I am crazy: I took 5,909 pictures and movies on my vacation in Vietnam!!!
You’d say that I went to make a documentary for Discovery, not a trip for my birthday 🙂
But well, it was a new place, I was curious to see, to hear, to learn a lot, and so the camera and the phone became the extension of my hands.
I went to Vietnam in the spring, when they say it’s the perfect time to visit. Their peak season is considered to be from November until April. In May it decreases, as the hot weather is already coming. Then there is no way to go. Unless you like to live in a stove.
Vietnam looks like a tongue on the map, the eastern coastline having 1,650 km from north to south!
With such a long distance between the two extremes, the country has two types of climate: the north of Vietnam enjoys 4 seasons. Winters here have temperatures of about 10 degrees Celsius. When it gets down to 7 degrees they close the schools 🙂 Because, if they have no problem in dealing with the heat and humidity, the cold is their enemy. (Several Vietnamese I met during this vacation told me that they had never seen snow.)
In the south, however, there are only 2 seasons: the dry and the wet. Or, as someone said: very hot and creepy hot hihi.
I encountered a heatwave in the south, like our summer heat when you really feel like taking off and running to the North Pole! I walked in a 36 degrees Celsius heat, which felt like 42! Well, that wasn’t a walk, it was a melting slide…
In the north of Vietnam, on the other hand, I found a perfect spring, even cool in some of the evenings. And I was surprised when, feeling the need to turn on the heat in the hotel room, I realized that the air conditioner does not have a “warm” option. They use the air conditioning only for cooling. They have enough heat…
My trip started with 5 days alone, in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, and then I joined a gadventures tour, a company that I had no idea they existed until the time of booking and that I stuck to them because of the lack of time to I organize everything myself, as I usually do.
It was a kind of… an act of courage on my part, because I have never been on a vacation with a group of foreign citizens that I didn’t even know the countries they come from! But I said that I have to get out of my comfort zone…
I don’t know how comfortable they felt when I was showing off that I already knew the capital, having 5 days in advance 🙂 I was informed and relaxed, but the first contact I had with Vietnam was downright shocking!
HANOI
I got dizzy!!! This happened to me the first day and it lasted for two or three days!
I was caught in the whirlwind of traffic in Hanoi, with all my senses activated to the maximum. The smells of the food cooked on the sidewalks, the sounds of the street, the colors of the buildings, the texture of fruits unknown to me, plus the multitude of tastes that delighted my taste buds rushed all over me.
If you want a holiday with a chill vibe, Hanoi is not the place. Instead, it’s the place where you feel alive! And that’s how you want to stay when you cross the street and see yourself surrounded by dozens of scooters, cars and rickshaws…
TRAFFIC IN HANOI
I admit, it’s the first time I’ve experienced something like this, at such a scale!
Here, before discovering the tourist attractions, the parks or the food, you have to learn… how to cross the street! Seriously! Everyone tells you this (even the guide books).
In order for you to better understand, I must tell you that absolutely no vehicle stops at a traffic light! I was shocked during the first days. Used form my country, to put my foot on the crosswalk and the cars to stop (in most cases), here this gesture is mega risky! Nobody even stops at a red light, not to mention at a pedestrian crossing without traffic lights. (Only on the big roads, with intense traffic, with trucks, hundreds of cars and scooters, the color of the traffic light is respected in some intersections. That’s it!)
You cross the street not at the green light, but when you get the courage… And here comes the lesson learned about how to cross the street in Vietnam: calmly! Slowly. You don’t rush, you don’t run, you don’t turn from the middle of the road, you don’t make sudden movements. You start from a sidewalk and walk step by step, looking not at your walking direction, but at the drivers/scooters. Right in their eyes… That way you are as sure as possible that they will avoid you.
With this lesson in mind, here is my first attempt:
Vietnam has almost 50 million scooters! Yes, you read that right! Fifty million scooters.
