Overview, Afterthoughts and Advice
The fun part's over, now for the tedious part... "documenting" and blogging about our experience in Vietnam. As my dear would say it... a happy problem, not. It's not so much the recounting of our experience there, squeezing my memory juices do take a good deal of brain power, but its the tedious process of sorting out the uploaded photos and plunking them into the "right" places in my posts which really turns me off at times. That said, I'm determined nonetheless to regurgitate my experience not just for the benefit of a random public view which I believe would help, but for us (me and my dear, whom I call my wife now ;p) to remember our days in Vietnam as well.
Visiting Vietnam this year was for our pre-honeymoon, because we wanted to travel overseas, some place not too expensive, and not too underdeveloped. The reason it's just a "pre-honeymoon" because we wanted to save up for our Europe trip next year. After our trip to Cambodia, both of us were rather dreadful of 3rd world countries... primarily due to the sanitation and convenience of the latrines. This was especially bad for long coach rides where you would have to hold your "business" in for a good 2-3 hours at times.
However, it would seem that for the day trips in Vietnam, it wasn't that bad, just a good 1.5hrs before the next toilet stop, or how the Vietnamese would say it Ve Sinh. The translation of the word toilet was the first word I learnt in Vietnamese, where we had the chance to learn from Tina, a hotel staff we met on our first day at our first accommodation stop, the Holiday Gold Hotel. I'll leave the reviewing of the accommodations to my later posts, and it was at that very place we also learnt other words such as Beef, Pork, Chicken and Fish.
Met up with a couple of my friends (who had been to Vietnam) a few days before our trip and they advised to pick up a few words in Vietnamese, especially of food because language would be a problem. That, we did, but didn't quite come in handy cos of the way we pronounced the words.
I don't know where to start, so I'll just jump straight to categorising the main pointers for a trip to Vietnam, just like how they do it in the traveller guide books.
Language
Language is definitely a problem in Vietnam. Unlike in Cambodia, on the contrary, even though it's more developed, most Vietnamese can't speak English. Even if they did, their conversational English was difficult to catch at times. The locals who were better in communicating in English would be the tour guides, who would tag along for day trips (eg. Perfume Pagoda, Tam Coc) or the guides on board the junk ships at Halong Bay (I would think so in general cos' we only went for 1 cruise ship on Halong Bay, Victory Star).
Stall owners/assistants generally could only speak 2-10 English words tops, with the exception of those working in souvenir shops who had a broader knowledge of the English language. Ie. to say, if you come across a stall where the assistants/owners were able to converse to you in English, it would be a touristy stall, those kinda stalls you would ironically wanna stay away from when visiting another country.
As brought up by Fung (one of our guides on Victory Star Cruise), there are 5 sounds for the Vietnamese language, 1 sound more than Chinese. So that means for example, the famous food of Vietnam, the beef noodles or Pho (noodles) Bo (Beef) might mean "Street Beef" or "Prostitute Beef" when pronounced incorrectly.
To mean noodles, you can pronounce "Pho" as "Fur" (even though online it's taught as "Fuh") and "Bo" as "Ball". For chicken, it's "Ga", pronounced like Lady "GaGa"; for fish, it's "Ca", pronounced like "Car"; for pork, it's "Lon", pronounced like "Learn". As for toilet, "Ve Sinh" is pronounced literally as you would think it would pronounce. And you might come across the word "Pate", pronounced as "Pa Teh" in a food menu, meaning "liver".
There's actually also more than 1 way to say toilet in Vietnamese, the other 2 ways are "WC" and "William C (Cow?)... something" which I never really did manage to decipher, which sounded like a guy's name. Abbreviated as WC. It's probably a lingo over there, as taught by Tina but we decided to use Ve Sinh instead.
"Cam On", or pronounced as "Gan En" in Chinese for gratitude, means "Thank you". These 2 words are actually pretty powerful considering you're a foreign land, pointing with your 10 fingers trying to communicate and when compromise and understanding has been achieved, these 2 words will change the expression of most locals to a friendlier look, often accompanied with a smile.
I think that was about all the practically useful Vietnamese words we learnt during our trip there...
