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Published: August 12th 2007
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The proceeding days saw us head North at a fair pace towards Hannoi, stopping off at Hoi An and Hue respectively. Hoi An was a pleasant little place and is also a World Cultural Heritage site with a lot of Chinese, Japanese and European architectural influence present. A very relaxed place in comparison to the trashy Nha Trang and the hyperactive Ho Chi Minh City.
After Hoi An we payed a visit to Hue where not to much was achieved. We had a brief walk around the forbidden city and the citadel which itself seemed to be mostly undergoing construction work. The evening meal however was a meal to write home about, popped into a little Indian restaurant called 'Omar Khayyams Tandorri' and had quite possibly the best Indian meal of my life. Even though I was full to the brim with over a quarter of a plate of chicken korma and half a keema naan to go I just found that I was force-feeding myself to the point where I had to take small minute breaks in order to create more space within. One gap of about 10 minutes obviously proving to long as the waitress came along and
Hue (iv)
Vietnam Flag and a pole and other stuff whisked it away from me without asking if I had actually finished with the meal. But I wasn't to peeved as if anymore food would have entered me I do believe I would have exploded like the fat guy in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
The next leg of the journey was a grueling experience. After setting out at 6am to go and see the Demilitarized Zone me, Paul and Curtis had to kill time for a few hours in some S**thole called Dong Ha. We went for a brief walk and found a marketplace where everybody pointed and laughed at us. Then we found a shop where we fancied a drink but the woman there wouldn't serve us, she just looked at the floor and pretended we wasn't there. After that riveting experience we went back to wait at the bus pickup point where I played keepy uppies with a shoe until the bus finally decided to arrive. And when it did finally arrive it was frigging packed! At the best of times the buses in Vietnam have been crap, now this bus was just as crap as the other crap buses apart from the fact that
it was rammed....which made it really really crap. Me, Curtis and Paul had to squash up on the back seat with some Vietnamese people of which they wasn't to happy about (The Vietnamese people that is) especially as we had a 12 hour journey ahead of us. I don't really know to much about the architecture of buses but we must have been sat above the engine or something as it was so hot, you couldn't even rest your feet on the floor of the bus without them getting scolded, it was just to damn hot ... and crap.
By the time we got to Hannoi we was just absolutely f**ked. Along my travels I'd heard that the best place to get scammed and ripped off would be in Hannoi. Luckily we didn't plan to stick around for to long as our flight back to Bangkok was due within the next couple of days. The only thing I found a little bit black and white was the whole two tier pricing system where you pay about 5 times as much as for things as the locals do. I know as westerners we probably make more money as a whole
but sometimes it just feels like they were taking the piss. Especially the ones that sit on there arse all day waiting for a tourist to come along so they can milk the dong from their western pockets. (Dong being the currency of Vietnam).
I've been reading a book recently called 'Off the rails in Phnom Penh' by 'Amit Gilboa' which is basically about the lives of people living in the capital of Cambodia, but one segment has a page dedicated to peoples views and experiences on Vietnam, they go a little something like this:
"People doing business in Vietnam have this joke; Whats the difference between Vietnam and a casino? In a casino you at least have a chance of not losing your money"
"I watched a vendor selling coconuts from his cart. Not knowing that I spoke Vietnamese, he told this woman, 'look at this foreigner watching us. Pay me 5000 instead of 2000 so that he thinks that that's the price. As soon as he pays I'll give you the 3000 back.' I couldn't resist it. I didn't even want a coconut but I went up to buy one anyway and so he says,
in English 5000. So I told him in Vietnamese, I know what you just said to that woman and he was really pissed off, the f**ker still wanted me to pay the 5000 though"
"Yeah Vietnam's incredible. From the moment you get off the plane until the moment you leave, every single person is trying to steal, extort, seduce or lie their way into your pocket"
"Sure, there are some honest people in Vietnam, about 9 of them."
Curtis even had a little fun and games with them at one point in Hue, he asked a motorbike driver to take him to a specific destination from his hotel, so the driver takes him in a loop around the hotel and stops back where he started and the driver states '5000 dong' !!!! He tells him to piss off and gets another driver who does exactly the same thing. Jokers.
I just don't have the time for this sort attitude really and I could probably bitch and moan about Vietnam all day long. I'd rather go to a country that appreciates custom. They can be aggressive and abrupt and the whole staring at you to the point
where it feels like it's passing curiosity is slightly disturbing at times. In fact the majority of people I've spoken to that have visited Vietnam have encountered some sort of negative experience in the country. The thing is tourism does a lot for a countries economy but it seems that the majority of Vietnamese have so far failed to notice that, except maybe the 9 honest ones. There is no doubt that Vietnam is a place of intrigue and definite history, and maybe it's this history that makes it feel all a little hostile at times.
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