The first thing I noticed while debarking the plane in Vietnam was that the temperature was much more comfortable; the second was the military officers "greeting" us at the bottom of the stairs. Since we had carefully arranged or visa's in Bangkok, we didn't have too much trouble at customs. However, it was definitely the most tense and rigid customs crossing to date. No smile, no "welcome to Vietnam", more like barking out a few questions and yelling things we didn't understand. Our drive to the hotel was eye opening right from the start. The buildings were different, somewhere empty brick shells, rice fields surrounded the road, there were five times more motorbikes than cars and each one was carrying some form of interesting cargo. The first one we saw had four or five dead pigs
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