u/hoyarugby2

I have wanted to travel to Vietnam for years, and my desire has only been reinforced now that I've been reading deeply into the history of the Vietnam War.

However, I am a person who does not tolerate heat and especially humidity well. I hate summer here in the northeast US, I get quite sweaty from even doing things like going for a 30 minute walk when it's 90* out and moderately humid. Even during the dry season, southern Vietnam is always hot and fairly humid, basically the weather of a NE US summer at all times. Many of the places I'd like to go in Vietnam are battle/base sites further into the highlands, where the weather is even worse than in coastal towns. My past experience traveling to tropical/hot places is the Caribbean which doesn't count and Morocco in the winter, which likewise isn't helpful

Being a tourist especially somewhere like Vietnam involves spending much of the day walking around. I really don't want to have to pack 20 changes of clothes and shower 5x a day to remain presentable and not smelly, especially as I normally try to travel light with just a carryon sized bag

Any strategies or tips/tricks for handling the heat and remaining hygienic/presentable, especially for Vietnam?

I was watching a lecture about William Westmoreland last night, and the lecturer mentioned that one of his great failures as the architect of US policy in Vietnam was not taking the training and equipping of ARVN forces seriously. He mentioned that ARVN forces were generally more poorly equipped than PAVN ones until Vietnamization, with ARVN's WW2 era weapons outgunned by modern PAVN ones. Another memoir I listened to from a US advisor said that the US hadn't taken the training of RF/PF forces seriously until after Tet, but once they were properly trained and equipped they were very effective

On its face this seems like insane policy by the US. The later war showed that ARVN could hold their own against North Vietnamese forces when supported by US airpower, so why did it take so long for the US to start properly equipping and training ARVN forces?