Traffic
If you've heard of how horrendous the traffic is in Vietnam, I would say seeing is believing. If you haven't, then you're in for a crossing of your life. The traffic flow in Vietnam is one of the craziest I've seen, even the worst impression I had of "bad traffic conditions" which I encountered in Bangkok about 10 years ago felt so trivial in comparison to Vietnam. Most, nearly all the traffic lights felt like they were there for "aesthetic reasons". There will never be a single traffic light showing a red light where all the vehicles facing the light will come to a halt, there would always be a few "traffic light breakers" who would just "cruise" past it, they weren't even trying to "beat" it.
One cannot never cross a road in peace, look left, look right... oh yeah, and that was a primary mistake we, I made initially. Because it's left hand drive over there (similar to America), I was supposed to be looking right first, then left. And because of that, my heart stopped a few beats during our first hour roaming the streets because everytime we started crossing after checking that the left side was clear, the vehicles on my right were larger than life...
However, as we're all familiar with the saying that you've to be thrown into the fire to learn, our road crossing skill level upgraded from 2 to 8 (10 being the max) within that first hour. In the days to come, our level increased to the zen level of 10.
There's added "zenness" to the level because the constant honking of the vehicles never stops. For vehicles to stop honking is like asking the locals to stop breathing. It's the culture of most countries actually, where honking is a means of notifying other vehicles on the road that you're coming through, not like a "SIAM AH!" in Singapore where honks are rare and would always attract stares. In Vietnam, even if you were to honk like a god-zillion times before passing a slow moving vehicle, neither drivers would even bother to look at each other after passing.
The 2 guide books I borrowed from our local libraries did not leave the mention of the traffic out, it almost feels like bad traffic conditions is part of the culture of Vietnam, if you haven't crossed a road in Vietnam by yourself, you haven't experienced Vietnam... But the books advised pedestrians to cross at junctions because vehicles tend to slow down at junctions.
However, this, I found to be one of the worst ways to cross the roads over there. Actually, on the contrary, not crossing at junctions is the best way to stay safe. Before I forget, another of our day trip guide to Tam Coc, Tony told us that there were 6 million people in Hanoi, and 4 million owns bikes. With that stats alone, you'll probably get a better picture of how insane the consistent flow of bikes is over there.
But think of them like water, and you're like a slow moving rock crossing a river. The motorcyclists would always know how to manoeuvre around you in the tightest possible space given, so don't panic because they generally have very good spatial awareness.
So what's my advice to cross roads over there?
1. Cross at the middle of roads whenever possible because at junctions, vehicles come from all directions. At the middles of roads, you know they only come from 2 sides, left and right. There are only a few roads where the traffic is one way, usually the bigger roads, but still, look left and right all the time.
The key is to cross slowly, and steadily. However, don't assume that the motorists will definitely go around you, use your common sense, assess the conditions, muster your courage and cross the roads.
2. If fearful, stick close to the locals, and follow them. Watch how they do it, then imitate them. Most of the time, the locals are just bo chup. They cross without any regards for their lives. While you might be tempted to do so, hold back your complacency because I've seen 2 minor accidents there. You'll still wanna stay safe and keep yourself on top form to enjoy the rest of your holiday.
Generally, the vehicles are not that fast moving so as long as you cross steadily, they are given enough reaction time to siam you.
3. Wait for a stream of motorcyclists before crossing. I avoid crossing when bigger vehicles (such as cars and vans) are approaching. Unlike the roads in Singapore, the kings of the roads are the bigger vehicles. There are only a few streets (especially those in the French Quarter since it's a more Atas [high-class] region of Hanoi) where there's a higher frequency of bigger vehicles. In those scenarios, you're not left with much of an option, but to stay really close to passing vehicle and quickly move within the "gaps" in the traffic.
4. If all else fails, get a Cyclo! A reverse Trishaw where the cyclists would be at the back (actually made more sense) and the passengers will get the "best seats" in the house, with a front view. Ok, I'm actually not serious about the getting the Cyclo part. Cyclos are much more expensive than taking Taxis (only take those that go by meter for the cabs, duh, just like any other countries to avoid being ripped off), deservingly so cos of the hard work and the "better view" but it's a great experience and a great way to travel along the streets of Hanoi.
However, if you can't, or don't have the balls to cross the roads there, you're better off just staying in your hotel room to grow mushrooms. There's going to be lots of walking, most of the attractions are actually within short walking distances and taking a taxi wherever you go would be an utter waste of $$$. So keep crossing the roads till you get the hang of it. Cos' once you do, once you reach zenness 10, you're sure to heighten your experience at Hanoi going around by foot.
