You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Vietnam' tag.
i’m currently in phnom penh, cambodia, headed for sihanoukville tomorrow. good ol’ eli b. brings up a good point in his comment on my last post, so i’ll dedicate this post to my experiences with the locals which i’ve been remiss about as of late.
truth be told, i wasn’t very fond of the vietnamese, although i love thais and laos (i think i mentioned this in a previous post). let me explain why. these are generalizations, but for the most part, the vietnamese are very rude and basically only care for your money. they will talk to you and approach you only to offer you a motorbike or cyclo ride. “motorbike miss? motorbike madam?” are encountered at every corner a thousand times a day. it gets immensely annoying after a while. it’s hard to simply ignore them when they also follow you down the block. (also imagine being a solo girl with a huge pack when you’ve just gotten off a bus and have to look for the right guesthouse or hostel, and you’re basically just being bombarded by a chaotic mass of motorbike drivers thirsting for your money). so you’re either compelled to be rude back at them or pretend they don’t exist.
here’s a solid example of rude behavior in vietnam (also bear in mind that my image of the vietnamese was tainted by the hellish 29-hour bus ride and the incident at the food stall – go back a few posts for that story): you cannot simply browse or window shop in vietnam. if you touch something, the saleswomen will scurry over to you and say “very nice, i give you very good price.” and whether you intended to bargain and buy it or not, if you don’t end up purchasing it, they’ll hastily and roughly snatch the item right out of your hands, turn away with a loud “hmph,” speak loud insults in vietnamese, and turn abruptly to another customer.
in another instance, i bargained really well for myself for some fruit, and the lady just snatched the money right out of my hands because she wasn’t satisfied with how much she was getting. (and another thing is more often than not, you need exact change or they will simply take all the money for themselves.) there are countless, COUNTLESS stories of these things happening in vietnam. also bear in mind that i almost didn’t go to vietnam because of all the bad reviews i’ve heard about the country. many fellow travelers have said they would never go back to vietnam again because of all the brusque and unappetizing attitude of the locals. and this is not taking into account just the general loudness, ill/strangely-mannered behavior of the people there (particularly men, who’ll just whip out their members on the side of the road in more rural areas and just take a piss right in front of you). and YES, i realize that’s part of being immersed in a different culture, and i take all of these sights with a grain of salt and understand that this is how the people here live, but it’s something that’s hard for a lot of westerners to digest – even for any open-minded person.
to be fair, the people in the north were much more abrasive than the southern vietnamese. still, i got the sense that they all only really cared for you money. you essentially feel like a walking atm machine. they don’t care to get to know you at all, which is also a fairly big contrast from the laos and thais. even when we went on a small excursion up a river known as the fairy stream in mui ne, little boys (9 and 14 years old, who really looked more about 6 and 
walked beside our group. but we rarely spoke back to them as we all knew what they intentions were: money. i finally caved a bit and talked briefly to the boys, and they told stories of how their parents had passed away and that they were very poor (but one of the boys had dyed hair – hm, how could he afford that?). at the end of our little trip up the stream, they demanded “MONEY MONEY MONEY!,” and started screaming and throwing huge tantrums. this is my general perception of the vietnamese. they won’t hesitate to cheat you for more money – not in the slightest.
the vietnamese are a hardy people. even their landscape is really rough. they’ve been through a lot for sure, but so have the laos and the cambodians. i’ve only been in cambodia for a day, and i haven’t encountered the same kind of rudeness i did in vietnam. sure, they still want your money here, but they’re never short of a smile back at you. i feel i’ve rarely seen the vietnamese smile other than to make fun of something.
so this is why my posts in vietnam lacked anything much about the people there.
it’s also tricky business being a female traveler in these countries. in lao, my aussie friend and i befriended a 25-year old local guy who worked at the bar we were chilling at, and although he was very friendly, extremely nice and probably totally harmless, he was clearly talking to hit on us and flirt with us, particularly my white aussie friend.
