to explore. Such innovations -- plus a healthy dose of spontaneity -– create those “magic moments” that make its tours truly memorable
on the Hanoi-Haiphong train. Speaking Vietnamese and French with him, we establish a rapport quickly and are invited to drop in for tea and old memories. We arrive just in time for the evening Mass at the famous Phat Diem Cathedral in Vietnam’s oldest Roman Catholic diocese. We drop into a village temple to a 13th Century hero where his descendents’ are performing their annual veneration of him. We witness a family’s tears and joy at finally finding the grave of their long-lost soldier son killed in the South. Or we find ourselves surrounded by laughing and welcoming young Vietnamese at an ear-shattering disco in Da Nang.
Stop the bus and learn how rice is harvested, how those mechanized threshers work, how to make rice paper and rice wine and all those different types of fish sauce. And how about this lovely beach? We stop for a quick swim and a seaside snack of fresh caught crabs and prawns.
; we magically bring visitors into the heart and soul of Vietnam |
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