In the capital, Hanoi, there are 10 million inhabitants and 7 million scooters. With all those 7 million I think I crossed paths… At first scared, then cautious, and then, in the end, after a few days of “training”, I end up crossing like on my own turf. I didn’t even cross at the pedestrian crossing, but I took it straight through the big intersection hihi:
Do you think that this is where extreme sports in Hanoi ended?? Not even close: if you survived crossing the street, it’s not like you can breathe on the sidewalks and walk like a normal tourist, looking up at the buildings, or down at the shops. You have to keep your eyes open for all types of vehicles, because you’re always walking among them. The sidewalks are full of everything, but pedestrians.
What do we have here on the sidewalk? Well… a hairdresser’s in the middle of the street, a scooter parking lot, a warehouse and tables where you can eat.
Here we have “ad hoc restaurants” and cafes with an extension to the boulevard.
And here, a parking lot for scooters and a place for local women to gossip…
And so, you have to go on the road, and the adventure continues! Here is the proof:
I’ll tell you, I really deserve the Hanoi-Pedestrian-Expert Diploma.
The city is practically in a continuous rush hour!!!
They’re honking like hell and if you’re a nervous person, it’s better to take the plane to Bali… Do you know what they say about the Vietnamese? That they speak 3 languages: Vietnamese, English and honking hihihi. If in English it is a little bit difficult for them, in honking they have PhDs!
What I noticed, however, was that they don’t honk because you did something or because they want to hurry you at the traffic lights, they honk to make their presence felt. Basically, they announce: “I’m behind you, be careful, I will get in front of you”, “I’m turning right, so don’t cross, even if you have the right” and so on…
What’s more, I found that many people who passed by me, a pedestrian tourist, were honking at me not because I was a blonde, single and alone, but because they wanted to know if I needed a car/scooter to take me somewhere. Taxis, uber-scooters, cars or private scooters acting as illegal taxis, motorcycles – all very attentive to potential customers in the street.
I experienced the traffic from the scutter and from the rickshaw, from the taxi and from the bus. All the drivers I traveled with showed great dexterity in sneaking around.
But the biggest surprize was when, being in a taxi to reach one of the tourist attractions, I saw the driver taking the opposite direction on a long street. Then, what do you know? Cars started coming towards us. My God, I froze, thinking about how much swearing we would get, how he would try to forcefully re-enter our lane.
No way!!! He himself started honking! What?!? Yes, he started honking on the principle I told you about above: “dear people, I’m coming, so make room for me”.
The cool part is that absolutely none of the drivers who were coming towards us, on the correct lane, cursed him, didn’t give him a bad look. They all moved aside to make room for him. Man, this shocked me!
“Saigon is even more crowded than Hanoi!” – I was told. Wow, is it even possible?!?
There I understand that they will build a subway, hoping to decongest the traffic.
Everywhere, the state encourages people to use public transport. In the big cities, they invested a lot of money so that their public transport was electric, beautiful, elegant. However, if you look at the buses, they are mostly empty. Only the old people use them and the students who go to school. Anyway, as the traffic is hell, it takes you more to go by the bus than on a scooter that slips by quickly. So…
The traffic policeman, generically nicknamed Pikachu by the Vietnamese, is like a statue in traffic, without much use.
And we, the pedestrians, when we are in a group, are instructed to cross the street in the “sticky rice” mode 🙂 That is, a compact group. And calmly, I haven’t forgotten that. And you can do something else apparently: you extend your hand nicely towards the drivers, like “slowly, slowly, let me reach the other side alive, please”.
In two weeks of Vietnam, I didn’t see any accident when I traveled by car, bus, scooter or rickshaw. And as a pedestrian, I was not touched by any vehicle when I crossed the street chaotically, among dozens of them!
The driving school is very serious for them. To take the exam, you need 100 hours of driving. Then you go and have the theory and the polygon exam. That is all.
It’s just that you go to school for nothing, if you don’t have money for a car. It’s terribly expensive to have a car in Vietnam! For many, the car remains the dream of their life. Car taxes are up to 200%!
