Carmen and Matt's Japan Adventure: Vietnam

Hello everyone,

It has been a lovely 6 weeks summer break. Though it would have made sense for me to blog more often during my time away from school, it was better to have fun instead and enjoy my time off. Now that I'm back in school, why not add blogging as another thing to my to-do list.

So we have some catching up to do. Our big summer trip was to Vietnam in August for 9 amazing days with our first stop in Hanoi.

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam. No, it's not Ho Chi Minh City. Hanoi has a lot of history and the French colonialism is still very much part of the culture. We stayed in the Old Quarter section and witnessed many things that can only happen in an emerging country.

I was amazed and sometimes shocked by the difference in the infrastructure and public safety or lack thereof. Here's an example of typical scooter - notice the child (without a helmet no less) is sandwiched between 2 adults in a scooter fit for maximum 2 people.

Well, at least the adults had helmets - in this picture, there's a man that isn't wearing a helmet at all as he's crossing a busy intersection. Side note, there are not enough traffic lights!

What about pedestrian safety, you ask? Well, here's a wide street and this poor couple was trying to cross on the crosswalk. First, it's good that there's a nice designated crosswalk. But there were no lights so they had to merge into the street and inch forward against incoming traffic. We were this couple many times during our stay. At first, I was scared and intimidated and I would constantly hesitate. But I soon learned that if you just keep walking across the street, the scooters will swerve around you. Though I have to say, there were some CLOSE CALLS.

Even when we weren't trying to cross the street and just wanted to stay on the sidewalk, we couldn't. The sidewalk here are scooter and bicycle parking spots or restaurant eating areas, so many times we had to walk on the street, with the cars and the bicycles and the scooters.

Ahh - finally, we were safely inside and able to enjoy some people watching. But what's this across from us but a bunch of LIVE electrical wires bundled together. Argh - the engineer inside of me is alarmed.

Anyway, now that I've learned how to walk and cross on the street, we actually found the city quite fascinating. There were French colonial buildings everywhere, some brightly colored, others desperately in need of renovations. The atmosphere was what I imagined: vibrant with many people trying to sell you food and souvenirs along alleyways and side streets; busy nightly market fairs selling everything and anything you can imagine, and very friendly people who tried to help despite the language barrier.

That's right ... even in narrow alleyways, we still had to deal with bicycles and scooters.

There were many old ladies like her carrying these heavy seesawing things, trying to sell fruit and whenever a policeman came by, they scurried away. I guess you can't be selling fruits without some sort of permit.... My favourite was the lady who carried a pot of broth in one and fresh pho and chives in the other - she was selling Pho!

Here's Matt buying coffee beans from one of the vendors on the street. We even got to taste the coffee. Did you know that Vietnam is the 2nd largest coffee exporter in the world, only second to Columbia. Vietnamese coffee is known to be strong tasting (more on Vietnamese style coffee later).