Food
One of the biggest worry I have before setting foot in Hanoi was the food. Frankly, I don't like the Vietnamese food they serve here in Singapore. Are they authentic? After being in Vietnam, I would say, you do get to experience the taste of the foods in Vietnam, but mostly those "generic" tastes from more established restaurant chains. As for the roadside stalls, the really authentic taste of Vietnam, they taste way nicer than you would imagine.
True, there's lotsa raw vegetables, and mostly those which have strong tastes such as parsley and those under the same category, but the tenderness of the meats are worth enduring the taste of parsley in your mouth. We could have the stall holders not put the raw veges in, but it would either "insult" their food, and even if we wanted to, we weren't able to communicate it to them.
Beef and Pork is in abundance there, as for Chicken and Fish, they tend to be less available, and less savoury. So unless you can't live without chicken or fish, just stick to eating beef and pork. The Pate there was also very delicious, a little salty, but it was like minced meat, and didn't taste anything like mashed up liver.
The famous Vietnamese Spring Roll was disappointing. The translucent rice wrappers were smooth but didn't have the chewyness. Because they break off so cleanly with every bite and that there wasn't much taste to them, they added no "value" to the taste experience. And most of the spring rolls wrapped parsley in them, all I could taste were the overwhelming taste of the parsley... There were also other versions (ingredients) of the spring rolls but none impressed my taste buds.
However, the fried spring rolls were on the opposite side of the spectrum. They were like "Nyo Hiangs", and tasted better than most Nyo Hiangs you would normally get at a "5 Spices, Wu Xiang" stall in Singapore.
There were of course many other foods we tried there, which I will include in my posts, so for now, to sum it up, the food in Vietnam would satisfy most Asians' tastebuds but if you're not a beef noodles fan, you might encounter some difficulty finding meals which will fill your stomachs just right.
One important food I left out is the desserts there. Surprisingly, the desserts, in particular, the Cheesecakes were one of the best I've eaten. There had a stronger cheese taste than the cheesecakes in Singapore, and were more "solid".
Cost (Currency & Tips)
The cost foods along the roadside stalls range from 20,000 dong - 90,000 dong. The exchange rate, at the time of writing is 20,000 dong - 1 USD. At least that's the "standard" exchange rate throughout Hanoi. What we did was that we changed USD before setting foot in Hanoi. The Holiday Hotels, Holiday Gold Hotel had a pretty decent exchange rate (not sure if they were official/legal) but the exchange rate was 20,800 dong to 1 USD. This rate was actually better than most banks, we also changed at 2 banks which ranged from 20,700-2,780 dong to 1 USD. Surprisingly, the best rates we had were on Victory Star Cruise, 20,100 dong to 1 USD.
To avoid "losing" the few cents with every transaction we made, we paid almost everything in dong. Hence, I would advise that you change your USD to dong (in intervals) at a local bank/hotel. Having leftover dongs isn't advisable, because they don't have much value over USD and you can't use it anywhere else, so only change what you need.
We found it cheaper and more convenient to book our day trips in Hanoi, through our hotel, as opposed to booking them online. For the highly acclaimed water puppets show, we also booked the tickets via our hotel and were able to get them without much advanced notice. So fret not, if you're a contingency person, you can be almost certain that you'll be able to get day trips/performance tickets with a good 2-3 days advanced notice. If you settle for a good hotel, you won't also have to worry about being ripped off and handing them extra commission.
One hidden cost of the trip is the "compulsory" tips. The boat rides (to Perfume Pagoda and Tam Coc) requires compulsory tips, where the rowers would demand that you "tip" them. For that, I'm not too sure if the tour company even paid the rowers but they would become pretty aggressive in asking for $$$. The standard rate for tips, yup, don't know why there's even a standard rate for such things, is 20,000 dong, or 1 USD. So based on the exchange rate above, I usually give my tips in dong.
It would seem the locals know they're ripping you off with the exchange rate when you pay with USD instead of dong, because they don't seem to show a pissed-off face when you pay them in USD, but when you say 20,000 dong is 1 USD and you pay or tip them in dong, they show the pissed-off face. What the?!
There were also voluntary tips, which were rather pressurising, but we did give tips to good service on 2 occasions. If given the "chance" to tip, it would total a good 7 occasions, which if we were to all give tips, we would have spent a fair bit of our cash purely on tips.
