Same Same But Different (Vietnam)

Tonight as I sat in the Pho 2000 restaurant (where, incidentally, Bill Clinton ate at back in the year 2000), the only Westerner, eating my noodle soup listening to a Vietnamese family converse in French, I thought back on my time in Vietnam.

Upon arrival into Ho Chi Minh City (still referred to as Saigon by half the population), I was at once taken with the millions of Vietnamese cruising on motorbikes, a river of chaos streaming through the city. I’d never seen anything like it. Even entire families find their way ‘cross town on a single bike. Intermittent honking fills the air as they let each other know their whereabouts or intentions. It’s absolutely fascinating. Crossing the street is an adventure in itself. But it’s like magic- you just start walking across the street into the chaos and miraculously the motorbike river moves around you like stream water around a boulder.

After staying in, shall we say, more adventurous hostels in the Philippines, I was completely content with my hotel room in Saigon, complete with air-con, HBO, and private bath. I ventured out only for bottled water that first night, so happy was I with the luxury. But then the outside workings of Vietnam started calling my name.

I found the Mekong Delta, the area south of Saigon, to be one of the most exotic places on earth. We visited floating markets, ate lots of tropical fruit, and took boat rides through the jungle where they actually do wear those pointy bamboo hats. I met lots of other foreigners, mostly Aussies and Europeans, and we exchanged strategies on how to see the rest of Vietnam.

At any rate, I wasn’t in the mood for any more sightseeing of Vietnam, and headed back down to another beach town, where I met up with Elly, an Aussie woman I hit it off with early on in my time here. The absolute madness of that party town drove us up the coast to Hoi An. After a tortuously long 13 hour bus ride spent shoving a drunk English guy off my shoulder, I was sincerely hoping Hoi An wasn’t just more of the “same same but different” of the stuff we’d seen so far. Everyone we met said Hoi An is very quaint, but I had my doubts on whether or not any place in Vietnam could qualify as quaint, but amazingly enough it fit the bill. I scrapped the rest of my travel plans and decided to stay as long as possible before my visa ran out.

Hoi An’s streets and narrow alleyways were lined with tailor shops and other cute little restaurants and buildings, which we happily explored, even as sweat constantly dripped down our faces in the heat. The more window shopping of the tailor shops we did, the more ideas we got, and an initial order of one jacket at the tailor’s with the cute little pregnant woman, Yen, turned into a virtual brand new wardrobe. Got heaps of Christmas shopping done as well- yes, I realize it’s only June, but what the heck, it’s all cool stuff. Yikes, though, went a little crazy there; hope I have money enough to get me through Europe! But Yen was just so much fun, it made it easy to keep going back. The Vietnamese in general are just so nice.

I had a feeling there’d be surprises for me along the way here, and one of the best things about Vietnam was hanging out with Elly. We talked so much over so many yummy meals, I think we barely stopped to breathe and I’m amazed any of those fried wontons and cao lau noodles found their way to our tummies. It was great fun being girls and chatting and laughing for hours on end. I’m going to miss her!

I’ve run out of time in Vietnam; I hope I’ll be back again someday. There’s a whole other half of the country left for me to explore.

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