We only spent a little time in Ho Chi Minh city. The currency in Vietnam is the dong. Get it out of your system now. There’s no reason we can’t be mature adults about this. Traffic here is insane here by sheer volume. At peak travel times (usually just before and just after work) it’s especially bad. We have a phrase for this at home. It’s called ‘an absolute and unmitigated clusterfuck.’ It just has to be seen to really understand it, we had to learn how to cross the street all over again. Protip: wait for a local to cross and make sure they’re always between you and traffic. They’ll get picked off before you… but not by much. Food here was a different game – fried meat on a stick is great and all, and I like street noodles of questionable hygiene as much as the next guy, but after a certain point, you want a little imagination. You want a different approach, east meets west, asian fusion – pick a cliché. You want a banh mi. I don’t know how they do it, I guess it’s an aftershock of French colonialism, but man the bread they use is just better than anything at home. And decent bread is not a common thing in SE Asia (but donuts on the other hand…), so we were especially jonesing for a familiar taste at this point. Although to be honest, there’s not much food you can’t get in America (a testament to our multiculturalism), so in general there aren’t a lot of real surprises on the road. Either way a delicious freshly made sandwich for about a dollar will put a smile on your face. They even had some veg ones for Shefali. The markets and street shops were either a tranny that’s a guy selling you services you don’t want or a guy that’s named Tran selling you products you don’t want, and either situation is likely to be a poor application of your dong. See what I did there? We realized we got here just in time for Tết (Vietnamese New Year) which sounds awesome, except for the fact that everything shuts down for nearly a week on either side of it, meaning you better want to stay in one place for a long time and not eat or do much since everyone who would normally be selling you food, drink or personal services went home for Tết. We were tempted to stay, but couldn’t really afford to stand still for that long in one place so we bolted back to Bangkok to correct course and not risk losing anymore time. It was a hard decision to make – we ended up wasting our visa and missed out on perhaps the biggest celebration of the year in Vietnam. It kind of sucked. But we have an entire world to see, and limited time to do it. So it was the right move – however deep the sting of regret.
Vijay
[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157640717913805/