Vietnam Evaluation 203.1

Vietnam

likes: The old beautiful shop fronts of Hoi An, quiet long beaches, trying to cross the streets slowly (as if in a 1980's computer game) whilst trying to dodge the motorbikes,

Dislikes: People not knowing how to queue, no chains like Starbucks,

Days spent there: 17

Places visited: Ho Chi Min, Mui Ne, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hanoi, Halong bay.

Number of times i wanted to come home: 0. Its way too late for that.

Favourite Hotel: Hanoi hotel called The Rising Dragon Hotel, old small rickity building with only 3 rooms on each floor, in the middle of the craziness of Hanoi.

Favourite Memory: Sitting on the long beach of Mui Ne near sunset, wandering in and out of the sea with no worries whatsoever, i could have stayed all night. perfect temperature, perfect surroundings, perfect company.

Worst Day: Again, its too late for this. Everyday, no matter how miserable is brilliant, when compared with being at work.

Favourite new food/drink: self wrapped spring rolls, with fresh salad and veg and a tasty dipping sauce.

Best Norwich City Victory: Getting into the position of KNOWING that NORWICH CITY ARE GOING UP! Premiership next season, after beating Portsmouth 1:0

Country Score: 203.1

Haviana good time...

Nowadays my life is on a track of calm, relaxed and bumbling. My main concern in life is how long Xss's eyebrow hairs will get when we are old and grey (they are pretty long and wild now), and the only time i feel anxiety is when a chip nearly falls off my dinner plate. So imagine the calamity which is my flipflops breaking!!!!! Arghhhhhh.

Really, it was funny and not stressful as we shuffled along the beautiful streets of Hoi An at a pace not even Xss could break a sweat in despite the 35 degree heat. The flipflop would stay on for about 8 steps before breaking again, or on particularly comical occasions, if i fell down a step on slight incline, both my shoes would break at the same time and we'd have to stop with me dancing on the very hot road trying to fix my shoes and minimise sole burnage.

Only hours before a shop worker had asked me if i wanted new shoes, to which i pointed to my at the time semi broken Haviana's and said, 'look i have these, i don't need more'. But now i do.

So having situated Xss at a cafe for lunch, i took his flipflops and set off to find anything i could to protect my feet. This is ironically a hard task in Hoi An, an old town filled with tailors and shoe makers. Since they make everything and it is their livelihood no-one sells the sort of plastic crops that are abundant elsewhere. I wasn't going to buy a pair or new leather boots so the search continued.

Eventually i found one stall in the market where they had a mountain of flipflops, of the swimming pool float variety, you know the ones which look like you would be able to walk on water in them. Helpfully everyone joins in in searching for a pair. After 3 minutes of searching, we had managed to find a left and a right foot of different designs and sizes, and it seemed like i would not be able to get anything better. So the bargaining began. She began at $7.5. haha.

It was hard to explain that i really did not want these mismatched (one was black with a tiger picture on the other was green with a dollar bill design) shoes, especially for this much, but i needed something. But need drives a market, so we continued in a jovial way, negotiating my rip off. Eventually we settled on $3 and i managed to find a matching pair!!!!!! Same size!

It is irrelevant that they have a picture of Lional Messi on, and that i am not sure who he is. But some of the kids i work with think he is cool, so i'm happy. i'm now bouncing around in my lovely Lional Messi shoes, who needs Haviana's!

All change at the border

We have made it to Vietnam, and yet again how different it is to its neighbouring country, Cambodia. The change happened almost instantaneously. We got off the bus at the Cambodian side, paid our overdue fee's as we has overstayed by 3 days. All very civil, nice, quiet, calm. Got on the bus again, and got off 100meters later at the Vietnamese check point. All very confusing as the coach driver kept all of our passports and insisited on handing them out to us by calling out our names, in a Cambodian accent. Xss and I were called forward on a strangled version of 'Edward?' his middle name.

So we drove off from here onwards to Ho Chi Minh, but no we had another check point 10 meters further on. A very offical and military Vietnamese man got on, no smiles and deamnded to see all our passports again. He was not friendly but abrupt and curt. there was an air of seriousness about him that made you stiffle your giggles. Well, no-one had lost their passports over this 10 meter gap so we continued on our way. As we drove off again, the black stage of dusk set in, Brothers in Arms came onto my eye pod, and they were burning the fields off to the right of us. What better setting than to gaze out of the window looking for left over tanks from the Vietnam war!

Since we have so little time left, we are trying to make the most of it so have been on numerous day trips and have had very little sitting around (although we have slept in until 12noon at least two days). First we went to the Chu Ce tunnels where the VietCong hid from the americans during the war. They had made the tunnels bigger so that us westerns could fit down, and i could run along them quite comfortably if i bent over 90degrees at the waist. However the real holes i would of had to crawl down on all fours, and with over 100km of them, and some dug at depths of 10 meters down i think i would have been acused of helping the Americans when i died of a panic attack and blocked the way.

Ho Chi Min seemed like just another big city so we went to the 'War Remnants Museum' formally called 'The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes' and then left for the beach side towns. The Museum was intersting and i learnt a lot, but now different from their neighbours Cambodia! Here were all these stories of resistance, Hero mother (mothers who were honoured for losing several sons to the war effort), and documentation of all the crimes of the Americans. Nothing on their part or their strategies, but how they had been picked on, withstood adversity and had come back fighting. Vietnam was not down for long, infact it seems that the war and agressive bombing hardly got them down at the time despite 3 millions people dying (only 1million were fighters the rest were women and children).

Well, now we are leaving the beach again for more culture in Hoi An, we are going by train which i am very excited about! I dont really know why this seems exciting but it is.