Vietnam, final remarks

The first thing that comes to mind is the sound of a motorbike. In this first, and possibly last installment of Vietnam Adventure, motorbikes ruled the excursion. While the picturesque American farm wakens each morning to the sound of the rooster crowing, the typical Vietnamese alarm clock is the uneven revving of a 110cc engine as it weaves around other scooters, cars, buses, and pedestrians on the streets and sidewalks. Admittedly, this comparison is a little unfair. Most of my mornings began in cities and all of them began in touristic locations.

Unable to complain too much about the motorbikes, my most memorable experiences in Vietnam were those where I was part of that biker heard cruising the streets at a snails pace looking for that small space to merge into or out of. Sticking to the more rural stops to rent a scooter, I was never a part of those hundred-plus scooter traffic movements of Saigon or Hanoi, but even in the rural areas there are groupings of bikes at intersections that depend on each others movements to make it out of there scratch-free. In those cases the stress can be quite exhilarating.

The real reason to drop five bucks on an all-day scooter rental is the country-side cruise. Observing the landscape, the villages, and the people from a seat on the motor. Slowing down to take a closer look or speeding up to race the clock and get home not too long after dark. With a motorbike, its easy to make a U turn when you've messed up directions, or to stop and ask how to get somewhere. It's easy to take a quick break and walk around, or to stop and put a couple bucks in the tank. During this time in Vietnam, I often dreamed of having my own bike in the states. Something I would learn about, work on, take it out and cruise around the country roads. Who am I kidding? It will be nothing like this in the states. It's been a while, but all I remember being on the roads were a lot of cars, big SUVs, even bigger 18 wheel trucks and a lot of folks like myself who didn't really know how to drive if I had a couple of bikers to share the road with. I think I'd feel safer in the organized chaos of Vietnam's road system.

On food:

Vietnamese food is very good. There are two main choices, rice or noodles. Having just two choices can get old, but if I have only two, these are the two that I want. The rice can be simple or fried and can include a wide variety of meet and veggies for it to go with. There are a few kinds of noodles. Rice noodles (Bun) are my favorite but there are also yellow noodles (Mi). The noodles can be stir-fried, crunchy, or in soups. This brings me to what you could probably call Vietnam's national dish, Pho (pronounced “fu”, u as in umbrella). Pho is a noodle soup that can come with either beef or chicken. The best Pho I had in Vietnam was also the cheapest. At about $1.50, it was served to me from a large pot on the side of the road as I sat on a small plastic stool eagerly awaiting. It was served with a plate full of mint leaves, another with deep-fried bread (cost extra), and some chopped up chili peppers. I have paid as high as 3 USD for Pho. So little for something so good.

My favorite Vietnamese dish is called Bun Thit Nuong. At first glance, it looks like a bowl full of grass. But upon closer inspection, included in the pile of local greens and mint are chunks of pork, peanuts, other veggies, all topped over a pile of rice noodle. You can't just dig in on this dish though. It must be mixed up really well before enjoying.

Breakfast was really enjoyable in Vietnam, mostly due to the coffee. Some love it and some hate it, I loved it. The method of preparation included a metal contraption placed on the top of the coffee mug. In that contraption, hot water seeped slowly down through a thick layer of finely-ground coffee, dripping out into the cup below. Already waiting in the cup is a hefty layer of thick creamy condensed milk. The milk is sweet and there is no need to add sugar. My usual breakfast food was an omelet and it always came with a baguette. Usually, after ordering, we would watch the owner of the restaurant take off on his motorbike only to return minutes later with a bag of baguettes.

As for drinking, there are several brands of beer in Vietnam and they are all quite cheap. At the low end, is the random keg in Hanoi for 25 cents a glass. At the higher end is a bottle of Tiger at a restaurant or bar for about $1.25. I didn't really see any Vietnamese drinking liquor but rice wine at 30-40 percent alcohol is made in the countryside and is sometimes sold to tourists with a dead snake or scorpion in the bottle. I did get the chance to try this but I was sick at the time so I passed it up. Aside from alcoholic drinks, Mihai took a risk at a highway rest stop and bought a cup of green liquid poured over ice. The man was feeding stalks of sugarcane through the press and out came this cloudy liquid that, when poured over ice, became florescent. It was a very pleasant, sweet drink. Refreshing on a hot day.

Finally, I must say something about the fruits. Mihaela is the fruit queen, always making sure that we have fruits around to snack on and making sure we taste a little bit of everything. Over the past month, our taste buds have met up with a couple different kinds of mango, a couple different kinds of guava, dragon fruit, jackfruit, a strange kind of plum, bananas, and a star apple. The mangoes were by far the best in my opinion. The star apple was kind of bad. The jackfruit had a strange after-taste. The others were alright, but I expected them to have more taste.

