Some Basic Info

This post comes from San Francisco as I've left Vietnam and returned and was unable to post again while there due to the theft of my laptop. I made the foolish mistake of trusting the people who ran the mini-hotel I'd stayed at to keep a watch on my bags while I was gone for 3 days and also made the mistake of putting my laptop inside my bag and returned to find the bag a little lighter than when I left. I was robbed twice during this trip to Vietnam and both times were due to my trusting business staff and being coy. By being coy I mean I didn't disclose that I had valuables in my bags and assumed all would be alright. Big mistake. The first theft was cash taken from my backpack while on a snorkeling boat trip in Nha Trang. I assumed that leaving the backpack on the boat with the cash while I and the rest of the clients were in the water was safe. I didn't know the cash was missing until later because the thief was smart enough not to take all of it. In both cases I should have removed the valuables and handed them directly over to the staff for safekeeping in order to assure at least some accountability, or in the case of the cash I should have just left it with the hotel desk. The mini-hotel owner in the laptop theft incident tried to explain that because the hotel is also a school many people have access to the bags and that I shouldn't have left the laptop in a bag. Maybe so, but buying his logic I guess I was lucky to get my bags back at all.

There seems to be a general attitude that Vietnam is not safe which, regardless of the aforementioned thefts, I find to be completely untrue. Countries like Vietnam are often the victim of rumors and hearsay because many people want to believe that certain beliefs are true. As I was leaving San Francisco back in November a Korean man next to me in line asked me if I thought Vietnam was safe because he'd heard that it was dangerous. A Korean man! While it's true you have to keep an eye on your valuables, I don't believe there's much violent crime in Vietnam. At least I never heard of or saw any. As for thefts, they occur everywhere and it's always a good idea to keep your possessions secured.

I had an apartment in Sài Gòn for 6 months and worried a little about whether I would get my deposit back, $500 US I had paid in cash when I moved in. I was pleasantly surprised when there was no issue whatsoever as I was paid back in full on the morning I moved out. I haven't heard any other stories on this topic so I'm assuming that it's business as usual in Sài Gòn to refund an apartment deposit when there's no reason not to.

I enjoyed eating pho (or phở as it's properly spelled) often while in Vietnam until I found out that it's common practice to add MSG to it. I imagine it's common practice there to add MSG to about everything as there is usually an MSG aisle in the large supermarkets so a lot of it is being sold. Anyway I had been feeling not so great and stopped eating the phở and started feeling better. Could have been all in my head of course.

I finally experienced riding some of the Saigon buses that leave from the Bến Thành market and other points around the city. I was apprehensive because I had not seen many foreigners on them and had even read somewhere that they were best left to the locals. Turns out it's quite easy to read where each numbered route takes you and all you do is hop on a bus and wait for the ticket seller to collect your 3000 vnđ (about 15 cents US) and sit back and relax in air conditioned comfort. It's a good way to see parts of the city while taking refuge from the midday sun and heat. I also made 2 trips down to the Mekong Delta and used the Saigon bus (#2) to take me from the Bến Thành market out to the Miền Tây bus station that serves the Mekong region from Sài Gòn. Once you arrive at the Miền Tây station it's very easy to find your Mekong destination and purchase a ticket from one of the number of private companies that run the buses. Upon return to Miền Tây you simply head for the parking lot behind the station and look for the same Saigon bus to take you back.

For bus trips up the coast or to Dà Lạt, there are many companies that run open tour buses from the Phạm Ngũ Lãu backpacker area and the prices are very reasonable or really just plain cheap. It's best to go directly to a bus company to purchase your ticket instead of using a tour service company because you'll pay a markup and won't know what company and bus you'll be on. For my numerous trips to Nha Trang, I found the sleeper buses are the way to go whether it's nighttime or daytime and regardless whether you'll actually be sleeping. The reason is that you have space to stretch out a bit and you don't worry about the seat back in front of you suddenly dropping into your lap while likely bruising your knees! I'm not kidding about this, it happened to me more than once. I guess the Vietnamese attitude is that you don't worry about the person sitting behind you unless they complain which I did every time this happened and the individual in front of me obliged by raising their seat back from its near-horizontal position. The company I liked best for sleeper bus trips is T. M. Brothers Cafe. Their prices and service are both excellent and I found them better than the few others I tried.

I took 2 train trips from Nha Trang to Huế and back and my ticket had the word 'Foreigner' printed on it. I suspect I was charged more than a Vietnamese because the price didn't seem so cheap and the train was packed full of Vietnamese passengers. It's accepted practice to charge foreigners more for anything and everything in Vietnam and it's even openly practiced by the government at the hotels they run. At one of these, I saw the room rates printed on a card at the reception in vnđ and thought they looked reasonable. The reception staff then flipped the card around which had higher prices in US dollars and informed me that I had to pay the US dollar prices! I moved on. It's easy to get around being overcharged once you become familiar with the system and the prices. Except with train tickets.

If you fly into Hồ Chí Minh City you should pay about 120,000 vnđ ($6.50 US) for a cab ride from the airport to the Phạm Ngũ Lãu area or anywhere in District 1. Once I thought I would have some fun and asked a waiting cabbie as I strolled out of the international terminal with a faux naive expression on my face how much it would cost for that trip. He sized me up and gave me his price of 500,000 vnđ! I laughed at him and told him to go to hell with a few other choice words thrown in that he may or may not have understood and kept walking. In general the further away you get from the initial contact with cabbies in this situation the better the prices get. This is of course a general rule all over the world and the known universe. You can also take a Saigon bus from the airport (#152) to the Bến Thành market for a cost of I think 5,000 or 6,000 vnđ. Another option if you don't have large bags is to walk through the airport parking lot to the exit gate and catch a xe ôm, or motorbike taxi, for about 50,000 vnđ. The airport doesn't allow them inside the airport boundary. I used a xe ôm both to and from the airport numerous times. It's interesting but a little too adventurous for most and I don't blame anyone for feeling that way!

