Women-only travel tour to Vietnam sparks adventure and sisterhood

Light brown floodwaters lap at the entrance to Vy’s, a restaurant, market and cooking school in Hoi An, in central Vietnam. Spill-off from the nearby river continues to rise while we spend 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 ends, the streets look like they are covered in iced coffee throughout Hoi An’s Old Town, a Unesco World Heritage site. We will have to leave Vy’s by boat. “This is definitely an adventure,” says Cheryl, as we gingerly step into a wooden vessel festooned with silk lanterns and fake flowers. Cheryl and I, along with 15 others, are on a Vietnam-focused trip with AdventureWomen, a pioneer in the rapidly expanding world of female-only travel. The US-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 are responding to women’s growing demand for small-group travel that promises safety and sisterhood. “I like the camaraderie of travelling with other women,” says Peggy. She has been on two other AdventureWomen trips before this one. “I still keep in touch with the Galapagos girls.” Our group ranges in age from 45 to 72, plus a younger AdventureWomen employee – Emily – who is there to make sure things go smoothly. Depending on the destination, local female guides usually lead AdventureWomen trips. We have a man: Mr Nam. This unflappable father of two looks after us like we are his children, but treats us like adults. “Ladies, stay close together like sticky rice,” he says when it is 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 says. “It’s fill in the blank.” The buzzing capital city marks the jumping-off point for our 11-day trip, which calls for using planes, coaches and a boat to hopscotch across Vietnam. Our journey ends with a two-night stay in neighbouring Cambodia, where we are blessed by Buddhist monks and visit Angkor Wat, a sprawling religious site on many travellers’ bucket lists. But there is 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 helps shake off some of my jet-lag stupor as Mr Nam shepherds us through the Old Quarter, where shops flanking the crowded streets sell everything from wedding cakes to tombstones. On the pavement, people sit in kindergarten-sized plastic chairs, eating bowls of mung bean sticky rice and fragrant pho, the national dish of Vietnam. Motorbikes whizz by; the honk of their horns is ingrained in the city’s soundtrack. It feels good to escape the cacophony the next day on a 13-mile (21km) bicycle ride through nearby rice fields. Women working in the paddies put down their machetes to come over, say hi and offer us snacks and tea. We take 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 fades even further when we board our private boat in Ha Long Bay, a watery maze comprising more than 1,000 limestone islands. The Unesco site has evolved into a magnet for traditional wooden junks full of day-tripping tourists. Our two-night cruise ventures beyond this crowded playground to the equally dramatic Bai Tu Long Bay, where we kayak and bond over sunsets and the ship’s happy hour drinks. A few of the women in our group are friends back home. Most of us have never met. Having a 12-cabin ship all to ourselves, we get to know each other quickly. Days start with morning tai chi on the top deck. They culminate with fishing for tiny squid near the stern of the boat, under the stars. Back on land, we cling to the coast as Mr Nam leads us south, hitting highlights like the Imperial City of Hue (more Unesco) and Hoi An, an ancient trading port brimming with colourful lanterns, illuminated boats and countless silk shops hawking quick-turnaround, bespoke clothing. The latter leads to some spirited communal shopping as we hit each other up for fashion advice. We mostly manage to avoid the punishing rain that has become more common in this flood-prone nation. In Hue, we have dinner at a woman’s home where hundreds of her books are piled high on a top shelf. She put them there to protect them from a recent flood. She left them there because more storms are on the way. The woman, Dr Phan Thuan Thao, is a single mother, music scholar and descendant of one of Vietnam’s last emperors. She shows 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 helps 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, talks 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 has ever seen in such a short span. The water level outside is already ankle-deep when we arrive at Vy’s. Mr Nam buys all of us plastic sandals at the market so we do not ruin our shoes. On the top-floor cooking studio, where it is dry, Lulu guides us through the steps of making mango and prawn salad. The 45-year-old chef shares 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 says, getting a little choked up. She soon snaps back into work mode, beckoning us to the front of the kitchen classroom so we can get a closer look at how to prep and pour the batter for the sizzling crêpes. Lori Rackl

Women-only travel tour to Vietnam sparks adventure and sisterhood

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Amid growing demand for safe, small-group female travel, 17 women travelled with US-based AdventureWomen to explore Vietnam’s treasures

Amid growing demand for safe, small-group female travel, 17 women travelled with US-based AdventureWomen to explore Vietnam’s treasures