day 12 - 50th COUNTRY !!!!

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To Vietnam we go! Day 12, the 11 October 2009 is for me an historic day. I’m 29 years old and I am lucky enough to have been to all 7 continents and today I was going to visit my 50 country. 50 countries by the age of 30. Naturally crossing over the border from Laos to Vietnam I took a photo to mark this momentous occasion. My dream was always to see 50 countries by the age of 30. Other people have dreams of becoming a millionaire by the age of 30. Luckily I was able to become both, without even trying for the latter. Exchanging $150 dollars at the boarder I become an instant multi millionaire, as i was the owner of 2.2million Dong, yes you read right 2,200,000 !!

We spent all day in the luxury of our air-conditioned mini-bus to drive to Nimh Bin, our rest stop for the night. Having been to lots of countries I have seen lots of driving styles from the death defying Sao Paulo F1 racing drivers, to the Lima no stop sign drivers, to the Delhi cow avoiding drivers. The Vietnam drivers are a breed of their own. Even though they don’t drive very fast, with a max speed of about 50km p/h, its still a scary ride. They play chicken the whole time, beeping their horn and flashing their lights. Just when you think your safe to overtake a bike carrying a dead buffalo on the back of it will sneak up on you outside and overtake you first. Where i come from a motorbike is used to carry two people tops, but here you can fit a whole family on one, I have seen 5 people on one bike. When the family aren’t on the bike you can use it to transport goods, no not fast food like at home, real food. So you can put up to 6 pigs on the back, a few dozen chickens can be carried between the back and over the handles bar on the front, you can carry bags of rice as high as physically possible too. Whatever you can think of can be carried on the magical motorbike.

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