I've been to Vietnam!

Here's Part 2 of my "I'm no longer there, but I want to keep up with my country impressons posts" posts. This time, it's a bit closer. We've only left Vietnam yesterday so the country is a bit fresher in my head. Although we were in the country for almost three weeks so I'm sure I forgot about some of the things in the north.

1- In the whole of the country, the mode of transportation of choice is by 110cc (or smaller) motorcycles. That's pretty much all you see in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. There are literally millions of them in each city. They twist and turn in rows of four or more down the city streets. It's really impressive that we didn't see an accident.

2- We had to deal with the sound of a million horns again. As it was in India, the Vietnamese don't think it enough to turn on their signal lights, they also have to blow their horns. But once isn't enough, they keep on doing it. Even when they're not turning and even if there's no danger. And everyone does it. So you can imagine how annoying it can get.

3- Every hotel we stayed in had at least one computer with free Internet access. So really, we shouldn't have any excuses for not posting any blog entries in Vietnam!

4- Hanoi is very different than Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). In the Old Quarter in Hanoi, where we spent most of our time, the streets are narrower and the shops are all local (no big commercial centres or chain names). The city shuts down early. The opposite is true of Saigon.

5- Pho is great and it tastes pretty much the same as home.

6- We've had some pretty amazing Italian food (crazy good gnocchi, pasta and risotto) in this country, and have had parmesan cheese for the first time since we left home. It's pretty impressive since I'm sure most of the locals don't really like western food.

7- The overnight Vietnamese train from Saigon to Hoi An was the nicest one we've been in for the whole of our trip. The beds were soft, in sets of four and in a compartment with a lockable door. The toilets were clean and had toilet paper and hand soap. Although the journey did end up taking 22.5 hours instead of 15 hours. But you can probably blame that on all the rain they've had and the flooding.

8- Hoi An is the best place to get tailor made clothing for very cheap. You can basically get a whole new wardrobe for under $1000.

9- Amazingly, Hoi An gets flooded every year. This year the water level rose 3 meters higher than its normal level. They're used to that! They had to evacuate tourists to higher grounds. That's the reason why we went to Saigon before heading to Hoi An. When we got there, there was still a bit of water on the lower streets but it was all gone by the time we left. You wonder why they decided to build a town there.

10- Vietnam Post has some pretty expensive rates for their air mail service. We ended up paying way too much to ship all our tailored clothes from Hoi An. It would have been much cheaper to ship by sea but there's a huge time discrepancy between the two services. 1-3 weeks by air, 3-4 months by sea. Sea is way too long since we'll be in Dallas in less than 2 months. They need a Sea-Air service like all the other countries we've been to!

That's it for Vietnam, see you in Cambodia!