One thing I learnt while traveling is that the traveler's misfortune is actually his very Fortune!
And so - but certainly not by envy - I deeply complain the “five star hotel” traveler that knows only the best and can't enjoy the fun-struggling in places that feels like other planets; he for sure is poor in his richness and has nothing to laugh about thinking at his journeys – admitting that the laughing happens long after the misfortune did.
This is an old post, the only I wrote in English at the time, in 2004, while we were in Vietnam for two months.
I should probably mention that the trip previous to the one in Vietnam was in China - the first Asian territory I discovered - that made me feel both, traveling back in time and landing on a completely different planet.
Chapter 1: Gooooood Mooooorning Vietnaaaaam !
Humid air, sauna sensation, very indiscreet looks, sounds of voices that make no sense - déjà vu. The Asian adventure continue!
The first things that I noticed once out from the airport, were the scooters that are all over the place, like a furious, threatening flood.
Here is the Dynasty of Scooters! The taxi had to make quite smart moves to be able to drive between them, considering that they run all over the place in chaos.
Very soon I noticed that, like in China, the one rule when driving is No Rules.
And even more, here, not even the poor police man from the intersections – real reminder of the “respect behind the wheel” for the Chinese driver - does not succeed in changing a single thing and he’s totally disregarded!
Here, if you want to cross the road, just cross the f... road !!! Don't think about it, don't look around, don't hesitate! The others will (eventually) avoid you!
But if you even think of hesitating... well... the no-rules-drivers smell it, detect it, sense it; they start zigzagging the road and in the best case scenario you will be so scared that you will never-ever cross the road and you'll spend the night or even your life there, on the border of the road; in the worse case scenario... you might become a nice-smooth carpet for the scooters – but not for long though, cause being so many, in a few minuets you'll be dust on hundreds of wheels, it'll be like you've never ever been there!
Otherwise it is not so dangerous ; just frightening... and scary!!! ...
(And did I say it's really, really scary?)
Than I noticed the buildings: very narrow, tall, painted just on the front wall, usually with very strong colours (dark blue, pink, orange, green, violet).
The side walls of the house, in case other houses are not attached to it, are painted only if there have windows ; usually there aren’t, so the side walls stay unpainted and the house gets an unfinished look.
I read that a law was saying that the buildings can’t be larger than three meters; so imagine how weird they seem when there is nothing around, just the narrow house like a one-side-colored-tube in a middle of a field.
Sometimes the house can face a cemetery and this is no problem for the locals.
And sometimes tombs can be seen in a middle of a rice field. Which is strange to me knowing that rice is growing in swampy-lands ... But it seems that this is the habit for the poor people that can’t afford to buy a piece of land just to bury someone.
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Somehow, the feeling is that the time stopped about fifty years ago.