During a walk with the group, we saw a Rolls in a window. Searching on the internet, we discovered that its price is about 700,000 euros. Well, in Vietnam, it costs 1,200,000 euros. The same car!
So, how can you be surprised to see thousands of scooters on the street??
A very good quality scooter costs about 800 dollars and lasts for a long time, so it is completely worth the money. And, knowing the traffic, it turns out to be the optimal solution.
The scooter is indispensable to their life. That’s why a lot of them are stolen 🙂 A Vietnamese told us that he pays 10,000 dong (less than half a euro) for someone to guard his scooter when he parks it. He always prefers to pay this money, than to have it stolen.
From the age of 16, when you can drive one under 500 cmc, until even after 80 years, the Vietnamese use a scooter every day.
WHAT VIETNAMESE TRANSPORT ON SCOOTERS
Well, the fact that they are carrying their child and their mother-in-law, I’m down with that.
After I see the newborn baby being carried in his mother’s arms, while the driver is talking on the phone, I’m already starting to pay more attention to scooters…
These people take their dog at their feet, on a scooter. Can you see it? I wonder how the hell the dog doesn’t fall at every turn!
And this is not an isolated fact. Here’s what I came across on a road in Vietnam, at the speed of a scooter:
But what I was about to see the following days amazed and amused me at the same time.
I wasn’t always ready with my camera or the phone, many pictures on the go cannot be used, but what I managed to capture (both myself and with the help of others), I’ll show you:
Here we have the “painting” called Taking Ducks to the Fair or The Cute Face of the Foie Gras…
Chickens in the time capsule 🙂
He could easily be employed for Ikea delivery…
I think that all the companies that sell water would like to have such an efficient delivery system…
I have seen trees carried on a scooter. Put on the vertical and tied to the back of the scooter driver.
I saw big garbage cans. Not one, but 3 on one scooter!
Pieces of furniture carried on scooters.
And, because it’s too expensive to have a car here, I was told that people even carry live pigs and cows on their scooters!!! This story about the cows, I won’t believe before I see it with my own eyes.
But there are scooters that only carry… people. For a fee. Grab is what they call our uber/bold. It is full of such “green” people on the streets.
And there are the yellow scooters, too – the parcel deliverers.
Riding scooters all day long, the Vietnamese had to protect themselves from the not-so-friendly weather.
Thus, all kinds of clothes and accessories were invented, sweatshirts with sleeve extensions, to cover the palms exposed to the sun when you hold the handlebars, or blankets with sleeves, which keep your legs and hands warm or protect you from rain.
Especially women protect themselves.
For someone visiting their country, like me, it’s shocking to see women camouflaged from head to toe! The lady in the photo is super trendy, but I saw women wearing woolen gloves at 35 degrees without any problems, with two pairs of face masks, a hood over which they had a cap, over which they had a protective helmet… I also saw caps with headkerchief included, which covered the cheeks and the back of the neck well. Not to mention the countless full suits – some like dress, others like jumpsuits.
The less skin exposed to the sun, the greater the certainty of keeping it healthy and young.
And yes, clearly the mask here has nothing to do with covid. The mask is their daily accessory, which protects their skin. I would have mentioned pollution, but everyone I asked gave me only one explanation, that it is for “skin protection”.
I finish with the scooters, noting that I have something in common with the drivers and their passengers: at the traffic lights, I quickly pick up the phone to send an email, to see who has written on WhatsApp, who has posted what 🙂
RICKSAW
If you are afraid of scooters, but also if you want to have a unique experience, take a rickshaw!
I don’t know what to call them (rickshaw men/drivers), but you run into them everywhere. And, if you don’t see of them, they see you and come offering their services. Always negotiable. And they are always kind, not at all aggressive, and never insist if you tell them nicely that you don’t want to go with them.
I wanted. Because I was really curious how I felt the traffic in a rickshaw.
