Vietnam: Feeling like a millionaire, armies of scooters and floating markets

After our slightly unpleasant experiences in the Philippines, Anker and me had strong concerns about our next destination Vietnam, as average income per capita is even lower (~1600US$/person/year vs ~2600US$/person/year in the Philippines) and the last thing we wanted to do was spending more time at a place like Manila.
We had already seriously thought about alternative plans like heading off to Singapore (eating lots of banana pratas in little India of course) or rebooking flights and me going earlier back to Germany.

But fortunately Vietnam was a good place again.

Our general plan was to start in Ho Chi Minh , travel around the area of Southern Vietnam for a bit and then move on over land to Cambodia.
For the beginning we spent 4 days in Ho Chi Minh (formerly named Saigon) in a fancy hotel again and didn't do too much as both of us had to recover from the Philippines. We started the first day with a massage done by blind people for 2€/hour (massage counter: 5) and explored the city a little.
Our main means of transportation around Ho Chi were the extremely cheap taxis (~2€/ride) and in my 4 days in Ho Chi I have probably taken more taxi rides than in all my life in Germany :D
We also found the Vietnamese food especially delicious. Lots of fresh ingredients and delicious sauces, especially spring rolls are highly recommended.

Ho Chi from above

the green area on the right is supposed to become a new financial district in a few years - big plans for Ho Chi!

Vietnam is still communist ;-)

showing off our new bought Kimonos!

nomnomnom!

fresh springrolls - sooo goood!

Further, I had thought that Taiwan had reached the maximum scooter capacity on its streets what was unexpectedly disproved by Vietnam. Crossing a street proved highly adventurous but I liked it somehow.

moto driver chilling hard!
In Vietnam a motorbike seems to be so much more than just a means of transport. It seemed whole families lived on their motorbike :D

Also I thought Chinese was a weird-sounding language but compared to Vietnamese its as good as Hochdeutsch ;-) To my mind came the thought tat it sounds like they mixed the human language with chirping birds.
One day we hung out in a local park when some university students approached us to practice their English and we had some interesting conversation with them.

meeting locals in a park

#Malaria:
Unfortunately in Ho Chi I felt a bit sick, with light flu symptoms for a few days and when I happened to google for Malaria symptoms, I found the early signs pretty much perfectly matching my symptoms. It also said that people often falsely don't recognize Malaria and that you should consult a doctor as early as possible. Admittedly slightly paranoid and also amused about the fact that I might have caught malaria, I went to a nearby expensive hospital. There though the doctor lightly annoyed told me that I don't have malaria but just a light flu. -.- Whoopsie

Then it was time for an other massage (massage counter: 6) :-P

In general Ho Chi Minh proved a very enjoyable destination. A vibrant city, lots of culture and cheap.
Even though Vietnam is in general very poor, what we saw was a completely different kind of poverty than what we had seen in Manila. Here no one was living on the streets in torn cloth. It seemed everyone had some place to live, a job and a social web - the basics for a decent and fulfilled life.
On the other hand we felt like millionairs again - this time though because of the highly inflated money value as our banknotes ranged from 10.000 Vietnamese Dong to 1.000.000 Dong. A bit annoying if you have to count zeros all the time :-/
Once I deciced to take a motorbike taxi ride instead of a normal taxi, just to experience a ride in the crazy traffic (drivers for these were approaching us all the time, waiting at every intersection) the guys first offer was three times the normal taxi rate and unwilling to bring it down to a reasonable price. We finally agreed on a prie (15.000=~0,70€) and after the ride when I wanted to pay I accidentally gave him 200.000 instead of 20.000. Whoopsie again.
He happily accepted and gave me back 50.000. This made me realize my mistake though and I could fix it fortunately.

Also, in Vietnam we generally felt safe again.
However I noticed that I hadn't regained my general trust yet and was still worrying a lot about thiefs or peoples hidden motives. Seems like the thief had taken some more than my money -.-
But what was annoying were lots of scams: People trying to sell highly overpriced stuff, trying to trick you into something and getting unfriendly when you didn't give in.
So I came to think a lot about the problem of scams and the generally best reaction. Besides the general annoyance, what I see as the main problem is that they derogate the relationship between locals and travelers.
One situation was a good example. We were walking to a close-by museum when a guy carrying some stuff overtook us, smiled at us friendly and pointed out the way to the museum. He then even smilingly handed me his load to try to carry it and it seemed he just liked to interact with some travelers. A somewhat cool situation and not at all suspicious so far.

However, then he took out a coconut and handed it to me, a bit like a gift And finally he charged 20.000 what was about twice the usual price. I finally agreed because it's still less than 1€.
But what made me feel very uncomfortable about the whole situation was that the whole value of the interaction before was taken away when I found that he just wanted to sell a coconut and that it was all probably not more than a calculated act. Using social norms to quickly build a social relationship, give me something (the experience of carrying the load) to make me feel in debt to later feel obliged to buy the coconut.
It's not a big issue obviously but still it misuses the social norms of giving and taking to make profit. The smile and superficial friendliness is not authentic and for its own sake. What should be an end in itself is used as a means to get some money. The process of trying to extract as much money as possible from the traveler degrades him to his wallet while the traveler gets annoyed and looses his general trust. This extremely limits the depth of the social interactions and degrades the general relations. Imagine you come to a poor country with the best intentions and then everyone tricks you or even some of your stuff gets stolen - how does this leave your motivation to help those people? It can sometimes feel really strange like you are not welcome in a country but the people still want your money.
So what would be the best way to react? Unfriendly right away, ignoring them or even trying to explain this dilemma? Or giving in? After all it is usually just a little bit of money for you and has much more value for them. Of course it is understandable if a poor person sees a obviously much richer traveler he can easily justify for himself to trick some money away from him.
But if you give in, you directly reward the behavior. If no one fell for these scams, they wouldn't take place...

