Editor-in-Chief Marc Atchison hops aboard a vintage Vespa in rush hour traffic to get a inside look at Ho Chi Minh City.

Marc Atchison visits the remote seaside village of Ho Tram and discovers a paradise-like setting in this hidden Vietnam treasure.

SAPA, VIETNAM - All I knew was that the cable car was now running. I did not plan to take it, let alone imagine that it might prove the highlight of my trip. My guidebook scorned the venture, saying it would relay more people in an hour to the top of Vietnam’s highest point, Mount Fansipan, than the number of climbers who summit it in an entire year. With the cable car, the guidebook said, “the appeal of standing alone on a remote peak” would no longer be an option.

HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM - A month before I was to wind up a long-term volunteer stint in Vietnam, my 89-year-old father Gordon arrived on my doorstep. I was working in Hanoi as a communications advisor with the World University Services of Canada in their Uniterra program, and the local college where I was stationed was closing down for Tet, the lunar New Year’s celebrations.

HANOI - They walk with poise and grace through the city streets. Some guide heavily loaded bicycles, others balance wares at either end of a bamboo pole. They are the urban street vendors of Vietnam, mostly rural women who rarely see their families, selling everything from pineapple and bok choy, to teacups and plastic brooms.

MUI NE, VIETNAM - I shade my eyes from the early morning sun and try to drown out the banter of the excited young foreign backpackers gathered outside Saigon’s main bus station on De Tham St.

DA NANG, VIETNAM - As far as I’m concerned, you can’t have too many spa treatments. And Fusion Maia agrees. The resort on a beautiful stretch of oceanfront linking Da Nang with the historic trading town of Hoi An, is offering an innovative concept designed for people addicted to exfoliations, wraps and kneading like me.

SAPA, VIETNAM - The gentle swaying of the Victoria Express rail car awakens me in the early hours of the morning – when the darkness of night begins to give way to the beginning of day. Billowing black mountains silhouetted against a moonlit sky reveal themselves when I peer through the car’s picture window as the train cuts through Vietnam’s dense jungle en route to this northern outpost, renowned for its dramatic mountain landscape and tribal hill people. It’s not yet 5 a.m. but already me...

HANOI - It was just past 7 a.m. but already the streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter were clogged with thousands of noisy little motor scooters, the transportation of choice for the six million citizens of this lovely capital, also known as the City of Lakes.

CU CHI, VIETNAM - It’s not hard to pick out the tourists brave enough to have crawled through one of the narrow tunnels that were used so successfully by Viet Cong guerilla fighters in the Vietnam War.