Welcome to my Aussie adventure!: 3 Cities in Vietnam

So now we been spending a lot of time in Vietnam. We started in the south I saigon and have made all stops but one. So now we have been to 4 cities and we are on our way to our final distination Hanoi which is the capital city. So far it's been a very interesting trip.

We started in Saigon which is the capital of the south and we only spent one day their, so it's hard to say much about it. We heard that you should only stay there one or two days. So we went to Nha Trang which is their surfers paradise. We got a ride from the bus with two motorbike guys. It was a nice experience to sit on a bike and feel the breeze and the smell of the ocean. We got to the hotel just 30 minutes before the their boat trips started so after spending the night on the bus we decided to hit the sea. We went to a snorkel, dive and party boat. We stopped on a couple islands, and then we stopped for some snorkelling and it was fantastic!! After that it was time for lunch vietnamese style!! We got a whole table filled with different small dishes and then we just picked what we wanted. It was really nice and I love to be able to take and mix as I like. Everyone got a piece of watermelon but not me, I was to occupied with the food. There was only one piece left one the big table and I went for it and the old french couple got really angry and said it where theirs, even though they didn't put it on their plate. It was a bit rude, but when I understood that they were French then I just forgot about it, because French people they love conflicts and create dramas. They are completely opposite to us Swedes!

After dinner it was time for entertainment, it really felt like the kindergarten entertainment, they sang childrensongs from every country represented on the boat, which was a bit impressive! But they had no idea how to treat a loudspeaker, they had the volume so high that the speakers sounded really bad. And everyone was a bit annoyed about the high (and bad sound quality...) volume but noone said anything about it. Then one of the guides dressed up as a “lady boy”, with fake hair and boobs. Lady Boys is very common I Thailand where they try to sell sex, but often fool their victims that they have a real date and first when they come to the bedroom they ask for money. But this is just what I have heard, I don't now how true it is, but what I know for a fact is that they have a lot of lady boys in Thailand.

After the entertainment is was time for the floating bar. One of the crew members jump down a floating 'thing' which holds bottles of 16% portwines which they serve everyone in the water. And they served a lot of it, and we got a bit drunk in the water. But at least they give us floating rings to sit on. It was so much fun, and a bit dangerous and was thinking what would happen if anyone tried to do this back home. It would so be banned and the headlines would be something like “the deathboat”. But it so much fun to stuff that you never ever would be able to do home.

They day after the death boat we rented a scooter and hit the road, the scooter was quit powerfull, it would do at least 120km/h. The same thing here, no one asks for licence and I don't think you need one. But I bringed my international licence which allows me drive scooters completely legal in most countries. We were riding along the coast and it was beautiful!

The next stop was Hoi An and it was the tailor town, the town where they have over 400 tailors! They make the clothes for you, to make them fit perfect and you decide which material to use, design, etc. They even makes copy of famous brands and they make them fit you perfect! I got a suit with a shirt and a tie for 105 dollars, which is a bargain. Jodie got a couple of dresses for like 15-25 dollar each. It's interesting to see how jobs like tailors is so big here, it's such a boom, compared to home where this job is dead as dead.

After that it was time to go to Hue, a town famous for it's spicy vegetarian food and cheap beers. It was a nice town! Right now we are on our way to the capital city, our last stop Han Oi.. It's an 13 hours bus trip, but were running late as always, so it's going to be more and 15-16 hours trip

How could think that Vietnam was going to be this super capitalistic, touristy place where people here only see you as an walking dollar sign. Of course not everyone, but I can say this, no one is approaching you to offer help or whatever just to be nice. They all want money in one way or another. If your lost and you ask for direction they offer you a lift, but it's not free. Nothing is free here, you can't even park a bike on tourist destinations without paying. And it's even if you have a bicycle you have to pay

We went into a Buddha temple and directly a young boy and girl to give us a free tour. But it's not a offer, it was a forced tour, we tried to shake them off, but without success. Something was wrong, they showed us around and said repeatedly that there was no entrance fee, but if we wanted we could buy postcards as a donation to their temple and school. Fair enough, but it didn't take long before the scam was set in place. We went to the stairs where you go up to the buddha statue, they showed us the postcars and told us to pay them 20 dollars. We said, we only wanted to buy one postcard each, but they refused. They started to get really pushy and when we said we where not interested but we could give them a donation of a couple of dollars, but that was not enough. They said if you don't pay you don't go up. And when they did that we meet some other tourists that passed us and told us that you don't have to pay to go up. The situation was intense and because we left our scooter we just rented there we decided to quickly walk away, so they didn't have a chance to smash it. The adrenalin was pumping and was took of fast.

This is the kind of scams they try to pull over again, they work as the maffia, they first give you something, say it's a free service, and then it's to get ripped off. Always negotiate for any service before start, otherwise your walking right in to the trap. So everytime you want to buy something from the market it takes like 15 minutes to argue and you have to walk away several times to get them to give you a good offer. So to get a couple of different things on the market just takes to much effort, they always give want you to pay like 15 dollars for a shirt, and then at last they agree to sell it to you for 2-3 dollars. It's better at the hotels, but still you have to argue about the price as well, some hotels have fixed prices, but it's imossible to know if they have it or not.

But when you finally finish the business talk, and have the chance to cold down and have a normal conversation with this people you realise they are really nice people, very helpful and they always look up to you for being western. Asian people really look up to western people, I have seen it so many times before. In general the poorer country, the more they look up to you. You feel like you are some form of royalty.

But I guess everything has their reason. Like Sweden for example with a rough history when we were Vikings. The swedish Vikings was feared all over the world. The was famous for drinking an speciel beer and was eating poisonous mushroom before they arrived with their boat to the battlefield. Then they went berserk, running into the village with their weapon and killed anything in their way. When the enemy retreated, the Viking took all their gold etc and the the most beautiful women. That the reason why Sweden had the most beautiful women in the world, something that you can see today. Sweden always ranks highest when it comes to good looking people. But back toe the point the history shape us, today Sweden is the exact opposite to vikings. We are afraid of conflicts, want the highest job and social security. So the Swedish vikings become social security junkies and the vietnamese communists that was used to share everything with everybody become the opposite. You see the same thing happened in the former soviet union. They are the same way, becoming very selfish and got the dollar sign in their eyes.

You see this behaver everywhere, like the priests kids that are going wild because they were raised to be so good people that they went the opposite.

Titanic :)

The ladyboy!

The floating bar!!

Another bill that almost was a half million!

This actually is the central bus station!!

And this toilette is not broken!

This nice man drove us on his bicycle in the heavy rain! Poor man!

Dodgy bus repair, this occur at least once every long bus ride!

There was a truck driving in our bus making the bus shake a bit, but everything was fine! And YES they did a bush repair, duct tape and cardboard as a temporary window

This place sold communist propaganda posters, but I was not allowed to take pictures! They wanted to sell the posters for 7 bucks each, I tried to bargain but without success