Hi everyone, I missed you all! You may think that I’ve been on holidays meandering about except exactly the opposite is true. But more about that another day. Today is Monday. Today we meander albeit by memory back to Ho Chi Minh City.
Ho Chi Minh City
My first impressions were of bemusement…not of the culture, not of the chilli phở for breakfast but trying to understand why everyone was beeping their horns? At each other presumably…but often there was no good reason. There wasn’t even anyone around to justify a beep…but beep beep beep they did!!!
After about three and half days the anxiety settled and I stopped jumping at every beep and started to enjoy the hospitality, food and culture. Beer Hội corner was a regular jaunt for ex pats were you would sit on these plastic chairs designed for toddlers effectively in the middle of a busy intersection and drink cold beer while mopeds seamlessly scooted past. Crossing the road is an adventure in and of itself. The key is to make and maintain eye contact with any moving object headed your way. Push bike, moped, xe lam or Xe ba gác máy, whatever it was you make sure that you’ve been seen and chances are you’ll also be avoided, even if you walk right into the path.
As you can probably tell from the photo above, the infrastructure is also a little lacking in safety regulations. Of course everything still seemed to function well enough and even if it didn’t, no one really complained about it…there was no reason to, the people just carried on getting things done.
One thing about Vietnam that I think is overlooked is the fact that they make amazing coffee. Often migrants into other western countries like Australia bring an element of their culture and refine it like the Greeks with their lamb (although lamb is almost non-existent in Greece) and the Italians with pizza (Italo-Australian pizza is much better!). The Vietnamese however brought their coffee here and haven’t done it justice…it’s still very nice, don’t get me wrong but the coffee in Vietnam is fresh and tasty!
Its not far to get to Vietnam. It doesn’t cost that much if you’re already budgeting for a holiday. Instead of meandering down the beaten track to other parts of Asia, try Vietnam [albeit a little trodden by now]!