Souvenirs & Sightseeing (Brief History)
Vietnam has some really unique, but rather costly souvenirs. The Vietnamese are very good with their hands, good craftsmen I mean, and they specialize in weaving pictures (especially those of the rear views of Vietnamese women with their cone-shaped straw hats). There's also a large variety of souvenirs made from sea shells, from tissue boxes to pencil holders, to ship figurines. Antistatic(?) combs made from bull horns were in abundance, and most had intricate carvings on them.
According to Sunny, one of our guides from Victory Star, there are 4 main animals in Vietnamese culture, the Dragon (represents power), the Phoenix (represents beauty), the unicorn (represents intelligence) and the Turtle (represents longevity). Find the odd one out... bingo! The turtle! The rest are folklore, only the turtle exists. And legend has it that one of the great turtles contributed to the history of Vietnam by coming out from Hoan Kiem Lake (the main region of Hanoi) and passing a sword to an emperor during one of the eras to defend the country from its enemies.
2 of the animals are very commonly engraved on souvenirs, such as the Turtle and the Dragon, however, I don't recall seeing any Phoenixes and I'm almost 100% sure I didn't see any Unicorn represented in any of the souvenirs. I can only infer that folklore is folklore after all, whatever sells is belief... and demand...
There's also 2 iconic flags that we saw wherever we went. One of which was the Vietnam country flag, the other was this 4-colored square flag which represented different elements.
Vietnam is actually a pretty artsy place, there are quite a handful of art galleries situated all around Hanoi city, probably catered to the French people over there as the country was once colonized by the French between 1885-1945, after which Uncle Ho (that's how the locals called their great leader, Ho Chi Minh) freed it from the French's rule and asserted Vietnam's national independence.
Therefore in the main regions of Hanoi City, the city is divided in the Old French Quarter and and The French Quarter. The Old French Quarter is "messier" and more bustling, while the French Quarter presents a classier and feels like a more expensive place to live in. The hosts at the restaurants in the French Quarter also had a broader range of conversational English.
Expect 30-40% French culture prevalent in Vietnam still, especially the buildings, a majority of them being influenced by French architecture. The housing and other buildings of Vietnam are most 2 storeys high, narrow/thin shaped blocks, characteristic of the country.
There's also a great deal of grown Bonsai (about half the size of an average adult) landscaped with the different attractions of Vietnam. They were like flower pots in Singapore, and I guess the locals were thinking, instead of a mini sized flower pot, since there's enough space there, why not have an average sized one, grow Bonsai in them since the temperature allows it and instead of the usual Bonsai potted plants, let's decorate them with figurines and landscape them like an attraction in Vietnam!
Time & Weather
The time in Vietnam is 1 hour behind Singapore's time. So if it's 8am in Singapore, it's only 7am in Vietnam. Since we went during December, it was winter time. Checking online for the average temperature, it was about 18 degrees. Thinking that that was around air-con temperature, we went there packing light.
Lo and behold, you're probably want to minus a good 2 degrees from the existing temperature because that was how it felt throughout our stay there. When it was 18 degrees, it felt like 16, which could be due to the wind. It wasn't humid and was fairly dry.
There were 2 particular days which the temperature hit a bottom 13 degrees, which felt like 11, with the chilly winds. Those were the days which we suffered the most.
So even though Vietnam's near to Cambodia (Cambodia's temperature wasn't that low when we were there last year) and it's in Asia, there's a reason why there's such thing as a season over there... and winter, is called as such because when winter is here, regardless of where you are in the world, expect gloomy and cold.
The skies turn dark at around 5pm each day, and the sun rises at 6.30am each morning. The temperature ranges from 13-20 degrees and as mentioned, you'll have to minus 2 degrees to the daily temperature.
It only drizzled twice during our stay there, an on and off slight drizzle at Tam Coc, and a rather consistent one in Hanoi during our last day there (phew!). Other than that, apart from gloomy skies and misty surroundings (especially so for Ha Long Bay), there wasn't much precipitation.
Sanitation
There's rarely bins around in the city, and in 90% of the stalls, patrons could just throw litter onto the floor... there were used tissue papers, wooden chop sticks, "guay zi" shells etc all over your feet when you step into a roadside stall. The stallholders would sweep the rubbish to the side of the road in a pile and the waste cleaners (Urenco, I would think Singapore's equivalent of Sembwaste) would further sweep them up at night.