You might think that they run all the time into cars or scooters, but no, they are not. They have a great talent for sneaking, speeding up and hitting the brake when necessary, without throwing you out of your seat. At least that’s how my man was.
After the solo experience, I had another one, a group experience. Because in Hanoi, rickshaw rides are organized for groups.
So, our group took all the rickshaws on a street corner, and we even requested some more. We mostly stayed one person per rickshaw, only a few had couples. ‘Cause well, it can’t be easy to ride a bike with over 100 kilos in front.
“It’s like you’re in a wheelbarrow”, my friends who saw this picture said hihi. Yes, it looks like that, except that I was sitting really comfortably, with my butt on the “sofa” and my legs stretched out in this tray.
The tour is nice and, even if they pedaled past sights already seen by me, now I enjoyed them while resting my bones.
Apart from the rickshaws that serve groups of tourists, I also saw a vehicle for compact groups of citizens, be they tourists or people on delegation:
It’s a kind of group taxi. We also shared something like this in other cities and, after a few turns, we looked to see if we were all still on board.
Can you say that a little arrogance in traffic wouldn’t work, if you dare to take more money out of your pocket?
This beauty of a car lay abandoned on a sidewalk in the center, crying for a face worthy of it. My face didn’t fit, so I passed it, resigned.
ZERO TRAFFIC
On Friday night, I’m shocked! This time, because of the lack of any scooter, any car or rickshaw on the streets of central Hanoi! They have their “pedestrian” evenings (Friday-Sunday, from 7 p.m.) and you can see the happy people that fill all the arteries! You feel like you’re at a big outdoor party, especially since, from place to place, street artists perform, to the delight of the passers-by.
Although I can walk on the sidewalk, I only walk on the road. Just to feel like I’m taking revenge for the other days…
LONG LIVE!
“We are a socialist country with a capitalist economy” – say the Vietnamese when, as a tourist, you bump into red flags with the hammer and sickle and big billboards with slogans everywhere. “And we have the right to vote” – they add.
There is only one party in Vietnam, the Communist Party (I have a flashback…). It is the only legal party. If you dare to found a party here, because you have revolutionary ideas, you are arrested.
“Well then, why are you still going to vote??” – I ask, puzzled.
“We vote for people”. Oh, ok… So, whoever is better from the only party in the country, that one should be elected.
They cannot be compared with the Chinese however – they want to emphasize. They are open to the world, they have cable and internet even in the most remote corners of the country. And believe me, it works perfectly, I wouldn’t have expected it! Anyone can afford a subscription, because it costs only 3-4 dollars per month.
We chat a bit about the new entries on Netflix and move on.
In 1986, they changed the system from communist to capitalist. People got land. “Socialist oriented market economy” they call it. Many are supported by the state.
In 1994, the American President Clinton ended the trade embargo imposed on Vietnam (in 1975) and that’s how the gates for investments opened, and Vietnam began to develop a lot. I understand that after the embargo lifted by Obama (on arms sales to Vietnam), things have changed for the better for them once again.
Our guide, the 30-year-old generation exponent, tells us that what his grandparents wanted most in their time was that there would be no more war. Then, what his parents wanted most in their time was to have rice every day (they ate meat once, twice a year). And what his generation wants most now is to have meat every day and vaccines!
Vietnam is a safe country. No murders, no harassment, no bank robberies (only isolated cases, some robberies being out of desperation). However, they have thefts, yes…
Did you know that Vietnam still has the death penalty? I had no idea. It applies to certain criminals and for drugs! For example, if they catch you with more than 500 grams of heroin.
Until 2014, those sentenced to death were shot, then they started using the lethal injection. The guide tells us that, in his childhood, there were still public executions, in abandoned factories. You could assist without problems. No one blew the trumpet so that the people would gather, no one distributed the invitations, but people heard, the news spread around and that’s how they gathered for the “show”. God!
VIETNAMESE
When you go on vacation like me, planned in a hurry, you don’t really know much about the local people. So you can see why I was hungry for information.