In the Phạm Ngũ Lãu area there is a labyrinth of alleyways between Phạm Ngũ Lãu and Bùi Viện streets where you can find many mini-hotels and guesthouses (and unfortunately the one where my laptop was stolen) with good prices and where you can get away from the constant cacophony of the busy streets. I never explored all of it as I would imagine one could spend quite a few hours doing that, but it's worth some reconnaissance if you're going to spend more than a few days in the area. Rates are always negotiable and if you're staying multiple days you can always use that to bargain for a lower rate.

As you walk past the many jewelry shops you'll see all over Vietnam, you may notice the board often placed in front with numbers for 'mua' (buying) and 'bán' (selling) of something. That something is 1.2 troy ounce bars of gold called taels that are made by the Saigon Jewelry Company (SJC) and bought, kept, and sold by Vietnamese as a store of value and/or just to speculate on the price of gold. Vietnam effectively has separate systems for currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value, the Vietnam đồng or vnđ being the former and gold being the latter. I imagine this dual system evolved because of the unstable nature of the vnđ over the last few decades meaning its value has steadily declined. It's an interesting phenomenon because in the US and most other countries the currency is used for both the medium of exchange and a store of value. There is probably some well-known rate of inflation that economists know whereby a population seeks out an alternative store of value such as gold in Vietnam. Many real estate transactions in Vietnam are settled in gold with the price quoted in taels and not vnđ. Vietnamese can deposit and withdraw taels in banks and get paid interest on them just like cash.

When I left Vietnam I first flew to Hong Kong on one of the many low cost carriers that service the area. I first flew to Bangkok in order to get the lowest fare I could. What I found out is that some carriers are point-to-point carriers meaning you can only check your bags to the destination of the flight you're on, so I had to check my bags to Bangkok first and then to Hong Kong later meaning I had to collect my bags in Bangkok and go through customs there and recheck the bag for Hong Kong. This was especially aggravating because I had a 5-hour layover in Bangkok and I couldn't check the bags for Hong Kong until 3 hours before the flight so I had to haul the bags around the Bangkok airport for a while. In the end I'm not sure it was worth all the extra work and hassle and I was wishing I had just used a 'regular cost' airline. The low cost carriers usually give you a low quote for the flight on their website but as you navigate through the purchase process the fees and costs start getting tacked on so that your real purchase price may be substantially higher than the original quote that got you hooked. Also something to think about.

During my 5-hour wait in the Bangkok airport I found a seat along a main walkway and started people watching. While glancing across the walkway I spotted a young woman, very thin, very attractive, wearing a dress type thing that really didn't fall far below her waist. Why I fixated on her amongst all the others between her and me I just can't tell you. My eyesight is not as good as it once was, but as my gaze climbed up her physique to her face I thought that maybe she was also looking at me. So I did the only thing that one can do in those circumstances, I smiled. Within 2 seconds she and her 2 friends began making their way across the walkway towards me and arrived at the same bench I was seated on and took the 3 remaining seats that were left, the one I had stared at in so unsubtle a way seating herself right next to me. So I again did the only thing one can do in those circumstances and turned to her and said something inane along the lines of "So, where are you from?" "I'm from Thailand" was the response accompanied with a bemused smile. "Where are you traveling to?" came the question from her. Her English was quite good. "Hong Kong, and you?" I replied. "Maybe I go Hong Kong. With you." Smiles and giggles from her and her 2 friends. "I can fit in your bag" she added to a chorus of more smiles and giggles. Turns out one of her friends was there to meet her boyfriend from Germany and they all came to the airport together. They were from some area far from Bangkok. I noticed she had a tattoo on her shoulder blade and bent my head to look at. She slid her dress strap to the side so that I could see the intricate design around the words "Sex Love". I had already surmised that she probably was not a schoolteacher. Just for fun I asked her what her job was and this prompted a brief exchange between her and her friends in Thai and her response in Thai with more smiles. We had a pleasant and entertaining conversation for about 20 minutes before they had to leave to meet the German boyfriend. I learned something from the experience on a social, personal, and moral level and that is that I should try that smile thing more often.

Now that I'm back in the US I don't know when I'll be returning to Vietnam. While I enjoyed the 8 months there on this trip, it was actually a failure in light of my original intentions. I had intended to stay longer than 8 months maybe even for a period of years based on what I heard during my first trip in 2008 regarding visas in Vietnam. At that time many foreigners were taking advantage of lax enforcement of the rules for 6-month business visas and staying indefinitely in Vietnam by simply renewing these twice yearly. Sometime in 2009 the government cracked down on this and started requiring actual work permits in order to get a business visa. This meant I was relegated to tourist visas of 1 to 3-month durations which is not very long and doesn't allow one to really feel like they're living somewhere. Compounding this is the unpredictability of the visa rules that seem to change day by day and vary depending on your home country. While relations between the US and Vietnam are certainly much better than they were 30 years ago, the US is still not at the top of the list of Vietnam's favorite nations. Australians for example get more favorable treatment than US citizens in Vietnam.

Instead of getting an apartment with a 6-month lease I should have rented a furnished room on a month-to-month basis and kept my options open. If I return there I'll do it this way.

You Foreigner, you're not now nor will you ever be one of us! I don't think I was supposed to keep this once I left the train station. I can only imagine the non-Foreigner price is less.

Throngs at a Buddhist festival in the town of Châu Đốc near the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta region.

Roadside rest stop in the Mekong Delta region. I, too, was reclining in style in a hammock!