So Hoi, enjoy the report, have fun reading it, it is only for you!!! Let me know how you like it!
After a great time in Cambodia it was time to heading to Vietnam, the country I was dreaming to visit it one day – my dream came true. I took a three days trip from Phnom Penh to HCMC, before arriving in HCMC the tour went through the Mekong Delta. The first day we went with the boat to Chau Doc, we had a very nice journey on the Mekong. The immigration to leave Cambodia and enter Vietnam was on the river and very easy to handle – the first border crossing here in Asia without any difficulties.
The Mekong Delta was impressive, the people live along the river and on small boats with tin roofs on the river, and I still can’t imagine how whole families can live here. The whole life depends on the river. But it is a very beautiful place… and different.
One of the best things here where the floating market in My Tho, you could get everything on these floating boats, fresh fruits and vegetables but also fresh noodle soup. Our boat docked to another boat and we got some fresh pineapples, very nice. The fruits here in Asia are very, very nice, I will miss them in Austria, you never get something like this in our supermarkets. They pick pineapples, oranges and other fruits when they are green, during the transport to Europe they get ready to eat and not really fresh anymore….
Each boat has a bamboo stick which shows the selling product, their advertisement.
The traffic on the river was just crazy, the boats were driving in every direction and we crashed several times into another boat.
After the Mekong Delta I arrived in the crazy HCMC!!!
My first impressions of Vietnam: very beautiful country, the Mekong Delta was amazing. The people in the Mekong Delta were very nice but this changed in HCMC – I didn’t like the people there. I had the feeling that Vietnam is better organized compare to Cambodia and Lao, the buses leaves at the time which the timetable say and the people where always right if I was asking, how long a bus takes from one city to the other one.
Here in Vietnam there I saw again older people, in Lao and Cambodia you hardly saw grandparents. I had the feeling that everything is more influenced by the Chinese, especially the hut remembers me of China.
Many people like to make a picture which is quite funny. When you walking around the streets they are asking you to make a picture, their posing shows the Peace Sign and a big smile, if you show them the picture the laughing their heads off. Very good.
HCMC – the most important city in the south of Vietnam is just crazy, 10 Million people live here and there are 5 Million motorbikes in the city. It is just amazing how the traffic is working - I have never seen something like this before.
Crossing a street is a big adventure here, first you have to get some courage before you try the first slow steps into the crowd of motorbikes, you have to walk slowly over the road, never stop walking otherwise you will get stuck in the middle of the road. At the beginning I was staying at the pavement, waiting for fewer motorbikes but it was hopeless! This video shows before I tried to cross a big road.
Sometimes I have the feeling that there are no traffic rules here in Vietnam. In Austria everything is very strict, many traffic lights handle the traffic, everybody has to drive to strict rules and not many people use the horn. Here in Vietnam: the bigger the vehicle, the louder your horn, the more influence and priority you have in this crazy traffic.
It is noisy everywhere you are going here in HCMC, you can’t escape into a smaller street where it is not so noisy. A crazy city.
Some parts of the city remembered me of Europe, especially around the Cathedral, small cafes, supermarkets, boutiques and posh hotels. I haven’t seen like this in Cambodia and Lao and I didn’t really like it.
From HCMC I did a tour to visit the Ch Chi Tunnels, it was a very touristic tour but the information about the war and about the tunnels was very good.
It is just amazing how the people could live here in these tunnels for months; they never saw the sun for weeks. Without knowing it the Americans build their main base close to the tunnels, the Vietnamese attacked the Americans during the nights and the Americans where confused and didn’t know where they come from. After the Americans found the tunnels they tried everything to destroy them, Americans boomed the area heavily - the Vietnamese built the tunnels in a good solid area, the bombs didn’t damage the tunnels, Americans used special German dogs to find the entries – Vietnamese used pepper and chilli to confuse the dogs, the Americans passed toxic gas into the tunnels – the Vietnamese built the tunnels in such a logical way that the gas went out without harming anybody.
Everywhere in the forest they had entries protected with leaves. The soldiers had to know these entries otherwise they got lost and died. They used many different kinds of dangerous traps, some with poison bamboo sticks.
