Heeeloo!
My worldtrip continued, now a further subproject in southeast-asia. This time I went to Vietnam for a spontanious short visit. It was a good made decision to go for this trip in September/October in the end of lecture-free time at my university. The destination is a no-touristic small village with the “pure” kind of the vietnamese way of life. Its a great pleasure for me
to stay there.
Vietnam is around 100000m^2 bigger than germany and has a simliar number of inhabitants and the nominal BIP is 1040$ (711 eur).
The adventure started already on the airport, where I meet a guy from russia. He is a BASE-jumper (these crazy guys who jumps bridges, towers and other building with a parachute.) He just meat these guys who jumped down from the famous (first in the world) TV-tower in Stuttgart, the city I life in Germany. They are searched by the german police. I’ve seen some of the movies filmed by the tower-jumpers. Incredible!!
We are invited every evening in different families for dinner. So there are a lot of different kinds of classical vietnamese foods and finally become an expert in eating with sticks. The family bought a fork for me, but there’s no need for this tool any longer.
Finally, the hard disc of my laptop got finally broken. Because it seems impossibe (even in hanoi, vietnam’s capital) to get a replacement for the very small one, I bought a new laptop. Some hours later I got a call from a computerstore-guy, that he found some. Too late and the new one is fine 🙂 So I’ll have to spend some time at the customs in vietnam and germany for the tax-stuff (5% in vn)
One of the special food I’ve eaten is the dog. Dogs are a common delicacy in asia and thus more expensive than others. The meat tastes like beef but there is also different ki meat from different parts. Anyway, its for me a bit an odd feeling to eat a dog, because in our society dogs are domestic animals.
Another thing you should have seen in vietnam is Ha long bay. Eastern from Hanoi, at the coast in the sea of tonkin, there nearly 2000 small islands and rocks. Ha long bay is also an UNESCO World Heritage site since 1994.
Even there was taifun in the middle of vietnam, we had a nice and warm weather, so we swam in the warm sea between fishing boats..The kids were excited and very happy, they had so much fun in the water and on the beach, because they has never seen the sea before. There is no greater thing as seeing this smiling on their faces.
The traffic in vietnam is just: damn crazy. I planned to hire a car, like in Thailand in january. But now I unterstand, why there’s only one of those big car-rental companys in vietnam (avis). And why foreigers are not allowed to drive a car (only with a complicated procedure). On the third day we saw the first dead motorbike driver in the village on the side, some people tryd to rescue him. The reason, why I prefer big cars. We took for the daytrip to halong bay a car and a driver.
So long from Vietnam,
Oskar
