Closing Out Vietnam

The final days of our tour in Vietnam were spent in Ho Chi Minh City.  Bigger, hotter and more solvent than Hanoi, Saigon offered up the first fast food options we'd seen in a month and our last chance for bia hoi.  Modern architecture and mega-malls meet seas of scooters and remnants from the French occupation and The American War.  Watching the scooters part around us while crossing an uncontrolled four-lane traffic circle was a really cool experience.  The street peddlers were among the most aggressive we'd seen.  Usually we'd get 10 visits during a meal inside a restaurant, and getting them to leave almost always required saying something a bit past polite.

The hotel in Saigon was another interesting illustration of the property values in said metropolis.  Finding the place required a jaunt down a narrow alleyway and occasionally stepping over the landladies sleeping on the floor in the lobby.  They also may have been running a daycare of some kind, but I was still struggling with the local language and could not find out for sure.  As a general rule, I consider a bathroom to be small if I can touch all four walls at the same time.  At this place, it wasn't possible to use the toilet without touching two of them.  Fortunately, the hotel was clean, quiet and the A/C worked exceptionally well in the small space.

Getting back to the language in Vietnam, I originally thought the Latin alphabet would help with my feelings of illiteracy while trying to decipher the Thai squigglies.  Turns out, this was just a false sense of confidence.  Six tones are coded into the Latin, meaning, for instance, that the word 'ma' may translate to 'ghost', 'but', 'cheek', 'mother', 'tomb', 'horse' or 'rice seedling'.  These tones are somewhat regional, so what worked to ask for the cheque in Hoi An got blank stares in Da Lat, as well as individual, so if someone hasn't heard your voice before they need to guess the tone based on the context and any other tones used.

Generally, interacting with anyone who couldn't speak English was good fun, topped by the late night gas refill 'Good Scootermarian' mentioned previously.  Others were an extra garden tour at the Hoi An cooking school with the owner, who described his cockfight rooster by banging his fists together and saying "chicken...smash!"  Haggling for socks which came out of a pile on the floor using a jumbo calculator was pretty interesting in Hanoi, unfortunately I left one in Nha Trang and one in Hoi An.  Also, crossing the road to the beach in Nha Trang, seeing the panic I felt mirrored in a local's face as we both stepped in the same direction and (gaaaaack!) stopped in the middle of a busy street. 

Visiting Vietnam was hectic but very worthwhile.  It could be the cheapest place to travel in Southeast Asia and it offers some very unique experiences.  On to the Temples of Cambodia!

Dave

Notre Dame.

Old post office.

Smokey, this is 'Nam and bowling.  Follow whatever rules you want.

Not even close to the weirdest thing seen on the back of a scooter that day.