Vietnam is rapidly approaching 100 million inhabitants!!! And it has a young population. Since the war with the Americans, 57 million Vietnamese have been born!
In 2019, about 55% of Vietnamese were under 35 years old! (However, Cambodia surpasses them, having the youngest population in the area: 35% of the Cambodians are under 17!)
The population of Vietnam is the most homogeneous of all Southeast Asian countries – approximately 90% are ethnic Vietnamese. Three quarters live in the countryside, where most are rice farmers.
But, beyond numbers and statistics, I was curious to learn more about them as people.
For this, I asked Thang, the guide we had for 13 days, a lot of questions. I killed him with tons of questions…
(I recommend him at any time, to anyone, for his good organization, his seriousness, the good care he took of us, his English that humbled me and his willingness to answer all my curiosities, some maybe stupid.)
From him I learned that the Vietnamese are extremely close to their families. The families are numerous. Although the number of children per family has decreased, most of them come from families with 3 or 4 children and have dozens of relatives! Even 800 people can come to a Vietnamese wedding! Well, you can’t leave any aunt out, because “the entire village will laugh at you”…
Children sleep in the same bed with their parents until a late age (8-9 years old). Brothers sleep together in the same bed until they get married! Thang says he got married a few years ago in mid-March, and on March 1st of that year, he was still sleeping in the same bed as his brother.
Sleeping together also has a practical side: in the 90s, when they had no money for beds and mattresses, this was the best way to keep warm.
I like the Vietnamese! At least the ones I met, the ones I bought from, the ones I noticed, the ones I talked to.
Speaking of “speaking”: long live Google Translate, because most Vietnamese can’t speak a word of English. I used the phone a lot for translation, but sometimes funny things came out as even google translate makes mistakes… So long live miming! You can’t imagine how many situations talking with my hands has gotten me out of.
Oh, and the Vietnamese have another way of communicating, especially the street vendors who don’t know English at all and don’t have a computer: if you ask them how much a product costs, they take out a banknote from their purse that show you the value of that product. Simple, right? Well, I did my part, too. I took out a smaller bill than theirs from my purse and that’s how I started to negotiate 🙂 It worked!
Even though I had good intentions and tried to learn a few Vietnamese words, to make a good impression, I quickly got over it, learning that Vietnamese is a tonal language. That is, in addition to vowels and consonants, words can differ in the way they are “recited”. To give you a simple example: our guide, Thang, explained to us that his name is pronounced by going up with the voice. Otherwise, if you say it going down with your voice, it means “someone dies”! In order not to call him in the wrong way and panic all the Vietnamese around, he gave us the saving solution: “call me T”.
A guide from a food tour advised us in the same way, to call him by an English name, Tim. And so I made the connection with what I had seen at the hotel: Vietnamese receptionists whose badges read Andy, William and so on. I think it’s their way of making life easier for us, the tourists, and, on the other hand, to avoid being shouted at with who knows what horrible, filthy, funny, terrifying words, depending on how we sing their names.
VIETNAMESE RELIGION
Most of the Vietnamese who have embraced a religion are Buddhists. Then there are some Catholics. And they also have Taoism from the Chinese and Confucianism.
buddhist temple in Hanoi catholic cathedral in Hanoi
They are not at all strict when it comes to religion, as far as I understand. There was no enmity between those of different religions. For example, a Catholic and a Muslim can be buried in the same cemetery. For them, the respect for the community is very important, above the importance of one religion over another!
We saw a kind of altars in the middle of the field on our bus journeys. Hmm… very strange. You can see the field and all of a sudden, in the middle of it, there is a kind of funerary monument.
That is exactly what they are! The Vietnamese bury their dead, just like us (unlike the Cambodians who burn them and then scatter their ashes on rivers or keep them in an altar in the house or in urns placed in pagodas).
After about 5-7 years, the Vietnamese dig up their dead, collect their bones and put them somewhere else, in a new, fresh land. That’s the custom. But they do this only once! According to their belief, it is not good to do this moving of the bones several times, as it brings bad luck.