My dear was totally disgusted with the sanitation and the sea of tissue papers we had to walk in most of the time, but personally, working with the budget they have, I thought it was a rather efficient way to clean the streets up. Every stallholder played their part by sweeping the rubbish to the side of the road and once the cleaners came, they could easily gather all the rubbish and dump them into the waste bins.
Even though badly littered, there were only molehills of rubbish along the streets, not mountains. With the exception of a roof we caught a glimpse of during our last day in Hanoi at the Women's Museum, which was lined with rows of rubbish... how they were to be cleared remains a mystery to us.
As for the toilets, there was a particular toilet at a restaurant at Perfume Pagoda which we had to flush manually from a common porcelain receptacle (reminded me of this huge vase-like tub I bathed in when I was very young). The cubicles were surprisingly clean (not comparing to Singapore's standards).
I don't even remember entering a dirtier toilet than Singapore's coffee shop toilets. Generally, the toilets there were better than I had imagined (I thought I had to relive Cambodia's toilets). I think part of the reason goes to the consideration of the locals.
However, I didn't like the cubicle doors because they were translucent. While it wasn't possible to see the person in it, one could see the outline of the person and the color of the clothes he's wearing, somewhat like a frosted door. This lack of privacy made me uneasy when I had to do big business on 2 occasions.
The tap water is not suitable for drinking, but is relatively safe for brushing your teeth and bathing in.
One main complain I have is about paying for the toilets there. Collection is usually after, and the collection counter/box is ALWAYS well hidden. There's no mention about having to pay for the toilets and we found out we had to do so only after using them, with the cleaner pointing to us the rates, sometimes, they even "made up their own rates".
We had to pay for most of the public toilets at the main attractions, usually for 2,000-2,500 dong (about 10 cents USD). Note the zeros. Because of all the zeros, it confused me a little at the start and I think I was ripped off at a public toilet, paying close a US dollar for both of us to use the toilet. Till today, I'm still super pissed off about the incident...
It felt pretty safe in Vietnam, and while the street scams were in-your-face in Cambodia, Vietnam's "scams" were more subtle. You would normally not realised you've been scammed only after the incident happened... most of the time it's just about ripping that extra cash from your purchases.
Not many Ah Beng or Ah Lians over there, and the few groups we came across were just minding their own business... one of the reasons could be because I look like a Vietnamese, which many of the locals claim.
As for physical safety, the walking pavements are not well-paved and wearing shoes is recommended. It also gives your feet an added protection when crossing the streaming roads. Wearing shoes also help keep dirty tissue papers at bay, well at least they don't come into direct contact with your skin.
Ate quite a lot of roadside stalls and it seems my stomach was able to withstand it. Did also drink a handful of iced drinks and all was well. So in terms of the food hygiene, I think it's relatively safe to try out the "authentic" local dishes.
Culture & Art (Appreciating Vietnam)
Much of Vietnamese culture is art. One can see why this is so from the ingeniously intricate souvenirs handmade by the locals. And since the locals grew up in an environment strongly influenced by folklore and legends, there's a lot of "hidden beauties in life" one can find over there.
Which resulted in us creating a new term, Stone-gazing. Just like Stargazing, with patience and given a good amount of time and imagination, one can see figures, even make out stories by simply looking at the stones there.
Actually, even before Sunny brought us to Surprise Cave (in Halong Bay) which struck me to come up with the term, I already noticed that there were a lot of stone structures which looked like animals either for sale or on display at the attractions. I even chanced upon several roadside "hidden beauties" which I don't normally see in Singapore.
The funny thing is that I wasn't intentionally "looking" for them but somehow managed to "find" them. It almost felt as if due to the strong influence of folklore legends and stories, nature itself took on a lifeform of its own to recreate familiar figures of animals in Vietnam, in Hanoi. As absurd or incredible (it's how you see it) as it sounds, I believe there's some truth behind it. There's too much of a coincidence that my encounters were purely stacked up fluke chances.
As I was viewing my photos, all that happened before our trip to Halong Bay, the Surprise Cave.
In summary, the scenery and attractions in Vietnam weren't that eye-opening as compared to Cambodia. Cambodia felt like a more "authentic" place to visit, while Vietnam was more touristy. On the other hand, if what I had hypothesized about the hidden beauties is true, then Vietnam ranks as one of the top countries to visit because under the guise of civilisation, nature're beauty has manifested into the seemingly mediocre everyday life of humans... creating an invisible element of wonder which can only be explained by the unexplainable.
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