Hello Vietnam!!!!!


Vietnam for me was two days of Ho Chi Minh City and three days of Cat Tien National Park. I had a great time and got a lot of shopping done. Also, I got a good amount of exercise out of the hikes in Cat Tein.

The first two days were my shopping and Ho Chi Minh experience. I'm really glad that I got a book about Vietnam on my flight to Halifax (Thanks Rex), though, I haven't been able to finish it yet. The book gave me a fairly accurate precursor to the city and culture. Everyone there rides motorcycles or anything similar to them. Compared to the amount of motorcycles there are very few cars and trucks. The traffic here is crazy. Nobody ever stops unless there is a light telling you to. At intersections that have no lights the crossing roads have traffic that acts like schools of fish. They flow together and apart with minimal bumping and collisions. Crossing streets like this is even more interesting. We had a little demonstration that helped us out before we got there. Basically, you wait for the best time to step out into traffic and once you start you do not stop. At a steady pace you continue through the traffic until you reach the other side. It can be pretty terrifying at times.

We got a good joke out of this situation. We had just gotten to Ho Chi Minh and we were a bit lost. We were more deciding where to go then lost. I was frustrated with our big group and it's indecisiveness. All big groups start out this way. While everyone was deciding, I went ahead and made the decision for myself and crossed the rode. While I was in the middle of the rode one guy asked me where I was going but I kept going. He crossed the road too and asked me, "Why did the Sam cross the rode?" I responded, quickly to my surprise, with, "Because he started and couldn't stop." You have to love the cheesey Vietnam jokes.

Both of the first two days in the city I spent shopping and treating myself to the high life. The high life is pretty inexpensive in Vietnam. The conversion was one U.S. Dollar to 17,586 Vietnam Dong. It was confusing at first because you felt like you were spending a lot of money. After a while we realized that the 40,000 Dong shirt we bought was really about two dollars. I got a lot of stuff here. I even went and got a Vietnamese message. We got one for an hour and thirty minutes and it only cost us thirteen dollars. In the U.S. cheap messages for one hour cost sixty dollars. We got a deal, for sure.

The last three days I was in the rain forest at Cat Tein National Park. The worst part were the leeches! They were everywhere and they were determined to get you. Every hike we went on we had to where leech socks. These are socks that that go up to your knee. You put them on over your socks, in your shoes, and over your pants. At about the shin you rub a special chemical that deters the leeches. When we first got there and saw all this stuff we did not take it all that serious, but after a few minutes on the hike we were thankful for the preparation. Other than the leeches the three days were great. We saw so many creators; spiders, snakes, beetles, frogs, birds, and many other things. The best time to hike was at night though, it was more dangerous. More animals came out at night that you would never see during the day.

After the whole five days I was exhausted once again. Two solid days of hiking was a great exercise, add city mayhem, little sleep, and traveling, we were bound to be tired in the end. Now on to China! I will mostly be hiking the Great Wall. Woot! More exercise.

P.S.
Alex was interested in India and I left him out in the last blog. He was saying that he chose India as his country of interest because they wear different clothes than we do. India does have some very interesting clothes. Many people still wear the traditional clothing but they also wear more western clothes. The western clothes are much like we wear; shirts and jeans. The traditional clothing for women are Saris, which are large pieces of cloth rapped around the body in a specific way. The traditional clothes for men are long shirts that go down to the knee and matching pants. The name of the outfit has slipped my mind. There are also many variations on these clothes, as there are in the west. I was able to buy the males outfit and I plan to wear it when I come to visit Valley Mills so you guys get to have a visual of the clothing.