I gave Vietnam a second chance...

...and it was worth it!

The South of Vietnam is quite different to the North - that's at least what everybody says. Not only do they speak quite a different dialect in the South and in the North, but also the mentality of the people is apparently different. I heard quite often, that the people in the South are friendlier and more open... And I am not sure if it was thanks to these differences, that I enjoyed my time in the South far more than in the North.

I guess, in my case it was more the way things worked out for me that made me enjoy myself more in the South: I met a funny British guy in Hoi An with whom I also stayed in Dalat as well. Dalat was the first non-touristy town I visited in Vietnam: in the mountains, surrounded by beautiful scenery, loads of vegetable, wine, coffee and flower plantages it definitely made a change to the coast towns. We visited the Crazy House there - a quite weird building...

However, I was not lucky with the weather as it was quite cold and rainy in Dalat, so we left after 1,5 days to Ho Chi Minh City - aka Saigon.

I really loved the city! So I ended up staying there 5 nights instead of just 2-3 nights. I had great CS-hosts: Viet, a Vietnamese guy and his flatmates were all really cool and I went to parties and dinners with them. And Hoang, another guy I got to know through CS, showed me around in the city and went salsa dancing with me - hooray, that was fun!

But if the people of the South are friendlier than those of the North? I can't tell, because all Vietnamese people I met in the South were orignially from the North.

In the end, I am not a good tourist: I often don't visit the sights that are worth visiting, but prefer "breathing in" the cities and places I got to. Getting an idea of how it is to live in a certain place, rather than taking photos of the main sights (you can find 1000 much better photos of these sights in the internet anyways). I prefer taking photos of szenes that are in my eyes typical for the city instead - like this street in Saigon...

Saigon really amazed me - it is such a lively city. And it is all about the traffic... never saw such a mess!! Hanoi is peaceful and quiet in comparison to Saigon! In rush hour it is simply crazy what is happening on the streets of Saigon... I took a xe om (motorbike taxis) a few times, and thanks to Hoang I was even driving a bike through this crazy traffic! That was hillarious :)
Check this video I made from the back of a xe om: that's how you are getting through a roundabout in Saigons rush hour...

But it is not only by walking around that one finds out more about the life in a certain place. Of course I talk a lot with my CS-hosts about the life here... As already mentionned in my last story - or you could read it between the lines - Vietnam is a really cheap country. Just a few examples:

When going out (in normal bars/restaurants - so no posh or fancy places), I'd pay around 15.000,- (€0,54) for a beer, you'd pay around 50.000,- (€ 1,80) for an average dish (you can also have a bowl of noodles from a street seller for around 15.000,- or even less...). The very delicious iced coffee with milk costs from 5.000 (€0,18) at street-corner-tables to around 30.000,- (€1,08) in nice cafés - however, on average you'll get them for 15.000,-.
Costs for hotel rooms start at about $6,-, a bed in a dormitory is around $4-5.

I asked some people, how much they earn: the average of their answers was 10.000.000 (€350,-) per month; for rent they usually pay around $ 200,- (I appologise for the currency-mix - but that's how people count here...)
I met some expats here as well - of course: English teachers. For English native speakers (and I guess for people who are fluent in English as well) it is really easy to find jobs as English teachers. Those who I met told me that they earned around $1.000,-/month for teaching only two days per week...
Somehow I can now better understand, that non-Vietnamese people are constantly ripped of...

However, Viet was not wrong when saying, that he's completely fine with the fact, that English teachers earn so much more: he said, he was happy that they are here to teach people English as it is really needed! It is a question of supply and demand. But still, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable to see that a Vietnamese person with great degrees can never earn as much (at least not without a lot of experience) as an English person with some shit degree would earn straight away...

One more thing about money: I wanted to change back my remaining Vietnamese Dong into USD - and only after I came back unsuccessful, Viet told me that it is illegal to change Dong into foreign currencies... Because of the high inflation rates Vietnamese would try to get rid of their Dong. Nobody wants this money, not them not me.... So, in Rome, do like the Romans do - I will try to get rid of my Dong on the black market like Vietnamese would do it... wish me luck ;)

So yes, it is all about money in the end - in a communist country? Whatever...

My father asked me, if I felt that I was in a communist country. I admit: no, not really. I don't know how it should feel like anyways. China is a communist country, but capitalism is their only religion. In Vietnam I wouldn't say that capitalism is like a religion. Of course you need to earn money to survive. However, in China I had the impression sometimes, that making money was only for the sake of making money - that's what I mean when I say that capitalism was their religion. Here it is different: They are definitely poorer than in China. While you wouldn't see this in China, here many mainly women walk around in tourist areas, selling loads of different things (nobody would need)... And you can see that they are not making money like this for the sake of making money; they sell these things for one simple reason: because they need the money to survive.

While I had much more time to talk with people in China and was lucky to meet some Chinese, who were really open and would talk about politics with me, I didn't talk much about politics that here. One question people in the West would like to know, is if these single-party-government are indoctrinating people and trying to influence their thoughts? Well, I guess so.

In China I could definitely feel it: Many web pages are blocked (in Vietnam I only know about facebook being blocked) and freedom of thought didn't seem to exist. But I also had the impression that many people simply didn't care - they had the way of thinking the government wanted anyways - no critical thinking, just believing the doctrin and making money. They didn't seem to me to care about politics as long as their standard of living was continously improving.

I can't tell much about the Vietnamese though. The only thing I can say is what I saw. And this really surprised me: whereas I was in a propaganda poster museum in Shanghai (see picture above) and admired the old communist style posters, however, you can see such kind of propaganda posters and messages still all over the towns and countryside - mainly in the South. I don't know how much people care about posters by the government, but the fact that the government spends money to hang up such crappy posters really surprised me...

Usually Ho Chi Minh would feature on these posters.
In China I didn't see any Mao pictures in or on buildings - appart from the really big one at Tianan'men Square. Here you find uncle Ho - how they like to call Ho Chi Minh - everywhere - on posters, on tourist-t-shirts, in post offices, simply everywhere. He is without any doubts their national hero...
In Russia you won't find a city without a Lenin-statue, in Mongolia Dschingis Khan is present everywhere, in China you feel the eyes of the government everywhere (the national TV-station is called CCTV - how frightening is this??) and here you'll literally have Ho Chi Minhs eyes watching you everywhere...

But I'll leave all this behind now, and am hoping not to find any Pol Pots-glorifications in Cambodia, where I am heading to today...