What a difference in Hong Kong and Vietnam? Hong Kong is very, very clean, Vietnam is not. Hong Kong shopping is extremely high end. In Vietnam you bargain for a hat for one dollar. In Hong Kong the cars are expensive, in Vietnam, everyone owns a motor scooter. I do not know the average income n Hong Kong but in Vietnam it is between $150USD to $300 USD per month.
Our first day in Vietnam began with an excellent cooked to order breakfast and then free time before meeting our local tour guide. I wish I could describe walking across the street in “Old Town.” It’s not like a salmon swimming up stream because the scooters are going in both directions. Actually Ron and I agree that it is sort of like PAC-MAN only worse. There are no lights or stop signs at the corners. Everyone is honking which says, “I’m here,” not “get out of my way.”
Carol got hit by a motor scooter. She did not even fall down but it was quite amusing seeing her keep her balance. The driver, in perfect English said, “Why did you run?” To me this said that he was looking out for walkers, but when she picked up speed in just 2 or 3 steps, he could not anticipate her move. Thus, he nudged her because he could not stop and avoid hitting her. Later we learned ( from our guide) the secret of crossing the street is to take slow steady strides. Makes perfect sense when you are involved in the picture. We do try to stay on one side of the street. Otherwise, when we cross we stay in a huddle and oftentimes hold hands like kindergartners. So far we have survived.
here are some pictures of the traffic. Please add your own “beep beep” every 6-8 seconds.
Our guide took us to the temple of “Confucius” which was interesting for the first 15 minutes. Then he took us to the “Hanoi Hilton” and someone is not quite telling the whole truth. The messages said the American prisoners were treated very well with good medical care. Actually the prison was built in the 1890’s by the French to house Vietnamese political prisoners. It was not a pleasant place to be. Because of progress in building the city, only about 1/3 of the prison still stands. Our guide did also refer to the fact that the Vietnamese were the victors in the American War.
We were getting hungry, but we made a short stop at the day market before trying some PHO with beef and noodles. Yummy. And filling. And cheap. Back to the day market. It was inside a warehouse. Kind of like wholesale. I cannot begin to tell you how much STUFF was crammed into that building. The inventory of the vendors was tremendous. We did not see too many Caucasian’s so I am thinking, not too many tourists. However, there could have been a lot of Asian tourists. On the street near our hotel was a vendor with zippers. How many, probably a million.
Next we went to the water puppet show. The music was outstanding, the puppet show caused most of us to doze off for a time or two. We then walked back to our hotel because it was Saturday night and there were so many people out, that they close the streets to traffic. It was another amazing experience.
There are 9 million people in Hanoi, and 95 million in Vietnam. Approximately 1,500 people die each year, and 4,000 babies are born. It is hard for me to believe that death ratio, but that is what our guide told us.
Here are a couple of more pictures. The first one is our meal, the second is a woman pushing her goods down the street. The last one is Sandra, Carol, and me sitting on a child’s plastic chair enjoying our smoothies at a street vendor next door to our hotel.
We were happy to drink delicious and freshly peeled fruit smoothies in a plastic cup, because we saw how the really cute ice cream dishes were washed. Not sterilized at all.
Sunday we take a ride out into the country and visit HaLong Bay.
Everyone is keeping up. I hope you are too.