With its breathtaking beauty and enduring traditions, Vietnam provides endless rewards for the thoughtful traveler. Discover both the ancient and modern worlds of Vietnam on this popular and magical journey.

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Discovering Vietnam

17 days from $4,597 | includes airfare, taxes and all fees

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WHAT OUR TRAVELERS SAY

This was our first Smithsonian tour and we were impressed! It combined first class transportation and accommodations with intelligent and thought provoking seminars plus knowledgeable tour directors and study leaders. It won't be our last Smithsonian Journey.

- Carol R.

JOURNEYS DISPATCHES

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Experts

Oct 23 - Nov 8, 2019 Departure

Sharon Ullman

Professor Ullman is a professor of American history at Bryn Mawr College. She received her PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in 1990. She specializes in 20th-century America with an emphasis on media and memory, gender, and the social history of American Cold War policies in Asia after WWII. After publishing two books on the history of gender and sexuality in the U.S., her more recent research has turned to the ways in which the Korean and Vietnam Wars impacted American society from 1950-1980, particularly focusing on the often forgotten prisoners of war from the Korean conflict. Her courses at Bryn Mawr College include such topics as “Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War,” “Political Culture of the Cold War,” and “Movies and History: The Past Lives Forever.” Professor Ullman has taught in China for the Bryn Mawr College summer program and has been the study leader on multiple trips for the Bryn Mawr College Alumni Travel Program, including to Vietnam.

Dec 1 - 17, 2019 Departure

Jonathan Hall

Jonathan M. Hall is a film researcher and curator in Media Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California. An expert in East Asian film cultures, Jonathan's research profile extends to avant-garde art and digital technologies. In 2004-2005, Jonathan co-curated “JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film, 1955-now,” the most extensive program of Japanese experimental film to tour outside Japan; he has also served as Festival Fellow for the Cinema/Pacific Festival where he curated a program on sound in recent Japanese cinema. His published articles and forthcoming book include writing on kabuki dance, Japanese postwar photography, and mid-20^th century avant-garde film. Jonathan has previously taught at the University of Chicago, the University of California, and the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo. He pursued his graduate work simultaneously at the University of Tokyo and the University of California Santa Cruz.

Jan 8 - 24, 2020 Departure

Dana Sachs

Dana Sachs first traveled to Vietnam in 1990 and she has been visiting the country and writing about it ever since. Her first book, The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam, chronicles her experiences living in Hanoi in the 1990s. Her novel If You Lived Here tells the story of the friendship between two women, one a Vietnamese exile in the United States and the other a North Carolina native, who travel together to Vietnam. In 2010, she published The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam, the result of a Fulbright Foundation Fellowship that allowed her to conduct extensive research in Vietnam. Dana’s love of literature and Vietnamese culture led her to translate, with Vietnamese partners, many Vietnamese short stories and to co-edit Crossing the River, a collection of short fiction by the acclaimed writer Nguyen Huy Thiep. With Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Bui Hoai Mai, she compiled a collection of Vietnamese folktales, Two Cakes Fit for a King, which includes beautifully illustrated versions of some of the country’s most beloved stories. Dana and her sister, documentary filmmaker Lynne Sachs, also produced Which Way is East, a documentary film about contemporary Vietnam. Her journalistic articles and essays on Vietnam have appeared in numerous places, including National Geographic, The International Herald Tribune, Travel and Leisure Family and the Huffington Post. She lives with her family in North Carolina.

Feb 9 - 25, 2020 Departure

Ronald Wixman

Professor Ron Wixman was one of the founders of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Oregon where he taught courses on culture, ethnicity, nationalism, religion, and geopolitics. As such, he has done research on the people and cultures of South East Asia, which included numerous trips to throughout this diverse culture region. As a specialist on these topics he has been a lecturer and tour leader to all of the countries of South East Asia. His research focused on the diversity of cultures, religions, and ethnicities of all of Southeast Asia, which included not only the majority peoples that form the bases of the current countries of the region, but also on the numerous minorities in the highlands. Vietnam is one of the most diverse and interesting of these countries and has played a major role in the cultural history of its neighbors as well. Included among the topics he will discuss with you are: ethnic and religious diversity of Southeast Asia; traditional versus modern agricultural development; the impact of colonial rule by the Chinese and the French; and modern geopolitical issues in Vietnam. Not only will you enjoy the friendly and welcoming people of Vietnam, but also the fabulous cuisine of this country, which is becoming a world-wide phenomenon with restaurants now becoming popular throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Feb 23 - Mar 10, 2020 Departure

James Anderson

James Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A historian of premodern China and Vietnam, Anderson’s first book was The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao: Loyalty and Identity Along the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier (University of Washington Press, 2007). He is co-editor with Nola Cooke and Li Tana of The Tongking Gulf Through History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and co-editor with John Whitmore of China's Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier Over Two Millennia (Leiden: Brill, 2014, forthcoming). His recent articles include “Distinguishing between China and Vietnam: three relational equilibriums in Sino-Vietnamese Relations” in Journal of East Asian Studies (2013). Professor Anderson served as Executive Director of the academic consortium Southern Atlantic States Association for Asian and African Studies (SASASAAS) from 2007 to 2010. He has been active for many years in promoting international education and study abroad opportunities at his home university in North Carolina.