Postscript
Reflections, where to start in a little looking back? I guess I will start with what comes to mind.
The dollar has such relative strength that it makes it easy to see all of the sights that there are. So much different from Europe where you had to pay $40+ dollars for the family to see things. Here $2 usually get the whole family in. The average dinner was about $8 for meals and drinks for all. The ice cream, to which we added 16,17,18,19,20, and 21 on Monday afternoon, was a steal at $0.15.
I am really starting to take to Pho as my main meal. Pho is a traditional Vietnamese soup made with a rice noodles in a broth with some meat and other flavorings. It is served everywhere and very easy to order. In Hanoi we had our first Pho of the trip. We walked into a street corner place and they said how many, we said 3 (Patti is a special case) and they just bought It right out. It was very good. It also does not hurt that noodles are the girls second favorite meal after plain white rice. The next Pho we ate tasted a little like some of the not so nice bathrooms smell, but I ate it nonetheless.
Vietnam seems cleaner then China although there are still a number of smells that shock the senses. It was fun to mess with Riley a little bit about the odors. The question, "Riley, do you smell that?", would trigger her gag reflex and she would bury her nose in her shirt.
Back Basket carrying women are everywhere in Vietnams high country. They seem to haul everything in there from lumber and dead little fish to clothing items and many miscellaneous items. Many times in the market they make their purchase and toss it over their shoulder. I had a coincidental encounter with group of individuals on a junket from the University of Colorado Boulder. They were on assignment to study the environmental impact of the famed basket and once and for all rid the world of the plastic grocery bag scourge. There were representatives from groups as diverse as B4B (Boulder for Baskets), BTB (Ban the Bag) and the BBA (Boulder Basket Alliance). I am not sure how much they accomplished but they seemed to be having a good time.
We continue to be entertained with the challenge of crossing the streets of Vietnam. Patti remarked today that we are worried about our kids crossing the streets in Littleton but the states are like kindergarten compared with these mean streets. We cut our street crossing teeth in China and honed them in Hanoi, but Saigon holds my record for the most volume and craziness. Hanoi was busy, but then you have to multiply that by 3 for the much wider roads and the sharp increase in volume in Saigon.
Vietnamese like to buy products that are made in the U.S. for their high quality. I wish someone told me that about the Vietnamese sun screen.
Most of the homes and buildings seem to me to be very narrow, and some very tall up to 4 stories. I never did find an answer for this. Maybe there is a certain plot size limit. Our house is probably small to medium by american standards but huge compared to the Vietnamese. These buildings are among the finest in Vietnam and certainly were not the norm.
In China there were no napkins at the tables, in Vietnam there were nose tissues on the tables.
We were all pleasantly surprised with the lack of mosquitoes. There were certainly other bug issues but hey, it's a jungle out there.
The dollar has such relative strength that it makes it easy to see all of the sights that there are. So much different from Europe where you had to pay $40+ dollars for the family to see things. Here $2 usually get the whole family in. The average dinner was about $8 for meals and drinks for all. The ice cream, to which we added 16,17,18,19,20, and 21 on Monday afternoon, was a steal at $0.15.
I am really starting to take to Pho as my main meal. Pho is a traditional Vietnamese soup made with a rice noodles in a broth with some meat and other flavorings. It is served everywhere and very easy to order. In Hanoi we had our first Pho of the trip. We walked into a street corner place and they said how many, we said 3 (Patti is a special case) and they just bought It right out. It was very good. It also does not hurt that noodles are the girls second favorite meal after plain white rice. The next Pho we ate tasted a little like some of the not so nice bathrooms smell, but I ate it nonetheless.
Vietnam seems cleaner then China although there are still a number of smells that shock the senses. It was fun to mess with Riley a little bit about the odors. The question, "Riley, do you smell that?", would trigger her gag reflex and she would bury her nose in her shirt.
Back Basket carrying women are everywhere in Vietnams high country. They seem to haul everything in there from lumber and dead little fish to clothing items and many miscellaneous items. Many times in the market they make their purchase and toss it over their shoulder. I had a coincidental encounter with group of individuals on a junket from the University of Colorado Boulder. They were on assignment to study the environmental impact of the famed basket and once and for all rid the world of the plastic grocery bag scourge. There were representatives from groups as diverse as B4B (Boulder for Baskets), BTB (Ban the Bag) and the BBA (Boulder Basket Alliance). I am not sure how much they accomplished but they seemed to be having a good time.
We continue to be entertained with the challenge of crossing the streets of Vietnam. Patti remarked today that we are worried about our kids crossing the streets in Littleton but the states are like kindergarten compared with these mean streets. We cut our street crossing teeth in China and honed them in Hanoi, but Saigon holds my record for the most volume and craziness. Hanoi was busy, but then you have to multiply that by 3 for the much wider roads and the sharp increase in volume in Saigon.
Vietnamese like to buy products that are made in the U.S. for their high quality. I wish someone told me that about the Vietnamese sun screen.
Most of the homes and buildings seem to me to be very narrow, and some very tall up to 4 stories. I never did find an answer for this. Maybe there is a certain plot size limit. Our house is probably small to medium by american standards but huge compared to the Vietnamese. These buildings are among the finest in Vietnam and certainly were not the norm.
In China there were no napkins at the tables, in Vietnam there were nose tissues on the tables.
We were all pleasantly surprised with the lack of mosquitoes. There were certainly other bug issues but hey, it's a jungle out there.
Vietnam Telecom, I think they even have the Chinese beaten on this one.
In an number if occasions I was able to talk to folks about the most important questions in life. That is, where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going when we die? Most of the Vietnamese practice ancestor worship or Buddhism, Daoism or some mix. Our guide SEn and I had a good time chatting at this temple of a syncretistic religion called Co Dai. It mixes many religions together. SEn said, "Really, Jesus did not have red hair, white skin and blue eyes", when I told here that Jesus probably looked more like her with His middle Eastern complexion.
She also had not heard that He said that He was the only God and these were the grounds for His execution by the religious authorities of His day. SEn said that once, about three years ago, she had heard from a missionary family from Canada about the concept that we cannot do enough good to be right with God but must trust that the sacrifice of Jesus which pays for all the wrong we have done in our lives. Pop Quiz - See if you can find Jesus in this picture from the temple.
We enjoyed meeting the people of Vietnam. That might be and probably should be the highlight of any trip. At times during the planning stages of our trip I did wonder about how this was going to go and how it might be different than China given that we fought a war in Vietnam. I mentioned this before, there always seemed to be a smile back at you if you initiated and in almost every case a very warm welcome when they heard we were American.
The very youngest always threw out a hello. With the older school aged kids there would be one or two that had good English skills and who would initiate and then all of them would be very excited to interact about anything. All of the women and many older men called the girls babies and would touch their faces. These boys at the waterfall were hilarious. They chatted with us as they sloshed around in the waterfall the whole way up and down.
I would recommend travel to Vietnam to anyone interested in visiting Southeast Asia.
See you next time, John
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