in thailand, i had befriended a few locals through couchsurfing (i think i’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a super awesome networking sight for travelers) and they were great. but the problem i had with them was that i couldn’t ever get them to talk about anything serious. they didn’t really want or care to talk about the real conditions and situation in their country. they also liked to drink LOADSSSSS of alcohol, and i couldn’t keep up with them and really couldn’t handle hanging out with them much more towards the end of my stay in bangkok and chiang mai as they wanted to get drunk literally every night!
so far, here in cambodia, i’ve met one nice 19 year old guy. i sat next to him at a food stall yesterday in the late afternoon, and he just started talking to me. he spoke great english for a guy who didn’t learn the language in school. i learned that he was a car driver (i don’t believe they have real taxis here, so he just picks up anyone who wants a ride for a small fee). that was nice, but we didn’t get very far in our conversation. i think he mentioned something about being poor and still living with his parents (which is very typical here even as adults). still though, this conversation was a nice reprieve from the quite literal animosity i felt in vietnam. i can already tell the cambodians are friendlier than their eastern neighbors.
speaking of cambodia though, it’s definitely a very poor country. i don’t know if it’s supposed to be one of the poorest or not.. however, phnom penh seems to be rapidly developing (with the help of korean construction companies it seems, as i see korean construction, restaurant and store signs everywhere. in fact, it was also like that in saigon. i think korea must be doing a lot of development work in this region). anyway, the biggest difference i notice from cambodia and vietnam or thailand is that although the main road is paved, the side roads are not at all. and although lao was quite poor, it was mostly that the entire country seemed rather underdeveloped and pastoral. i didn’t see so many beggers even in their biggest city of vietiane like i’ve already seen here in phnom penh. for some reason, although lao has been through a lot, the people there always seemed happy. here, i get a slightly mixed sense. i guess the people are still trying to recover from the khmer rouge days.
speaking of this, i went to the s-21 museum today, the prison where they used to confine, torture and execute thousands of people during the khmer rouge revolution. really gruesome stuff. it really dampened my afternoon, and i have decided i don’t want to go to the killing fields. i think today was enough.
as far as the war remnants museum in saigon, there was a lot of terrible stuff there as well. america did a lot of horrible things for sure, agent orange, napalm and the whole “burn all, destroy all, kill all” policy. and although there was one exhibit about the american soldiers who died sponsored by some american foundation and another exhibit about the war protests around the world, it was quite one sided, as was the cuchi tunnel tour and the hanoi hilton museum. i suppose it’s all propaganda and that’s just how it is… it got me thinking though, does america have a substantial exhibit or museum dedicated to slavery? i know there are native american museums, but i haven’t yet been to one solely dedicated slavery, and i’m quite curious to see what’s shown and exhibited.
oh, i get stared a lot here! like, a LOT! i got stared at in vietnam (in hanoi and saigon especially) and most thais and laos assumed i was japanese or korean. but MAN, i can’t avoid it here at all! and i’m not even white! i was walking with my dutch friend mark today and i felt that they were staring more at me than at him.
anyway, off i go to take a much needed shower – it’s boiling here! contemplating eating a ‘happy’ pizza tonight. can you guess what that is? hmmm…
i’m nursing a pretty bad hangover from a pretty riotous night out. this usually happens when we order buckets, which are literally small buckets full of something like jungle juice. apparently, i hit my head really hard while dancing, but i don’t recall it! i tell ya, the saffy (south african) boys are ridiculous drinkers. i don’t understand how they do it nearly every night, but i’m guaranteed a wild, fun night out every time i hang out with them. they start the party at whatever bar they go, sometimes to their detriment.
i’m leaving tomorrow for a 2-day mekong delta tour, then taking the slowboat to phnom penh, cambodia. should be fun times. well, minus the killing fields.. but i’m certain cambodia will be an interesting country to visit. i’ll probably be there for about a week or so.. 2 or 1 day in phnom penh, 2 or 3 days in sinoukville (a beach town), and 2 days in siem reap for ankor wat.
