First published February 2025 | Words and photos by Vietnam Coracle
Tom Divers is the founder and creator of Vietnam Coracle. He’s lived, travelled and worked in Vietnam since 2005. Born in London, he travelled from an early age, visiting over 40 countries (he first visited Vietnam in 1999). Now, whenever he has the opportunity to make a trip, he rarely looks beyond Vietnam’s borders and his trusty motorbike, Stavros. Read more about Tom on the About Page, Vietnam Times and ASE Podcast.
*Chúc Mừng Năm Mới Ất Tỵ! Happy New Year of the Snake!
During Tết Lunar New Year, Vietnam enjoys its longest holiday. The national mood is celebratory – even ecstatic – for the entire week following New Year’s Day, which usually falls somewhere between mid-January and early February. All of Vietnam’s well-known travel destinations are packed with holiday-makers, accommodation rates sky-rocket, restaurants do a roaring trade in food and beer, and noise levels (a euphemism for ‘karaoke’) are through the roof. For many years now, I have sought a quieter Lunar New Year, retreating into the mountains, valleys and streams that lie inland from the busy, festive coastal towns, carrying my tent and supplies with me on my motorbike as I ride down dirt paths through forests looking for freshwater springs and good places to camp. I invite my friends, who come along if they’re available, but this year I went alone, spending four days camping along three springs in the south-central province of Ninh Thuận. It’s not difficult to get off the beaten track here, and such was the isolation of the places I camped that the trip essentially became a silent retreat with all of the meditative qualities which that implies.
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LUNAR NEW YEAR SOLO CAMPING
This page is a collection of photos, notes and maps to try to convey some sense of what this alternative Tết Lunar New Year experience is like, and hopefully encourage other people to try something similar. (For more articles like this, see my camping guides archive. And if you enjoy this content, please support my website.)
Camping Locations & Springs, Ninh Thuận Province:
- Camping Equipment: tent, sleeping bag, reed mat, camp stove, lighters, flasks, cutlery.
- Food & Drink: mixed nuts, soba noodles, pesto, canned tuna, muesli, milk, boiled eggs, fish sauce, chocolate, fresh coffee (and V60 dripper), soju rice liquor, water.
- Clothes: two sets of shorts and T-shirt (one for daytime riding, one for evening change), scarf and sweater (for cold nights), swim wear (for bathing in the springs), trainers (for hiking), flip-flops.
- Reading Material: ‘Dharma Bums’ (Jack Kerouac), ‘A Quiet Evening’ (Norman Lewis), ‘The Body’ (Bill Bryson) – all on Kindle.
- Toiletries: toothbrush, toothpaste, insect repellent, sunscreen, towel.
- Extras: guitar, headtorch, knife, mosquito coils, tissues, phone, power bank, laptop.
Tết is perfect camping weather in Ninh Thuận Province: cloudless blue skies, dry heat, crisp sunlight from dawn till dusk, cool evenings, cold nights, and dewy mornings. Inland Ninh Thuận is rarely travelled, and yet there are good, empty roads leading into the mountains, valleys and forests of an appealingly arid landscape strewn with boulders and interlaced with streams and springs. This is Cham country, once an important part of the Hindu Kingdom of Champa, whose ruined temples are still scattered across the landscape, mostly unnoticed and unvisited.
For 4 days and 3 nights I followed goat paths upstream along mountain springs as far as I could get on my motorbike until I found a suitable place to make camp in clearings in the brush and bamboo thickets and tropical trees close to the water and sheltered from the sun. The days are peaceful and slow, but the nights are full of sound and activity: a rhythmic chorus of birds, insects and amphibians that is at once comforting and terrifying when you’re alone in the dark with not other lights in the landscape, only fireflies, stars and the faint glow of the new year moon hanging in the western sky like a mobile above a baby’s cot.
I was offline and hardly encountered nor spoke a word to anyone for over 72 hours. Inland Ninh Thuận is sparsely populated, inhabited mostly by a handful of minority ethnolinguistic groups, including the Cham, many of whom still live a partially itinerant life, moving with the seasons and the habits of the animals they keep, foraging in the forests and making temporary bamboo and timber homes on the mountainsides and by the streams. To keep my tongue from atrophying, I read aloud and sang with my guitar.
As I’ve said many times on this website, camping in Vietnam is one of the most memorable travel experiences you can have. It is active, engaging and necessarily requires you to get off the beaten path and see a side of Vietnam that most travellers miss. Camping brings you into much closer contact with your natural surroundings and you will see, hear and smell the Vietnamese landscape better than any other travel activity. This particular camping trip was bookended with brief stays in Nha Trang and Mũi Né, both of which are major tourist destinations crammed with travellers all doing the same thing, and neither of which I would recommend above a wild camping trip. If you really do want an adventure and an off the beaten path experience in Vietnam, camp! (See my Camping Guides for much more. And if you enjoy my work, please support my website.
*Disclosure: I never receive payment for anything I write: my content is always free and independent. I’ve written this post because I want to; not because anyone has paid me, sponsored me or hired my services. For more details, see my Disclosure & Disclaimer statements and my About Page