On places:

Though we stuck to the tourist trail, we visited a few different kinds of places. Along the way we explored a couple of villages, four beaches, the country's three largest cities, three cultural UNESCO sites, and one natural UNESCO site. We also reached the highlands but, unfortunately, we made it all the way through Vietnam without doing a hike. This will have to change when we get to Thailand and Laos.

Vietnam is a country with a lot of natural beauty. The scenery in the north really stood out with its karst landscapes at Ha Long Bay and Ninh Binh. Experiencing both places was well worth braving the colder, wetter weather. As soon as we hit Hue, in the center of the country, the sun came out and the wetness turned to heat. From then on we made it a point to fit in beach days and motorbike days. None of Vietnam's beaches are that spectacular but the water was nice and choppy, making for some fun playing in the waves. As seen from the motorbike, Vietnam is a wet country. Large rivers and their delta's crisscross the country-side and life on those rivers is the real spectacle. The importance of boats to daily life in Vietnam is by no means limited to the Mekong Delta. Where you don't find water or city, you find farming. Large swaths of land are pieced out for the back-breaking work of cultivating rice. Corn, aloe, and various fruits made up some of the other plantations we viewed from the road.

The central highlands is another heavily farmed region. Our travels took us by orchards, strawberry fields, and rows of greenhouse-type structures growing various kinds of flowers.

The people

“Welcome to Southeast Asia Andrew, the land where you have to constantly pay for not being from Southeast Asia.”

I was and still am shocked by the amount of tourists on this route. At times this fact is an annoying one. With large numbers of tourists come a variety of other unpleasantries. Long lines at the border, tours for everything and apparently no way of doing it on your own, inflated prices, hawkers, too many souvenir shops. Mihai was particularly irked by getting ripped off. The first couple of times we bought things, she had a feeling that these couldn't be the same prices that the locals were paying. Her tactic was to wait back and observe how much a Vietnamese person would pay for something. Toward the end of the transaction she would walk up, letting the vendor know that she saw what the last person paid, and ask for the same thing. One lady tried to charge me 15,000 dong for a water but it went down to 10,000 when Mihai worked this strategy. Once in Hoi An, she tried the same thing in an attempt to buy mangoes at the market. The vendor didn't budge and insisted that Mihai pay more. That was Mihai's last attempt at buying from a local market in Vietnam.

Eventually the hawkers got to me. Just a couple of days ago I had a bad interaction with a hawker and I have been thinking about it off-and-on since. On our way to catch our tour bus I ran into at least three guys selling sunglasses. Every time they followed me for a couple of steps, holding out their imitation Raybans, insisting that I buy a pair despite the fact that I politely refused. I probably shook off a couple of folks offering me a ride somewhere during that same walk. Already annoyed by what I had to put up with until then, I sat calmly on a stool outside the tourist agency where we had to wait for our bus. Another hawker pushing sunglasses came up to me. He could have been one of the guys before, or maybe a new one. He impolitely interrupted my conversation with Mihai so I impolitely refused with a strong, slightly angered “no”. I tried to continue the conversation but the man insisted. Two words later, I spit out another “no”, he continued and I again insisted “no”. The anger in my face and my rudeness to counter his own set off something in him. Finally, he dropped his sunglasses pitch, looked me in the eye and angrily said “one no is enough” and stormed off. Stunned, I watched him walk away only to watch him return and repeat his complaint in a louder voice. I countered, trying to defend my action by explaining that after one “no” he stayed and didn't let me be. Before, I finished he aggressively stepped toward me and in a louder voice reminded me that “this is Vietnam”.

At that point, I felt like a pretty stupid tourist. In my head, I try to defend my actions, “anyone would have handled an annoying insistent hawker the same way”. Maybe anyone back in the US, but this is Vietnam, as the man exclaimed. I let my anger show, and the the process, lost face and the respect of the vendor. In my mind, he was never respecting me in the first place. Then again, this is Vietnam, and on one of my last days in the country, I learned this lesson.

These are the negatives. I try to give Vietnam the benefit of the doubt and chalk up these negatives to the tourist trail. My positivity and idealism wants to believe that off this trail is where you are treated as a human being rather than a dollar sign. And where you treat the other as a human, rather than a hawker or beggar. In the countryside children will wave and say hello 90 percent of the time. People smile just a little bit more. Folks will give you directions without insisting you buy something from them. They'll try to speak your language, try to help you, and smile when you reply with a “com on” (thank you).