A narrative this grandiose is hard even to begin. I have 1,500 photos, about 30 voice memos, around a grand in lats spent on the entire enterprise, and as for the kilometers covered, it's impossible to count if you include the flight to Hanoi, over 7,000 km long.
Right off the bat, please don't take the story literally, because my tall tales are more like myth-making, as I always warn people. Prices and other reference points are given approximately: they'll change a hundred times anyway, and plus I didn't write them down. As for the events and their evaluation, it's all given through the prism of my imperfect consciousness. Usually, what people care about in trip reports anyway are emotions and impressions, not mathematical precision in the details.
Three people set off for Vietnam: Intars, Anna, and Vladislav, meaning me.
Anna and Intar told me not to write about them, so wherever possible, I will do just that.
In general, certain people known to everyone, about 5 or more in number, originally planned to fly to Sri Lanka, then to Madagascar. The Vietnam option came up because a cheap ticket straight from Riga popped up on https://skyscanner.net, thank goodness the search there is set up so you can look for tickets from, say, "Riga" to "anywhere", which is super convenient if you just need any interesting and cheap option.
Not everyone could or wanted to fly to Vietnam, so as a result only two were left: me and Anna, and later, at Anna's suggestion, Intars joined.
We bought the tickets in January. A ticket from the Polish company LOT Polish Airlines, which lost my suitcase the last time I returned from the US. But it's hard to resist a low price and a convenient layover, so an e-ticket costing 445 lats (without bikes) round trip was purchased with the help of a LOT employee from the Riga airport.
There was a problem with the purchase; there are often problems with bikes on planes. When I spoke to a LOT agent, I was told that the tickets had to be bought through them to make sure there would be room for the bikes on the plane. But Anna was the one buying the tickets, and she was told that there was room, and first you have to buy the ticket online on the LOT website, and then the bikes would be added. As for paying for their transport, that's right before departure altogether. However, when Anna bought all of us our tickets, it turned out that the bikes couldn't be fit on the return flight from Warsaw on the 5th — the plane was too small. And LOT didn't want to transport the bikes separately from the passengers. For changing the tickets to another date, when a slightly larger puddle jumper was flying out, they tried to charge us 100 euros per person. Fortunately, Anna knocked some sense into those jerks at LOT, and the date was ultimately changed for free.
As a result, we flew out on Wednesday, April 20 at 6:20, and returned on Thursday, May 5 at 0:50 Latvian time. These dates were planned out to include the Latvian national holidays — Easter, the first and fourth of May, thereby extending the trip to almost three weeks — two weeks of vacation + holidays. A classic maneuver.
As for the preliminary preparations, not counting the gear (which requires a separate post), the following were needed at a minimum:
1. Visa. Ordered in advance on one of the special websites, called Visa On Arrival. I ordered on https://www.myvietnamvisa.com/. The visa itself is stamped upon arrival at the airport, you need to have a filled-out application and two photos. The order costs about 20 bucks, the visa itself at the airport is another 25 bucks. The visa allows you to stay in the country for 1 month.
2. Vaccinations. I only got them for Hepatitis A+B (a combined vaccine), one dose costs around 30 lats, you need 3 doses. The second one is given after a month, the third after six months, you already have immunity after the second one, the third is needed for lifelong immunity. This vaccination is very important, but you can get by even without it, if you eat very carefully, wash your hands, and if you have a good immune system.
Some people also get vaccinated against typhoid fever (12 lats), yellow fever (idk), and bring along malaria pills (there are no vaccines for it). The pills can have side effects, be careful. We took a full-body mosquito net instead, it didn't come in handy. My doctor only recommended vaccines for Hepatitis A and B. There's a brochure about the Latvian Ministry of Health's recommendations for vaccinations for various countries.
It's also really good to have an active diphtheria vaccination; mine was very old, probably from school even, and I didn't have time to update it. They update it every 3-5 years, in Latvia — at the family doctor, for free.
3. Insurance. People get it from different companies. You can insure health+luggage+unforeseen trip changes. For me, just health at the bare minimum via Swedbank's online banking came out to 10 lats for all the days in Vietnam. The insurance is from a large firm, SOS International, and in Hanoi (the capital of Vietnam, where we flew into) there is a 24/7 representative office. At other firms, the insurance would have cost 20-70 lats.
I didn't get luggage insurance because I read an article where the author explains that insurance is like a casino. By and large, the casino wins. Meaning that in the long run, you'll pay the insurer more money than they'll pay you. Therefore, it only makes sense to get insurance for what you can't afford to lose. I only know of one such thing — my own health, which isn't exactly stellar anyway, so I guard it doubly.
For EU countries, you can skip insurance and get the free European health insurance card EVAK. It's worse than commercial insurance, but much better than nothing.
4. Of course, it's good to have at least 500 bucks of money — on a card and in cash too (it's useful to stash it somewhere else in case your wallet gets stolen). Bucks circulate universally in Vietnam, changing them and paying with them is not a problem. (Euros are a no-go).
5. Documents. You need to check your passport's expiration date. A driver's license isn't very necessary, in Vietnam they rent out mopeds even without one.
6. If you're planning to go somewhere by train, it's advisable to buy the ticket in advance. For the bus, it's not as important, because there are a lot of them, you'll just hop on the next one. True, rumor has it that they don't always take bikes on the bus, keep that in mind. They took ours without any problems, true, but only because there was room — there might not have been enough.
There's no point in booking hotels in advance — there are lots of hotels, prices are low ($10-20 per room), and there are always vacancies.