You can move the bones of the deceased anywhere, that’s why you see those funerary monuments in rice fields or in other fields.
I liked to observe the Vietnamese in their daily life, running on the streets, lazing in cafes, on stalls, on rickshaws or scooters, to see them in the evening when, noisy, they occupied all the sidewalks to eat together. (I can’t wait to get to the Food Chapter, to tell you about it!)
I read that they are among the happiest people in the world. I believe they can be happy even with a little, I think they can enjoy life. I don’t know how it is in the upper society, but I saw simple people, dressed either in traditional costumes or in modern clothes, doing real photo shoots around town with great enthusiasm. Not necessarily in a significant place, as brides do in front of historical monuments, but simply on the street, next to a flowering tree or at the edge of a lake and probably for no particular reason.
Vietnamese women arrived in Hanoi, to the Hoán Kiêm Lake, take out their traditional clothes from their bags for some beautiful pictures.
A group of singer-dancers (I think) take advantage of the day without traffic and take photos in the street, maybe to increase the number of followers on the networks.
Two girls do a photo session with all the equipment – camera, lights. I ask them if what they are wearing is a traditional costume and they say yes, but a Chinese one…
Then the little one and I take pictures of each other, amused, because each represents a curiosity for the other 🙂
And, also in the chapter “street photo sessions”, I saw many young people, beautifully dressed, some of them very elegant, posing in front of the luxury stores in Hanoi! I still haven’t discovered why. I understand that it’s cool for them to take pictures in such places, but I’ll investigate further…
Without me intentionally hunting them down, during this vacation there were people who surprised me, I have to admit:
On a street corner, this man brought a chair, attached a mirror to the fence of a property, two wires as hangers, placed his utensils nicely on the asphalt and on the wall and… Figaro here, Figaro there, Figaro up, Figaro down! A barber at your disposal.
And, what do you know, every day when I passed by him, he had customers, man! A haircut, a shave, solved with speed and talent.
I came across women past their prime who were dancing in the park, under the guidance of a coordinator who was also the DJ. I spent a lot of time watching them synchronize on Vietnamese songs, but also on international evergreens, and I did it with delight, because I could see that they were feeling good, relaxing, and I realized what a good therapy this can be.
“Hellooooo!” I hear nearby. “Hellooooo” – I hear even more voices. They are some primary school students, delighted to see a blonde oddity in their country. I smile at them and answer back “hellooooo”. That’s all I need! The whole class starts to greet me. They are all very nice and I can see how happy they are every time you greet them. Because it was not a singular case: both alone and with the group I had such “dialogues” with Vietnamese children. We also did a high five, we waved at each other…
The older children, with red ties around their necks (I have a flashback…), are not as communicative as the little ones, but they look at you longer.
I looked at them even longer, because I passed by a school just as the students were getting out after class. Take a look here at what parents who come to take their children means:
I was shocked!!! I was practically in a sea of scooters with parents/relatives! Parents who, once they took their children, left the area with a skilfulness that amazed me!
The Vietnamese rule the street! I don’t know how to make you understand, but the street is an extension of their house, it’s their territory, it’s their life. They can do anything on the street.
This woman is brushing her teeth at the root of a tree. A man urinates directly in the lake, believing that no one sees him (well, almost no one…). And if I thought that nothing could surprise me anymore, here is what I found:
On the sidewalk, in front of a clothing store, a lady is getting a pedicure!
I suspect that she is the saleswoman of the store, who called her pedicurist at work, so that she would not lose any customer…
Anyway, if during the first days I used to stare when I saw something like that, then I understood that this is their normality and I took it as such, only being amused sometimes.
Their normality is also something that is causing more and more controversy lately, and even horrifies some people: the consumption of dog meat.
About this topic, but also about the delicious food that I had no idea that I would enjoy in Vietnam, you can read soon… woof-woof!
Until then, here, the adventure at the end to my Vietnam vacation.
