Goodbye, Vietnam

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Well, it's been fun. Vietnam has held some very high, and some not so high, points for us. In this, our likely last blog from this beautiful county before we fly to San Francisco tomorrow night, we'd like to take time to recap some of the highlights of our time here.

Losing our luggage was not fun. This was the first time either of us have had our luggage lost by an airline, and I now completely understand why seasoned travellers suggest taking a change of clothes in ones carry-on. Learing that our luggage had been found, however, was definately a great moment.

Visiting Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island was an adventure, and again full of firsts: first time sleeping on a boat, exploring a jungle, eating food with beaks... The trip was full of beautiful scenery, great people, and new lessons (like not taking your first kayaking lesson in the ocean).

The shopping was, as has been noted many times, wonderful. I've never been to a city where you can buy near perfect replica's of so many brand name, mass produced items right down the street from beautiful, original, hand-made pieces - and purchase one or the other at the same price!! And, we bought lots of both kinds of pieces - so much so that we purchased two new pieces of luggage to hold it all!

We found the pricing of many items a little bit difficult to get used to. At first, everything seems so very expensive (that costs 15,000 WHAT???) until you do the conversion and discover that 15,000 Vietnam Dong (VND) is equivilant to $1 CDN. Then, for a little while, most everything seems so remarkably cheap that you want to buy one of everything. And, when that wears off, you sometimes learn that you're being overcharged because you are so clearly a tourist: for instance, Robyn paid 7,000 VND for some doughnuts, and quickly learned that a local would have likely paid 2,000. The difference is minimal, really, and the doughnuts weren't bad, but that's not the point!!

The weather was mostly good to us, with a few rough spots; considering that it's monsoon season, though, we could've done a lot worse than about one hour of rain each day.

The food was always interesting: seafood often comes fully intact, complete with fins and shells. There is, of course, lots of vegetables, which are not my favorite part. Everyone is proficient with chopsticks, so I learned to use them at least in part. I'm still not sure why rice is so popular, as you really have to balance it on those sticks to get it to your mouth. It's a skill, I suppose.

People here were wonderful to us. I'm sure that we gave them a lot to laugh at, but even when we ran in to their motorcycles or couldn't understand each other, we always felt welcome and were treated well.

All things considered, Vietnam's been very good to us. We're excited to go and see some tourist attractions before heading to the airport tomorrow, off to our next adventure. We're going to try to blog from the Incheon Airport in South Korea, where we'll spend some time before heading to San Francisco. From there, it's home on Friday!

See you soon, lots of love, Bethany & Robyn

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Comments

[Jessie]

I'm glad you guys are coming home (and by that, I mean in one piece....the motorcycle story was a bit jarring for me to read, I can only imagine the panic that actually being there must have caused). With that being said, I'm a little sad that once you get here I'll no longer have your blog to read. Some of this stuff is better than TV! Glad you girls had fun. Jessie xoxox