A few things about Vietnam

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1. Houses are swept from front to back, always. You do not want to sweep,the good fortune out of the house. This is a fact, I have observed it several times, not just homes, also shops.

2. The Perfume River starts way up in the mountains. There are many fruit trees (peach and cherry) and cinnamon trees in the area. So, the water is very fragrant, hence the name. Not sure if this is fact or fiction, but it is a lovely story.

3. In the north, the rice must be transplanted, and they can only grow two crops a year. In the south, they do not need to transplant, and they can grow three crops a year. Hance, mamy from the north Mooie pave south, sometimes entire villages will migrate as one.

4. North Vietnamese are considered hard workers, and the south Vietnamese are considers much lazier. This opinion was expressed by two of our guides.

5. The country has a massive pollution problem. The air quality is terrible. Often, one sees crops being sprayed with god knows what. Garbage is burnt or dumped into open pits. Though I am not absolutely positive, I'm pretty sure all the tour boats in Halong Bay dump their waste into the sea. I counted 20 something boats, with an average of 15 to 20 passengers, that is a lot of pee and poo to flush into the waters....ick.

6. Commerce is king, everyone is selling something, usually from the ground floor of their home. The second floor is for living. They sell clothing, jewellery, tires, electronics, gadgets and gizmos, and if not a store, then you have a few small, plastic tables and open a restaurant.

7. Many, many people, especially in Hanoi, eat and congregate on the street. A teeny restaurant will have a few tables,inside, but everyone sits outside, on teeny kindergarten size plastic chairs and drinks,their beer and/or coffee..there will be groups of 20 or so people, and you have to walk on the road to get around them, cause they take up,the whole sidewalk.

8. For centuries, the only written language in Vietnam was Chinese. Vietnamese was an oral language. When the French priests arrived, they developed a written for the language. It is a monosyllabic language, and the only SE Asian language to use the Roman alphabet. You might think that would make it easier to read/learn/understand. Not so, it is still a tonal language, Nd the up and down at the end of the word changes the whole meaning, and letters do not,have the same sounds.

To our ears, the language sounds guttural and harsh. The Vietnamese make fun of Korean, and think it is an ugly, unpleasant sounding language, due to its harshness.....all in the eye of the beholder.

9. We were told, several times, to be careful in Saigon, pickpockets and purse snatching a are, apparently, a huge problem. However, I witnessed acts of great kindness and honesty, in ine of the airports, someone had left an e-reader, and an employee of the airport was going up and down the boarding line, trying to find the owner. The strap broke on my purse, so I decided to leave it on the Mekong river cruise ship(more about the cruise to come....). I did not know there was 1 million dong(about 50 bucks) in one of the pockets, guess I had stashed it there sometime when I did not want to take my wallet. We left the big boat for small boats, and about 15 minutes later the guide came to me and said they had found the purse and the money, and it would be waiting for me when we docked....and there was a guy there and he made me open the purse and count the money...I gave half of it back to him.

10. The airports all have fancy lounges. The signage at the entrance is: CIP. This stands for Communist Important Person. I kid you not. These folks also have different coloured license plates, they are blue.......ironic, to say the least. We tried to go into one of the lounges, not knowing what the CIP meant, and the woman in he lounge started waving her arms around and almost yelling.....now if makes sense. Guess I do not look like a CIP....



More later

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