HCMC!

And here we are in Vietnam.. Ho Chi Minh City to be precise. This is our fifth day here in good ol' Nam and it's definitely been an eye-opening experience so far.. From the traffic, the food, the roadside vendors, the power lines, to the markets, the prices and I suppose the traffic deserves another mention.

Picture 1,000 motorbikes, scooters, bicycles, cars, cyclos (foot-pedalled single-passenger vehicles, buses, mobile food stalls, not to mention pedestrians all trying to navigate their way through an intersection in which everyone is moving in every-which direction (including driving on the wrong side of the road, on the footpaths and attempting to weave between a sea of traffic after driving through a red light trying to get to the other side). You have to be pretty game to ride through the streets of Ho Chi Minh.. Even as a pedestrian, the bikes and cars do not stop for you (sometimes not even at traffic lights) and the only way to cross the road is to walk slowly across, regardless of oncoming traffic, and hope to high hell they see you in time go around you. So far we've not had any incidents.. Fingers crossed.. I am amazed that I have not yet seen a single accident in the whole time we've been here! You really have to see it to believe it...
From the moment we stepped out of the airport, we knew we were in for an interesting stay. It is quite difficult to communicate with a lot of people as opposed to Singapore. Ask someone a question and even if they don't necessarily understand what you are talking about, as long as they hear one word they know they will nod as if agreeing. e.g. Q: Where can we get lunch? A: Ah, yes, lunch. It's also a little difficult to know if you can fully trust someone being friendly.. Are they simply trying to distract you while someone else goes through your bag, are they trying to soften you up so they can sell you something, or maybe they are just genuinely interested in you? The main items being sold by wandering street "vendors" are sunglasses, photocopied Lonely Planet guides and other assorted books and rides on cyclos and motorbikes.. Anywhere you want to go, but make sure you fix a price beforehand or you are likely to pay through the nose (although, having said that, paying through the nose might be around $5 for a cyclo ride, which, in Australia, would surely cost at least $20).
Another scam you might like to look out for is whenever going into a restaurant or cafe, they'll tend to charge you more per item than what the menu says if you're a tourist (it's pretty clear who are the tourists here). Upon questioning this, the response is that the prices have gone up since the Chinese New Year but they just haven't printed out the new menus yet. Unsure of what the rules of etiquette are here, we hesitantly obliged. But the next time it happened, we were a little more weary and asked a local what the deal was. Of course, we were being duped.
That's not to say that everyone here does that, nor is it that they are necessarily bad people, it's simply business. They understand that we have much more money than they do and try take advantage of that fact, so you just have to be on the ball. The locals are actually extremely nice and helpful when you give them a chance. Lots of smiles.
But enough about the quirks of this wonderful place, and onto what we've been doing these past few days...

Photos:

1. A typical street in Vietnam - check out the power lines..

2. A typical sidewalk in Vietnam

3. The traffic

4. The street vendor

5. Heavy load - quite a common sight here

6. The cyclo ride