good morning Vietnam

Long time no story...
I had quite some problems getting used to my new environment. First of all I wanted to take time to let all my impressions of China settle and to get myself a bit organised concerning the further travels: checking my guidebook of Vietnam, and I buying other guidebooks: "Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos and the Greater Mekong" and - my new tresure - "Myanmar"... yes, I am planning to go to Burma :)

But at the moment I am still in Vietnam, so one after the other...

Hm... now it's becoming difficult... So far I only wrote how great everything was, but I do really struggle finding Vietnam great. A lot of things were annoying me in China, I admit, but arriving in Vietnam I really started to miss China (appart from the spitting - can't say this often enough...).

It is the way tourism works here that makes me not enjoying Vietnam, and the fact - that goes with it - that somehow I don't manage to keep up travelling like I used to before.
How is tourism in Vietnam then?

You are constantly being ripped of. And having been told that beforehand didn't make it better - it only helped me fight against it literally since the very beginning:

At the trainstation in Lao Cai just after the border there were of course no tickets for the train to Hanoi for the same day left - only the few police men (yes!!) in front of the station "hey lady, hey lady..." had tickets they would sell for a much higher price. As I really wanted to go to Hanoi the same day I was forced to take one...
I arrived in Hanoi at 4am, and even though my CS-host lived really close to the trainstation I thought I should maybe take a taxi as I didn't know the city and didn't want to risk anything. I am not afraid, but you know the story: a girl alone in the middle of the night... Anyhow, I of course ended up in a taxi with an accelerated meter. I knew a bit how much a taxi should cost so I simply refused paying the indicated price of 60.000,- and gave the guy only 40.000,-. He didn't even protest too much - he knew like me that even 40.000,- were too much.
And no, I don't agree that the fact that 60.000,- (approx. €2,-) are still quite cheap justifies this kind of behaviour.

And it just continues like this... It is a never ending fight for the correct price (you will still pay more than the locals, don't you ever dream about being treated eagerly) and to avoid it you end up losing so much time only to compare prices...

Vietnam is a really touristy place. However, the geography of the country doesn't give you much of a way to escape them: you are either going from North to South or the other way round. Then of course there are cities on the coastline that are worth stopping at and some that aren't. And in those worth stopping at - yes, you guessed it - you are one of 10000 tourists considered by the locals as a walking wallet: You can't simply walk down a street without being hassled constantly: "lady, wanna motobike?", "wanna look", and - the from a marketing point of view really effective: "lady buy something!"

Moreover (yes, there is even more...): As you might have realised already, I am not a fan of package tours. I do really like travelling and organising everything by myself, taking public transportation like the locals would do. Vietnam however seems to be a country where everything is offered in package tours - Sapa tour, Halong Bay Tour, DMZ Tour, Beach Run, Brewery Tour, (I am just citing all the posters for tours hanging around in this hostel...). It doesn't mean that you have to book these tours of course, but when you want to go somewhere by yourself it is so much more of a hassle. The people not working in tourism in general don't speak English, so the few times I tried I really struggled to get information at public bus stations - because as the woman couldn't understand me she simply ignored me...

You never get a second chance for the first impression...

...but I decided to give Vietnam a first chance for a second impression

So now I try to overlook everything I mentioned above and enjoy my time (even though I admit that I still struggle somethimes with the overlooking)... And of course there is still a lot of things I like here and I want to share with you:

Hanoi

Even though I stayed about 1,5 weeks in Hanoi I didn't visit many of the tourists sights. I was rather walking around in the Old Quarter and non-touristy parts, enjoying and breathing in the atmosphere (and the bad air...) of this very capital city.

It is definitely quite a fun town, really lively with motorbikes everywhere - not electric like in China though so it is far noisier here and dirtier (Something like fine dust contamination would never make it into the newspapers like in Austria...).

Crossing a street in Vietnam is something between suicide-desire and adrenalin-driven fun.

Already the first day I ended up drinking loads of vodka shots with some men at a streetcorner food place during their lunch break... Alcohol is definitely a big thing here in Vietnam!!

My favourite place in Hanoi was - guess where - the Bia Ho'i intersection: there are many bia hoi corner bars - small places with tiny chairs where you can get ridiculously cheap beer (€0,18 for a 0,33 beer)... The later the evening the further the bar grows into the street.

Appart from that I had a great and really long night out with a former barkeeper of Shebeen who now works in Hanoi, and I also went to a cool concert the following day by Dengue Fever - an US-Cambodian-band playing a good mix of Western and Asian music... you should definitely check them out!

Halong Bay

Somehow it seems that you haven't been to Hanoi if you didn't go to Halong Bay...  After a few nights in Hanoi I made a short trip to Halong Bay, which lies close to Hanoi at the sea.

The scenery is really beautiful and reminded me of Yangshuo in China, where you'll find similar karst-mountains on the Li-river. I stayed two nights in Cat Ba Island doing a trip in the bay on the second day including swimming, visiting an enormous grotte and even some kayaking - really nice indeed.

Hue

Picture-title: "The american soldiers panic at Lang Vay bas. What's President Johnson thinking?"
in this government-subsidised museum...

In this small town I stayed only for one reason: I wanted to visit the DMZ - the demilitarised zone: the zone of 5km+5km around the Ben Hai river separating North and South Vietnam during the American war. And of course for this purpose it really made sense to join a tour which I didn't regret it at all: I learned a lot about the war in Vietnam from our guide and went into the Vinh Moc tunnels, where locals had been living for 5 years(!!) during the war.

Hoi An

So far it was all quite ok, but I struggled with my still generally bad impressions of tourism here. I only started really enjoying myself since I am in Hoi An - maybe it's because now I'm in South Vietnam, which is considered to be quite different to the North... hm... will tell you in the future after having been to other South-Vietnamese towns if that's true.
Anyways, it is hard not to like this sweet and kitschy town.

Every night all the restaurants and bars at the border of the river are nicely lit with candles and beautiful lamps, you'd see many coloured lamps swimming down the river and even though there are a lot of tourists (we're still in Vietnam, don't forget that...) they spread quite well around the town. And what is more it is relatively quiet in the center: in the pedestrian zone are far less motorbikes than usually (without them it wouldn't be Vietnam, would it?)

The town itself is definitely worth staying a bit longer: you could just sit in one of the plenty cafés in the town, enjoy the scenery and one (or more) of these delicious coffees (I had stopped drinking coffee about a year ago, I started again here...). However, the main reason why people stay here a bit longer is because they are getting some dresses tailor-made. In history and still today Hoi An lives from silk and tailoring: every second shop is a tailor shop (nearly all the remaining shops are souvenir shops or bars/restaurants...), where you can get yourself any high-quality clothes made within 24h.

And yes, me as well I got myself a nice new ballroomgown - just how I like it: simple and elegant...

only long black gloves are missing and then it's perfect

getting the local experience...

One way of giving Vietnam a chance of giving me better impressions is again Couchsurfing: Even though hardly any Vietnamese person was able to host me, they would still be ready and happy to meet up for a drink and to hang out. 

So I went for lunch with a really nice girl in Hue and met another girl here in Hoi An yesterday. She drove me around outside of the town and to the beach, and we finally ended up going to a wedding party we were just passing by!!

It was such great fun! Sitting in the middle all these wedding guests (a wedding with "only" 200 is considered as small), drinking beer with them and cheering for the great future of the couple. The whole lunch-party lasted only for 1,5 hours (the party continued later of course), with food and drinks and of course karaoke!! I wasn't the only Western person at the party and with these two guys - an Isreali and a German guy - we contributed to the party singing the worst ever performed version of "Let it be" - enjoy: