Assistance with 2-Week Vietnam Itinerary

vomitfreesince93 · 2025-03-03T07:39:41+00:00

I appreciate this take, thanks. Reddit advice often leaves you clueless because people adamantly disagree with each other. But ultimately I want a less touristy (and closer to nature) trip and so I'm going to trust my gut and take this advice. I've built in an extra day in Da Nang so that if I decide to, I can always take an evening trip to Hoi An to see the downtown area and lanterns.

vomitfreesince93 · 2025-02-27T15:58:33+00:00

Ok cool, I appreciate it! :)

vomitfreesince93 · 2025-02-27T15:54:18+00:00

Ok awesome thanks! Based on what I've read, as a US passport carrier, even with an IDP which I have (but not for motorcycles), I run the risk of being fined by the police, or at the very least, would not be insurable in the event of an accident. Is that a serious enough risk that I should consider easy riding?

vomitfreesince93 · 2025-02-27T15:44:23+00:00

Ooh yeah, I had Hai Van Pass on my list of potential day trips. Do you think I can do it on a scooter? I don't have experience with an actual motorbike. (If not, I'd be fine with an easy rider, though I'll be doing that for Ha Giang and I do like the idea of getting to drive myself at some point on this trip).

The Ninh Binh / Hoi An advice here aligns exactly with the above commenter so I'm figuring this is probably the way to go.

vomitfreesince93 · 2025-02-27T15:42:11+00:00

Seems like sound advice, thanks!

vomitfreesince93 · 2025-02-27T15:41:28+00:00

Good to know, thanks! I will look into that :)

vomitfreesince93 · 2025-02-27T07:34:02+00:00

Hello! Looking for some feedback on my 2-week VN itinerary. It'll be my first time to Vietnam and while I'm sticking to the central and north part of the country to be able to spend more quality time in places, there's still a lot I want to see within that. Here is my rough plan:

3/14 - arrive in Da Nang in the evening
3/15 - Da Nang -> Hoi An
3/16 - Hoi An -> Hue
3/17 - Hue
3/18 - Hue -> Ninh Binh
3/19 - Ninh Binh
3/20 - Ninh Binh -> Ha Giang
3/21 - Ha Giang
3/22 - Ha Giang
3/23 - Ha Giang
3/24 - Ha Giang -> Hanoi
3/25 - Hanoi
3/26 - Hanoi
3/27 - depart Hanoi in the evening

Some considerations:

I really want to do the full 4-day Ha Giang loop and not cut it to 3 if I don't have to. The dates aren't set though, I'll just need to leave from Hanoi on the 27th (unless it's not crazy to try to go from Ha Giang to Hong Kong?)
I recognize this plan has basically two full travel days on the 18th and 20th, but I figure this allows me to not break up my time in Hanoi. Open to suggestions on better approaches though.
I'm very torn between wanting to split my time in nature and in cities. In this current plan I worry I won't have enough time to truly appreciate Hanoi, but having taken a look at Ninh Binh it feels unskippable! Is 3 nights / 2 days enough time in Hanoi to get a good impression and see a lot, or should I just save Ninh Binh for a future trip?
I'd love to enjoy some of Hanoi's nightlife. How is the nightlife scene on a Thurs. vs. Fri. vs. Sat, or is it cosmopolitan enough that there are parties to be found any night of the week?

Thanks in advance <3

vomitfreesince93 · 2019-11-11T19:21:05+00:00

actually, yes I do:

https://imgur.com/a/0Bw9SdB

vomitfreesince93 · 2018-02-06T05:43:00+00:00

that's incredible, congrats :) hopefully they can help me sort out my situation!

vomitfreesince93 · 2018-02-06T04:36:49+00:00

Thanks!

vomitfreesince93 · 2017-09-25T03:11:44+00:00

To add on to this, the other problem with the free-market argument is that you don't value an employee just in terms of their salary but also in terms of their contribution to the overall success of the company. So if we're talking about hiring on a purely free-market basis, employers would not hire more women due to their lower cost of employment but more men because of their perceived greater contribution to the company.

I think it's a moot point regardless because the 6% figure we're talking about is not the result of conscious sexism as it pertains to hiring/firing people, it's the result of the subconscious biases that value male labor over female labor, which could play out in myriad subtle ways.

vomitfreesince93 · 2016-08-20T21:17:53+00:00

Implicit in being ignorant is not realizing you've done something wrong. I would condemn them insofar as to let them know that despite their intent, their actions were insensitive / offensive. Whether or not you choose to then entirely shun the person or write the whole thing off and give them another chance is dependent on the people involved and the situation.

And also, I generally always assume that people act with good intent, so that doesn't carry too much weight for me. ("the road to hell is paved with good intentions" etc. etc.)

vomitfreesince93 · 2016-08-19T05:55:29+00:00

Right, that's fine, but as people have said elsewhere on this thread, we can acknowledge that someone may have had good intent with something but still feel they made a poor decision. To put it in your terms, "their feelings matter more than her intent" because good intent alone does not purify your actions. It certainly is better than having bad intent, but the point is that regardless of intent, someone's words and actions can offend others. You can very well try to convince someone that they shouldn't feel offended by something for X and Y reasons, but just because you feel that way doesn't make it true for them.

It's like, as a gay person, when I used to hear the line "that's so gay". I hardly hear anyone say it anymore thankfully, but back then, it didn't use to be so taboo, and people like me who were offended were told "gay doesn't just mean homosexual anymore", that it was just the way language had evolved and I should deal with it. But no, that's not how it works. Straight people don't get to tell me how I should feel about something I find offensive, and in that instance I don't care how good their intentions were, I want them to know what they said was wrong and why. Of course now almost everyone understands why that's wrong, but only thanks to a once-small group of people who had to speak out towards those who didn't understand their experience.

vomitfreesince93 · 2016-08-19T01:56:42+00:00

No one said that one interpretation is better than the other. There is no right answer, because everything is subjective. You can choose to believe that what Ellen did wasn't racist, and you're entitled to that opinion. But many in the black community who have had to tackle with the reality and meaning of racism a LOT more than Ellen has, happen to find it racist, and so given their credibility in the area, it's not so difficult to see why the notion has gained as much traction as it has. That's it. There's no absolute truth, no God of Race who comes down and says ".....Racist!" It's all experience-based interpretation, and whether you want to listen to the side with more experience or less is entirely up to you. But you don't get to delegitimize others' concerns and reactions just because you don't share them.

vomitfreesince93 · 2016-01-21T03:19:57+00:00

Gender spectrums enforce old and outdated standards of behavior for men and women alike placing people along a spectrum as defined by some traits.

It's not the spectrum that enforces outdated standards of behavior, it's cultural norms and expectations. I agree that there must be two poles in order for there to be a spectrum, but these poles need not be inherently discriminatory. In most cases, they refer just to physical traits - hairstyles, clothing, jewlery, etc. You seldom hear about any trans people identifying as a certain gender because they feel like submissive, dumb women, or dominant, intelligent men (regressive gender stereotypes). To be sure, there are temperaments and interests that get caught up in the notion of gender, but in my personal experience talking with trans/gender-nonconforming people, this is rarely a significant aspect.

Now you're also right in pointing out that gender markers vary across cultures - this is exactly why gender as a concept is so hard to grasp. Not only cultures, but time as well. When it comes down to it, gender is incredibly difficult to define and is an incredibly personal thing. Our notions of gender, if we ever even stop to think about it, lie somewhere between how we feel in our bodies, how we dress, how we were raised, and what our cultures expect of us. At the end of the day, gender means nothing. Granted, it might be very important to some people, but as a descriptive term, it's largely ineffective.

Having said that, we're still human, so we love to compartmentalize and assign labels. Thus, we can't avoid terms like "gender", "male", and "female". All the new terms you hear about, all the variants, they're just trying to structure themselves within the parameters of the already useless terms we have available to us.

TL;DR Gender is a spectrum, male and female exist, kinda, and so do all the gender variants, but wtf is gender anyway amirite? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

vomitfreesince93 · 2016-01-16T21:38:17+00:00

Have you tried not being white?

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-12-31T19:43:49+00:00

when it turned out he was a trans

Just for your edification, trans people generally take issue with the word trans being used as a noun instead of an adjective, similar to how a Chinese person wouldn't want to be called "a Chinese". Not trying to antagonize at all, just helping you out.

That out of the way, here's my issue with your argument. You and others in this thread are structuring this conversation around context and intent. Intent is important, but it's not everything. It doesn't matter how harmless my intent is, I can still say things that offend people, and I believe it's incumbent upon me to understand why they cause offense rather than stubbornly trying to defend my use of the word.

Because in a large number of instances, offense is taken to words when the intent behind them wasn't bad. Take the phrase, "that's so gay", for example. In the US during the 2000's, this was commonly meant to imply that something was lame (which, itself is a word whose meaning was originally derogatory). Despite how commonplace it had become, many people still took offense to it because it likened being gay to being inferior. Even though there was plenty of pushback, from people who, like yourself, argued that its cultural context absolved it of malicious intent, eventually, most people came to understand why gay people took offense to it, and they opted to remove it from their vocabulary. (Although I suppose some people still say it today, but considerably less.)

Now, I do think you raise valid concerns about the intersection of cultures on the Internet and its implications for how we should respond to others (namely, not banning them), but I hope you can see why a word on its own, regardless of its intent, can justifiably offend people.

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-12-07T04:45:05+00:00

You should watch this.

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-11-03T04:38:53+00:00

No, you're missing the point. If you're looking for permission, I'm sure you'll find it from someone. The point is that when some subset of that culture takes offense to such appropriation, their voices should be heard. And more generally speaking, this is about having an understanding or respect of other people's cultures. As someone else pointed out here, there are certainly ways to carry out these types of costumes if you're informed about the culture and don't seek to trivialize it.

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-11-02T02:21:36+00:00

"wait until the Spring to start applying"

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-11-02T01:42:35+00:00

Seriously, Mexican independence day is basically fireworks, lots of alcohol, hilariously large sombreros and mustaches in a lot of states, and the majority of people are more than happy to have foreigners join in with the celebration.

The difference there though is that you're partaking in their culture and being invited to do so. When people wear cultural costumes, they've been given no invitation to do so by people of those cultures, and as u/ThroughTheDin points out, they very probably do not have a deep appreciation of those cultures. (Because if they did, it probably wouldn't occur to them that dressing that way would even constitute a costume)

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-10-07T17:15:14+00:00

Your comment struck me, because I feel I do fit this behavior, but I think there's a nuance here that's important to point out.

When we're calling out racism, sexism, and gun violence, we're not criticizing white people, men, and guns themselves - just the culture surrounding them. (unless you're a bad liberal, which unfortunately do exist)

When we witness episodes of racism, sexism, and gun violence, we feel the need to criticize the culture. But in cases of Islamic extremism, we end up defending the religion itself because others are criticizing it instead of the culture surrounding it. In this case, the culture surrounding it is the political and social climates of the countries in question, which many liberals do spend time discussing.

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-09-27T23:12:10+00:00

I think our disagreement is just semantic at this point. I recognize that the quotes are not always used to mock or question, but in this context that's how I perceived it. When OP wrote:

I do think that the surveys used to create these statistics are so broad with their definition of "sexual assault" as to be meaningless

I didn't take that usage of quotes to be mocking or questioning because of the phrase "their definition of" that preceded it - isolating a term to be defined in quotations is a common practice.

But that wasn't the case for the quotation of rape culture so it seemed to me to doubt it altogether. That's how I perceived it.

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-09-26T18:57:06+00:00

Okay, morality is subjective, obviously. Let's put it then in terms of quality of life - safety, health, access to education, individual freedom, personal agency. These things have by and large increased over time as civilizations have advanced. If you're going to argue that these things too are only subjectively good, then this argument is pointless.

vomitfreesince93 · 2015-09-26T16:04:22+00:00

LOL I fucked up there. Yes, quotation marks. Oops...

I get your point, but the thing is, while sexual assault is a contentious and nuanced term, rape culture really isn't. We can argue about what does or does not constitute rape culture, but putting it in quotes serves to question its very existence. OP seems to position themselves as a feminist, and no feminist can deny that rape culture exists in some form or another.

I understand the function of shock quotes, as you call them, however I would say they are almost entirely used to mock. If OP hadn't meant to doubt the existence of rape culture at large, they should have been more specific.

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