my previous concern that i’d have to meet a whole slew of new people has been thrown out the window. besides the handful of friends i keep bumping into and/or traveling with, i’ve also run into doug, an american guy from dc/virginia i first met in chiang mai, the israeli woman i was previously traveling with in northern vietnam, an irish girl from my bus trip from laos who doesn’t like beer (poor excuse for an irishman!), and a few others. the sad thing about hcmc though, is that this is either the last leg or the start of most backpackers’ trips, so i’ll have to say goodbye to most of these guys soon…
i’m still considering meeting up with some people in indonesia as well as australia… we’ll see.
having been in vietnam since sept 27th, i’m quite glad i came (i almost didn’t, due to the poor reviews some previous travelers gave of the country). the only regret i have is not having gone to sapa, a mountain village up in the north where the hmong tribes live…
a brief note: this post has no coherence whatsoever, i’m just writing whatever comes to mind.. i wish i could write more about some of the adventures i’ve had and my friends’ have had, but that takes time, so i’ll save it for another day.
on an entirely different note, being american really does kinda suck sometimes while traveling. you get the feeling that everyone hates the american gov’t. you can’t believe the countless conversations i’ve had in which we’ve all (myself included) endlessly bashed american foreign policy and just the general backwardness of some things about america. EVERYONE, seriously EVERYONE in the world (except for one of the south africans whose mom is an american from nevada) wants Obama to win. the world wants Obama to win, and it will be VERY disappointed if he doesn’t. they probably pay attention to the debates and the ongoing news about the presidential race than the average American. go Obama!
well, right now, i’m off to the war remembrance museum, which used to be called the american atrocities museum. lovely! should make me feel great about being american.
i’ve posted a select few photos on facebook. check it out. there will be more to come soon.
So I’m currently in Mui Ne, Vietnam, another beach town (if you can really call it a town, because it’s so small) in the south. To be honest, I wish I’d stayed in Nha Trang a bit longer. This place has better beaches, but there’s essentially no town – there’s only something that resembles a small resort strip.. Nha Trang had a good nightlife (i.e. rowdy, boisterous backpackers’ bars), and some of my travel friends since my slowboat trip in Lao are still there.. In any case, there are two new developments since my last Vietnam update.
The first is that I’m now traveling with a HOTTT (and i mean, excessively super HOTTT) Swedish medical student named Staffan. I met him and his other Swedish friend Anders (actually met this guy first) at the hotel myself and my two English friends (two girls who I’ve also known since my Lao slowboat trip) were staying at. Don’t get any ideas, it’s strictly platonic. But MAN, the first day we were traveling together, I could not look at him in the eye for fear of fainting from his hotness. I’ve been sharing hotel rooms with him along the way too (separate beds, mind you), which does NOT help one bit. It does NOT help that we’re also on the beach all the time. Literally, the first day we were together by ourselves, I think I went into the bathroom just to pace around and think in my head, “Shit, fuck, goddamnit man!” This has made traveling with him a bit difficult, but I think I’m slowly getting over it. At least he’s not super funny, or else, I don’t know what I’d do – I might have shot myself by now. Plus, tomorrow, I think we’re splitting up and going our separate ways. (Parting ways is always so sad, man… That’s the one thing I dislike about traveling!)
Anyway, this first development was made further difficult by a second new development I’ve had. I’ve developed a terrible rash all over my arms and legs. It’s turned out to be a really really bad heat rash (they look like boils really), but for about a half day, Staffan (who, as I said, is a med student) thought it could’ve been scabies. Thankfully, his medical contact back in Sweden thinks it’s not, which is a relief since there are no hospitals in this town. Plus I’m with a hot Swedish guy, and that would suck if I actually had something serious and contagious like scabies. Hopefully, it’ll go away in a few days because it’s terribly unbecoming.
Oh, another scare was that I thought I lost most of my travel pics, but I’m hoping I still have them – it’s a bit uncertain at this point, but I’m not going to freak out about it just this minute and I’ll wait till I get to a bigger town with better computers.. While traveling, you learn that your camera and flash drives are your life, possibly as or more important than your passport. And I don’t mean the physical camera itself, but the pictures in them, because truly, they are priceless.