One part of the tunnels is made bigger for western tourists to go in and walk for a few meters. It was a very good experience and although this part of the tunnels where already bigger it seems very small and I don’t know how the soldiers could live here.
After the noisy and crazy HCMC I went to the coast, to Mui Ne, a small city on the sea which was not what I expected: young Vietnamese boys where on kite boards, along the beach where many posh resorts and I had the feeling to be on a beach in Europe. I didn’t really like this, I thought it is not the real Vietnam.
We hired a motorbike in Mui Ne and went to the sand dunes which was nice but it was also a thing I didn’t expected from Vietnam.
One of the best things here in Vietnam is the coffee, you can see many small coffee shops in every small village and the people love to drink coffee here. They just have a small sip and they spend hours drinking this sip and talking with their friends about everything. Very nice and social, I love the coffee society here in Vietnam. In Austria we have coffee houses and we mainly get coffee from the coffee machine and not with cap where the water has to run through.
The restaurants are very different as well compare to Austria. In Vietnam the people sit on small chairs, share all the food and after eating the floor around the table is messy, they just throw everything on the floor!!! This would be not possible in Austria!
But after eating they just remove the chairs and table, clean the floor and everything is done.
Another interesting thing is this kind of eggs, I have never seen them before but I quite like them.
The beer is super cheap here, for a big beer in Austria you have to pay around 3 – 4 Euros (90 - 120 dong). In some local restaurants you can sit in this small plastic chairs with overlooking the streets and enjoy the street life. It is like television.
After I was visiting HCMC and Mui Ne I was a bit disappointed, the people were not nice on the tourist places and I wanted to escape from the tourist route which goes along the coast line. So I decided to go to Dalat, a small nice city. Their I found an Easyrider, an Easyrider is a guy with a bigger motorbike which puts your luggage at the back of the motorbike and takes you around the country, shows you different things and tells you everything about the country.
I spent six days on the back of an Easyrider, I went from Dalat to Hoi An through the Central Highland and it was a very good experience. The motorbike driver was nice, his name was Tung and he is around 40 years old. He is doing these tours already for 10 years and so he had a very good experience and he knew a lot about Vietnam and the history and I could ask him everything.
Tung showed me a lot in these six days in the back of the motorbike, I saw many new things, he told me a lot about the war and how Vietnam is developing from the war to now, how corruption is still a big problem in Vietnam and about the government. Here a few things I saw (the most for the first time):
Tapioca farming, where I helped the people cutting tapioca. The people were very nice and friendly there.
Silk fabric:
A poor dog on the way to the slaughter:
The Buddhism’s here is coming from China, when I saw first this statue I was a bit shocked because of the sign on her breast: it looks like the Swastika which is the emblem of the Third Reich but Tung told me that the cross is different and means long life.
Here in Vietnam there are also many Catholics (in Austria the most people are Catholics) and so you can find some Churches as well. There are no churches in Cambodia or Lao.
Mushroom growing:
Pepper planting:
Rubber trees, the main export is going to China:
The landscape was just amazing and wonderful along the way but sometimes the roads where in a very bad condition.
A part of the way leads on the original Ho Chi Minh Trail which was used during the American War to transport stuff from the North to the South. One way took around two months, just unbelievable how they could to this.
In the Central Highlands mainly minorities live here in small villages. Tung could talk many languages from the minorities and it was interesting to visit some villages and talk to the people. The life here is very different and simple. Once we visited a school, very interesting and the kids were very nice, happy and cute.
Once we visited an old woman who was hiding in caves during the heavy bombing during the war. They were scared the whole time and they could go out only at night and when it was full moon. She was a very impressive person although I met her quickly but I had the feeling she is still very strong, I still think of her sometimes. Nevertheless the people from Vietnam are called “Bamboo People” because their mind is very strong and nearly unbreakable like a bamboo (I believe this).
After six very exciting and adventurous days I arrived in Hoi An, back to a touristic city. Hoi An is a nice small town on the coast, the houses where nice and especially at night it was nice to walk through. The only negative thing was that people always were trying to sell you something; this was very, very annoying. Walking through a market and only looking was impossible, everybody tried to get you into their shop.
