R ESCORTED TOURS VIETNAM DESTINATIONS adventureAsian A group tour takes the stress out of far-flung family


holidays, as Lee Hayhurst discovers on a visit to Vietnam @leehayhurst


W


hen you find yourself in a queue to view the dead


body of a much-revered father of a nation, you realise this is going to be a holiday like no other. That was how our Intrepid Travel family trip to Vietnam started. On our first day, we joined


hundreds of Vietnamese in Hanoi on their pilgrimage to the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, the 20th-century revolutionary who led his country to independence after hundreds of years of rule by invading empires.


He also, of course, saw off a US hell-bent on preventing the country falling to the Communists, and his body lies embalmed in air-conditioned stasis, bathed in an eerie orange light just yards from the modest home from which he conducted the Vietnam war. Hours earlier we’d met, for the


first time, our fellow travellers on this amazing 11-day grand tour of Vietnam’s big six attractions: the five Hs (Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hue, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City);


and one M (the Mekong Delta). Our group of 16 had gathered


around a restaurant table in the unremarkable but comfy Hong Ngoc Hotel the previous night: eight children aged between five and 13, and eight adults all wondering whether travelling halfway across the world to holiday with total strangers was a good idea. What lay ahead of us was six long and winding bus journeys, plenty of wandering around temples and historic monuments


in the searing tropical heat, an overnight boat trip, a noisy and largely sleepless overnight train journey, an internal flight and a homestay. What were the chances of 16 people who had never met before rubbing along just fine in such circumstances?


w GROUP STAGES We needn’t have worried. We had remarkably similar origins back home – all but one of the families had or still did live within a


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