I think I’m headed to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow, probably by myself… Most of my travel friends are either still behind me or long ahead of me headed towards home. I presume I’ll be by myself at HCMC, which’ll probably be a source of boredom and loneliness but I’m hoping I won’t be alone for too long and will meet some good people again..
I’m still thinking a lot about home – both the people and places back home, and also what I need/want to do once I’m back. Again, I think I’ll be home in the relatively near future. It’s gonna suck to miss Halloween and possibly Homecoming though. I’d really not prefer to miss Thanksgiving also…
Currently in Hoi An, Vietnam.
The below is most of an email I wrote to a friend, copied and pasted. Some wild times were had.
The drinking’s decreased a bit, which I’m partly thankful for but partly not! It adds madness to things which can be fun.. But I suppose it’s better for my health.
Also, since when was UWisconsin such a great school? I mean, I know it’s not bad, especially for a public university, but um, to compare it to Harvard? This American girl I’m traveling with is cool, but she can be so f-ing pretentious at times. Comparing UWis to Harvard? I mean, come on! It’s put out more CEOS than Harvard, she says. Well, for 1, it’s a freakin huge school, and 2, what caliber are these CEOS really? Anyway, that pissed me off. Americans are bound to piss me off though at some point without fail, it kinda sucks..
A few other things. The Vietnamese love to holler. I hear they’re ruder in China and India though..
My previous presumption that Aussies are the coolest travelers still holds true. However, Israeli travelers are often quite haughty, cocky and rude than not. Believe me, this has nothing to do with Judiasm as nearly three quarters of my friends back home are Jewish. But these Israelis act like they own the freaking place, and so I generally dislike them. Some Brits can be asshole too, but they’re usually pretty cool. Germans are awesome as well.
I still dislike how people try to put me in a box, as far as my appearance/nationality is concerned.
—
Currently, I’m a bit stressed about when I need to come back to the States… The whole American pressure to advance (and it IS American, and perhaps a bit East Asian) is getting to me. I’m traveling with a 34 year old Israeli woman and another 24 year old American girl (the UWis grad), and although I like them overall, it can be annoying to be with them 24/7, for different reasons with each… Being with another American reminds me of the pressures to DO THINGS and to MAKE SOMETHING of myself and think about what I want to do next constantly, because that’s what we’re often talking about a lot of times. But then again, that’s about all she and I have in common so I’ve been continuously submerged (it does feel like I’m submerged) in this pressure, since a few days ago at least… What do I want to do? Law, film, international stuff? I still haven’t figured it out. I think the rents also want me home soon, which is a whole another issue that I don’t even want to get into. Apparently the Brits and Aussies don’t feel this pressure for which I commend greatly..
Other than that, I’m having a blast. I’m in Hoi An, Vietnam right now. It’s a nice, lovely old town, definitely a reprieve from the madness of Hanoi. You have to literally dodge and dart between motorbikes, bikes and cars left and right when crossing the street, as there are no lane markings on most streets – neither markings for lanes on the same side nor oncoming traffic. Also, very few streets have traffic lights.. People don’t ever seem to use turn signals, but honk to alert neighboring vehicles and people.. No road rules whatsoever. It is insane!
