Vietnam
This is the end of Vietnam, we're in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon, even by the locals - renamed after the liberation war in 1975 for the revolutionary dear leader). Its hot and sticky, I've been in cooler saunas. Phnom Penh tomorrow, in Cambodia.
Have a look at Sitemeter world report. Some of this is spooky. Would the latest visitor from Bluefrog internet in Rochester, New York take a bow please. Anna - you're not reading this from work (corbis.com), are you? Kalmar.lan in Sweeden, that sounds like Johan, bris.ac.uk is Loren? (Anyone curious, these reports are free from sitemeter.com, they also do some premium stuff.) Erm, forget about the Australian reader, he seems to have been looking for something else.
Take Dalat for example. We visited two incredible cafes in Dalat, one with amazing architecture (about 23.5 floors), art work, sculptures - aparantely it was supposed to represent the Vietnamese creation story with the sea goddess in the basement rising up to the sky goddess at the top. The other cafe was owned by a wispy bearded, beret wearing 70 year old calligrapher who serves you himself in his living room, all kinds of poems and artwork throughout. Then there's the Chun Ly falls, with fake Vietnamese cowboys, plastic mushrooms and alligators moving house. And Bao Dai's (last emperor of Vietnam) summer palace, a tacky 1930's B&B or at least we've stayed in better places on our budget. Then again, we did go go-karting for 60pence. Oh, and the hotel ripped us off by claiming with a smile that $16 was 293,000 dong (go on, multiply 16,548 by 16 in your head at 6am), then denied that we'd paid them that much.
Thoughts about Vietnam:
The national sport is badminton, there are courts chalked everywhere on pavements and car parks. They even have a football variant, with a springloaded 6' shuttlecock they kick around.
Motorcycles are everywhere, no one owns a car. All the streets are chock-full of 2-5 people perching on a honda 50cc (forget high occupancy vehicles, these people know how to do it). Pavements are reduced to motorcycle parks and street vendor stalls, you have to walk in the road. Crossing the non-stop roads is an act of faith, you walk calmly, slowly and steadily and trust the drivers want to miss you as much as you want to miss them.
The entire culture rests around the concept of face, of saving embaressment. I blame the rice (extremely high population densities- a rice field generates an incredible amount of food). So a Vietnamese will see nothing contradictory in saying "same same but different" if you ask is this the same price as that- first agreement to save face, then the money negotiations. As always, never ask the question "do you know the way to..." because any answer other than yes will lose the askee face.
You really have to watch the money, the rip-offs are endless. One problem is that everyone who speaks English is in the tourist trade, you just can't speak to locals (Vietnamese is an incredibly hard tonal language, completely different in the South as well). In South America it was different, people looked at you as if they themselves could be European (except the Bolivians). Probably coincidental, but everyone here now supports Chelsea!
We ended up taking the tourist buses everywhere, the local buses all seem to go from out of town bus stations. The tourist buses are cheap enough ($5-7), slow, and have a huge comission culture - every hotel, every cafe stop is baksheesh.
Possibly the hardest thing to take is the mosquito like beach/city sellers: you want book? You want manicure? -at least one every 5 minutes. I can't blame them too much, I would do the same in their situation, but it is damn anoying.
There are good points to Vietnam. The food is excellent and cheap. Mini-hotels with satellite tv, bath, air con are $10 a night. There are some good beaches, and dive sites (weather permitting)- Nha Trang, at $30 for 2 dives including equipment is the best I've seen. It'd be a lot better in the cool season (nov-feb), and as always, if this post came after a long cold drink in an air con bar. Hoi An did have marvelous tailors (of course, they said yes to everything even if they didn't understand what you said, so we got a few surprises) and was very good value.
Its a shame really, if the people smiled, didn't rip-off and were friendly, they'd have a lot more return custom. At least some part of me wants to believe that. Its not as if Vietnam is particularly poor, but this short term focus on screwing foreigners does put me off a country.
Have a look at Sitemeter world report. Some of this is spooky. Would the latest visitor from Bluefrog internet in Rochester, New York take a bow please. Anna - you're not reading this from work (corbis.com), are you? Kalmar.lan in Sweeden, that sounds like Johan, bris.ac.uk is Loren? (Anyone curious, these reports are free from sitemeter.com, they also do some premium stuff.) Erm, forget about the Australian reader, he seems to have been looking for something else.
Take Dalat for example. We visited two incredible cafes in Dalat, one with amazing architecture (about 23.5 floors), art work, sculptures - aparantely it was supposed to represent the Vietnamese creation story with the sea goddess in the basement rising up to the sky goddess at the top. The other cafe was owned by a wispy bearded, beret wearing 70 year old calligrapher who serves you himself in his living room, all kinds of poems and artwork throughout. Then there's the Chun Ly falls, with fake Vietnamese cowboys, plastic mushrooms and alligators moving house. And Bao Dai's (last emperor of Vietnam) summer palace, a tacky 1930's B&B or at least we've stayed in better places on our budget. Then again, we did go go-karting for 60pence. Oh, and the hotel ripped us off by claiming with a smile that $16 was 293,000 dong (go on, multiply 16,548 by 16 in your head at 6am), then denied that we'd paid them that much.
Thoughts about Vietnam:
The national sport is badminton, there are courts chalked everywhere on pavements and car parks. They even have a football variant, with a springloaded 6' shuttlecock they kick around.
Motorcycles are everywhere, no one owns a car. All the streets are chock-full of 2-5 people perching on a honda 50cc (forget high occupancy vehicles, these people know how to do it). Pavements are reduced to motorcycle parks and street vendor stalls, you have to walk in the road. Crossing the non-stop roads is an act of faith, you walk calmly, slowly and steadily and trust the drivers want to miss you as much as you want to miss them.
The entire culture rests around the concept of face, of saving embaressment. I blame the rice (extremely high population densities- a rice field generates an incredible amount of food). So a Vietnamese will see nothing contradictory in saying "same same but different" if you ask is this the same price as that- first agreement to save face, then the money negotiations. As always, never ask the question "do you know the way to..." because any answer other than yes will lose the askee face.
You really have to watch the money, the rip-offs are endless. One problem is that everyone who speaks English is in the tourist trade, you just can't speak to locals (Vietnamese is an incredibly hard tonal language, completely different in the South as well). In South America it was different, people looked at you as if they themselves could be European (except the Bolivians). Probably coincidental, but everyone here now supports Chelsea!
We ended up taking the tourist buses everywhere, the local buses all seem to go from out of town bus stations. The tourist buses are cheap enough ($5-7), slow, and have a huge comission culture - every hotel, every cafe stop is baksheesh.
Possibly the hardest thing to take is the mosquito like beach/city sellers: you want book? You want manicure? -at least one every 5 minutes. I can't blame them too much, I would do the same in their situation, but it is damn anoying.
There are good points to Vietnam. The food is excellent and cheap. Mini-hotels with satellite tv, bath, air con are $10 a night. There are some good beaches, and dive sites (weather permitting)- Nha Trang, at $30 for 2 dives including equipment is the best I've seen. It'd be a lot better in the cool season (nov-feb), and as always, if this post came after a long cold drink in an air con bar. Hoi An did have marvelous tailors (of course, they said yes to everything even if they didn't understand what you said, so we got a few surprises) and was very good value.
Its a shame really, if the people smiled, didn't rip-off and were friendly, they'd have a lot more return custom. At least some part of me wants to believe that. Its not as if Vietnam is particularly poor, but this short term focus on screwing foreigners does put me off a country.
posted by Matt and Lizzie at
5:48 AM
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