After Hoi An I went to Danang which is a bigger town, not very touristic but very business like.
During the nights everything was with lights. I sometimes had the feeling to be in Austria during Christmas time without snow.
I had a very good time in Vietnam with new friends, Tung, Hoi and Rose. I have met Tung in Cambodia at the Angkor temples and he invited me to come to visit him in Danang (which I did), Hoi is a good friend of Tung and Rose is the girlfriend of the English teacher of Hung. They showed me the real Vietnam: nice food, good restaurants, we went out in a bar dancing and I had a good time in Danang because of these people and everything started with making a picture with Tung in Angkor Wat. THANKS A LOT TO ALL OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But one of the best things was when I got invited by Hoi to his family and had lunch there. After lunch and a beer we went to a celebration on the street, all his neighbours were outside as well and where very surprised that a western girl was there. Hoi was a poor guy, he had to answer many question from his neighbours, and they wanted to know a lot about this western visitor. It was one of the best things here in Vietnam, I saw the real Vietnam with a lovely family and nice people, THANK YOU Hoi.
The traffic here in Danang was crazy like in every city: CRAZY.
It was nice to walk through the markets here in Danang, the people were friendly, nice and wanted to make pictures with me, started talking and didn’t try to sell everything to me. Here some impressions from the market:
Funny was to see some women who were sleeping in the shop:
The food here in Vietnam is very, very good, I will miss it when I am back in Austria. Everything is fresh and there is a big variety of special food which I have never tried before. It is not as spicy as in Lao and Thailand, you can put some chilli into your own meal to make it spicier. I like how the people eat here and share everything. You get a small bowl with rice and get everything what you want from plates on the table. In Austria normally everybody get his own plate with his/her food which he/she ordered. The food in Austria is also very heavy, fat and sweet. We eat lot of meat and some main dishes are sweet which you can’t find in Southeast Asia.
My favourite dish in Southeast Asia is noodle soup, I love it and you can get it everywhere and anytime!!! I love it when it comes with fresh herbs like basil, mint, salad, melisse and others. MMMMHHHHMMM!!! Delicious.
Things I have tried here in Vietnam which you cant really find in Austria where shark meat, frog, goat udder and an embryo egg – UARG! I could not finish it!
After Danang I went to my last station, the capital Hanoi and a crazy and chaotic city with many motorbikes and tourists.
I saw an advertisement about the water puppetry theatre and was wondering what this is and bought tickets to visit it. It was very funny to see this small wooden puppets on bamboo sticks jumping around in the water, the actors where hiding behind the curtain. There was a small orchestra beside the stage which played music in Chinese style and synchronized the puppets.
I was wondering where this “Peace” signs is coming from and I have heard two different stories: the first is that it is coming from China, people put the fingers beside their face to make the face smaller. The other story is, that it means “SU SU” and more less it means that I give you energy. Don’t know if it is true.
The safety is very different compare to Austria - on construction areas you can hardly see any workers with a construction helmet or proper shoes but there are interesting signs:
There are also people working with iron in the middle of the pathway without protection glasses, this would not be possible in Austria.
I am always wondering how people survive working with this unorganized electricity cables.
In Vietnam there is the law to wear helmets on motorbikes since two years which is good. In Cambodia only the driver has to wear a helmet, the people on the back don’t have to wear one and in Lao I think is no law for wearing protection on your head.
This was my time in Vietnam, I always wanted to visit Vietnam one day because of their history and stories I have heard about it and I am happy that I did it. The country is very, very nice and various, you have beaches, sea connection, the wonderful Mekong Delta, mountains and big cities. The people in the tourist places are not so nice but my friends in Danang showed me how nice the people in Vietnam are!!!
I like the way how the people live here but not everything is positive here, corruption is still a big problem and sometimes you can still feel the communism. Everybody has a motorbike and I would never go on a motorbike in Austria, the people are driving fast, there are many cars on the road which makes it very dangerous. Here in Southeast Asia I love to go on the back of a motorbike, it is wonderful.
I hope to return to this wonderful country again and learn more about this culture which is very different to Austria and makes the country more interesting.
Thanks again to my friends who made it possible to see the real Vietnam!
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