I have also been wondering about the best reaction regarding the thief in the bus in the Philippines when he thought I was sleeping. Should I have waited until I could be sure that he was a thief and then tell someone or confront him? Ultimately this would mean some risks for me - the main reason that stopped me from that was the uncertainty how he would react., possibly violent. And after all who knows what might expect him if charged with a crime. You never know his background and what made him do it.
However by letting him go, he would probably just move on as a thief and be successful with an other traveler some other time.
Lesson from this: Money spoils the people! ;-)

Being in Vietnam we were also eager to learn some more about the Vietnam war. So first was the visit of a War Memorial Museum that mostly depicted pictures of the war.
The pictures were really devastating. So much misery, suffering and death.
I have to admit that I still don't really know too much about the background of the Vietnam war, but it's all such a disaster. First the French occupying Vietnam as a colony, then finally getting kicked out by the Vietnamese. The French trying again to take over the power with US backing while the communists rise up until finally it all results in the horrible war.
In some way it is understandable how the constant Vietcong threat and ambushes finally brought about the Americans crazy decision just to bomb away whole parts of the country with napalm. But it is still devastating that a democracy like the United States was able to do that stuff. And then as soon as the war had started, every ethic concern was subordinate to the goal of victory it seems.

Next was a trip to former Vietcong underground tunnels. They had build a unbelievably vast tunnel network close to Ho Chi Minh, over 450km total, where people pretty much lived underground to protect themselves against the US bombings. We were also able to crawl through some tunnels for a bit and only 10 minutes in the narrow, cold and dark tunnels was extremely depressing. Living there? I would be mad after one fay I guess.
While walking around that place, a Vietnamese guy approached me and asked about my height. It turned out that some women working there had made a bet how tall I am. I felt honored!

Then it was time to leave good old Ho Chi to check out the Mekong Delta and its Floating Markets!
Random thing: Our next hotel had the probably worst shower design that was ever made up by a human mind.

so you shower, water drops on the black area. So where does it flow?

...it flows around the bathroom of course! :D

local marketplace

flowers being sold everywhere for the upcoming Vietnamese New Year

and Anker getting a manikure!

Vietnamese temple

What time is it? It's time for a boat tour!

slums at the Mekong river delta

For the next morning we had planned to make a second boat tour to some floating market. Unfortunately the stupid market just took place veeery early in the morning, so we had to get up before 5am -.-

Bah!

Floating market - really cool thing to see. Feeling the magic of travel at its best!
(unfortunately we didn't really take any better pictures)

this is how they produce rice noodles old school

drying in the sun and cut to noodles later

Our next destination was an island at the southern coast of Vietnam, Phu Quoc (I have still no idea how to pronounce it). We took a ferry to get there and interestingly during the ride they showed one of the good old Rambo movies. Especially entertaining for the children I guess. And the pleasant sound of machine gunning in the background - so nice! :D
Finally we arrived though and after getting to our resort-hotel I could experience a stereotypical resort vacation: A pretty beach completely packed with resorts next to each other and the resorts being packed with white tourists. Lovely!
For the next day I rented a scooter and dared my first scooter ride ever to get around the island for a bit, what was very enjoyable. I'm sure I'll do more scooter rides in the future, I like the independence and you get to see much more than from the inside of a car.
However I noticed that in some way El Nido might have spoiled my expectations about beaches. No beach there could quite compare anymore -.-
On the way back on a motorway I passed a guy herding some cows there. Awesome.

our resort

motorbike tour

The next day we made a boat tour for some snorkeling. With us on the boat was a French granddad whose goal for that day seemed to be to get drunk and tell everyone about his hotel at the beach. This at least he told Anker three and me two times. He also lived on that island for more than 10 years already and didn't speak any word of Vietnamese - that I call successful integration!
Then we had to change our hotel and after entering our room we had to start a hunt for the 20 mosquitos already inhabiting it, or as Anker used to call them  "The Malarias and Dengues".

During my Southeast Asia trip I have also started Project Beard. After some first trials during my former US exchange and inspired from Ankers mustache recently, starting with my Southeast travel I stopped shaving and grew so beard to experiment with different styles:

The Mexican

The Musketeer

The Detective

The Italian

And by the way, I've gotten into writing a bit for wikitravel.org, improving on the articles about places I've been to. Feels got to contribute and repay the community a little. Highly recommended.
I've finally also donated 10€ to Wikipedia! Make the businesses work that deserve it!

And I already got my two grades for the NTU exchange: A+ in Chinese and A- for Macro - yay! Good that I didn't end up dropping Macro, at least one course I can get credit for at my home university now.

That's enough for now - next is Cambodia!