I had a couple of wild adventures my first few days in Hanoi actually. I was nearly held hostage at the Lao-Vietnam border for not giving a dollar (yes, $1, but it goes a long way here) to this one random Vietnamese guy on my bus. There were only three foreigners on the bus: myself, an Aussie guy and an Irish girl. I was actually sort of getting ready to pay up (most people do when they cross the border) until the Aussie guy asked why we need to. That got all of our gears rolling, so the Vietnamese guy started shouting at us and demanding money without any explanation, and actually had the nerve to hike up this no-name fee to $2. So we started mildly arguing with him and saying that we’d pay the border officials but not to him. We spoke to the border official who didn’t speak a lick of English (we were at an unofficial border that foreigners generally can’t cross because there was a land slide by the official one) who also concurred with this random guy and said we needed to give him the dollar. We still refused and finally after about a half hour, the guy gave up. BUT not without telling the entire bus full of Vietnamese people and turning them all against us. By this point, the Aussie guy paid up (what a wuss for starting this whole thing but paying in the end), while the Irish girl and I still hadn’t, and so they were pretty pissed. They pulled the bus over about 100 meter down from the border crossing, and I thought shit was gonna go down. They all got off the bus and sat at the curb for about 3 HOURS (part of which was their lunch) in protest of our not giving the money. I didn’t get off the bus for fear that they’d just leave us there or steal my stuff. When they all got back on and the bus finally started going again, Jesus Christ, I thought they were going to drop us off in the middle of nowhere so I got no sleep the rest of the ride, and was delayed about 6 hours from when we were originally supposed to get to Hanoi (I was supposed to get in at 5 pm, but didn’t make it till midnight, ruining plans to meet up with travel buddies). I am however proud to say I didn’t give the dollar. Much trouble for a dollar though. I don’t know if I’d do the same thing again if it happened again, I probably wouldn’t. The problem was that I didn’t want to pay up as soon as the guy started yelling, as I don’t deal well with people coercing me to do something I don’t want to do. Once we started arguing, it was also hard to back down. Plus, by the time the third hour of waiting rolled around, we’d pretty much resigned ourselves to whatever fate was ahead of us. Bus ride from hell, really. And this doesn’t even compare to the breakdowns we had on the minibuses in Lao…
Another time in Hanoi, this woman at a food stall started yelling at a German friend and me for not giving her enough money for our food, which we paid for but she wanted double. As soon as we got up to go, fifteen of them surrounded us and we were thinking, fuck, shit, this is gonna be bad. I let my German friend do most of the talking, though I did my share.. They were literally blocking us from walking even a foot forward. As I’m trying to walk away, the owner, this older 50-something year old woman who was about 4 foot 9, suddenly grabbed my right upper arm really hard. I was jerked back, and at this point, I was suddenly boiling mad, just extremely pissed off, the do-not-tamper seal was broken, the jar was dropped and shattered. (Poor analogies? Perhaps..) Anyway, I turned around and started yelling at her at the top of my lungs – I think I said, “Don’t you fucking touch me, you fucking bitch!” It was her finally crossing the line and touching me that did it. At this point, I was standing over her and nearly about to punch her teeth out. Yes, I was enraged. She was still yelling at us, but we finally broke through the crowd and walked away at a brisk pace. And it’s suffice to say we avoided that street until we left Hanoi the next night!
Anyway, just a few adventures. I’ve heard of even more horrorific stories from friends and fellow travelers. The Vietnamese, especially in the North, definitely aren’t as friendly as Thais and Laos, and in fact, can be downright hostile. Currently, I’m in this small town called Hoi An fairly close to the coast and also on a river. I think I’m headed out of this town tomorrow for Nha Trang, another coastal-ish town, then Dalat, Mui Ne, and then Ho Chi Minh City. But yeah, I’m seriously considering coming back to the states relatively soon, maybe after Cambodia and southern Thailand. Like late Oct/early November-ish. Which would mean I’d cut out Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, maybe even Hawaii. Which would suck, because I always meant to end up in Oz towards the end of my trip. But I don’t know… Too many unknowns! Ahh!
Any suggestions?
I PROMISE I’ll write a substantial post about my adventures soon, because adventures HAVE been had – it’s not as if I haven’t and don’t have anything interesting to write about.
But today, I had a bout of homesickness… probably because of my TWENTY-NINE hour bus ride from Vientiane, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam. yeah… I also spent about 2 hours on facebook looking at pictures of some of you in the States. I just realized it’s FALL in New York and in Boston and in New England in general. It’s kind of hard for me to fathom except through looking at pictures of New York and the orangey-yellow leaves on the trees, because it’s been about 85 or 90 degrees here. If I think hard enough, I think I can almost smell the fall. But it’s not the same.. Oh, I do miss New York dearly. How I miss it…
Stay tuned. Seriously.
