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!

The Philippines: I found heaven and hell

This is gonna be a long post, but so much stuff happened - it feels more like a month of experiences.
I hope you enjoy it.

So on the 9th of January it was finally time to leave Taiwan.
My next destination was the paradise-beach resort of El Nido on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. My friend JiaXiaSha and some other exchange students had recommended it to me as the perfect beach place and also as not too touristy.
My flight was in the morning, first to the Philippines capital Manila and then to Puerto Princesa, the main city of Palawan and south of El Nido, where I finally arrived in the evening. From there I had to take a further van ride in the night to El Nido.
Unfortunately the ride took place on a bumpy dirt road and the supposed 4h ride (according to the woman who had sold it to me) stretched to 7h. In short, highly unpleasant. On the ride I met Richard, an English guy who has been travelling for the last 20 month and he even told me that this was the worst ride he had had during all his travels. -.-
This though, turned out to be a price worth to pay.

How would you imagine the perfect beach to look like?
Yeah, that’s El Nido!

I stayed at a small guesthouse that was run by the warm-hearted Filipino woman Oring and her funny little cat Simba. All in all, my stay was a bit like living with a small temporary family and I often played with the cat and talked a lot to Oring, who told me a lot about the Philippines and the corruption everywhere and also about her future business plans and in the evening she sometimes cooked vegetable curry for us and some other guests. During my stay there I also met a few other travellers who had some cool stories to tell. And again I found that during travelling, you never have to be alone if you don't want to. However, for this week I often chose to go for some solitude.

my room, first time ever sleeping under a mosquito net. One night my feet got stung really bad though because they touched the net - the curse of beeing too tall :-/

me, my host Oring and Adil from Belgium, who is already travelling for 3 years by now!

On the first day, together with Richard, I went for a guided ciff climbing tour that would definitely not be allowed in Germany - climbing on steep walls of sharp stones without any security gear. Definitely in the top 5 of most dangerous things I've done in my life! But our guide told us that he had done it barefoot before and during the way back we encountered an other group with the guide in flipflops and a woman in sandals. Nice job! :D
But again the view from top of the cliff was kind of worth it.

May it begin! Richard and our guide

Holy shit!

What a view!

Yeah, we were also carrying this rock up.

The second day I decided to take it easy and just relax at the beach - white sand, palmtrees around and drinking coconut juice.
And bumped into a friend from Taipei. What a small world!

sharing a tricycle with my German friend Timo, who also studied at NTU

The third day, I took a so called island hopping tour, I'm not quite sure, but that might have been the most beautiful experience of my life. Gorgeous mountain islands around and beautiful beaches everywhere. Furthermore we had some cool activities as diving through a small tunnel hole to a so called hidden beach, snorkeling and also delicious food, that our guides prepared on one of the beaches.
I'm not too happy with the pictures I took, but a Czech guy I met on the tour had brought a good camera and might send me some of his pictures soon and then I'll update it here.

The next day the weather got a bit worse unfortunately. Nevertheless together with Richard I started a Kayak tour to a nearby island. The woman that rented out the kayak to us, looked slightly amused when we departed from the beach, that was probably already a bad sign...
And yeah, about halfway we decided to turn back as the wind and waves just got too strong. Fail...
After that I took a tricycle to a slightly farther-off beach that was completely empty. I jogged down the beach for about 15 min without encountering anyone.

The day after that I strolled around town a bit and ended up in a slum-like area, with houses made of trash, poor children playing on the streets and a cockfight taking place!


So now some general impressions about the Philippines and Filipinos. In general it is completely different to Taiwan. The living standard is much lower and I had seen some really bad poverty. Everything is also quite cheap, but the food is in my opinion not so good and really not special. To me, some people had been quite nice, many competely indifferent and some openly unfriendly. In general Filipinos are rather laid back, a bit slow, taking things easy and not worried about efficiency. For example in restaurants it takes ages to pay the bill: First you ask for the cheque, after around 5min they bring it and walk off, eventually they take your money and walk off again and 5min later they finally bring your change -.-
Also it's much less safe and scams are taking place all the time and you have to do lots of bargaining if you don't want to get ripped off. The island of Palawan is supposed to be quite safe generally though.
However, Manila was yet to come...

So that was El Nido and I had a really great time there. However my plans for leaving civilization a bit behind, meditating in solitude on lonely beaches and writing stuff had only worked out partially. The place was just a bit to touristy and also there was just too much really cool stuff to do that I didn't want to miss out on. Yeah, whatever...

In the evening of the 14th, after 5 days in El Nido, I took a night bus to drive back to the bigger town Puerto Princesa from where I'd get my flight to Manila. While the bus was much more pleasent than the horrible van ride I had taken a few days before, I encountered some very unpleasent situations.
After a few hours of driving I was wearing an eyemask and earplugs to try to get some sleep. Then I noticed how a guy sat down next to me and after a while, I started to feel his hand carefully feeling around my side at the hip (No, not in a sexual way, you pervert!).
I'm not sure if he was really a pickpocket, but I immediately took of my eyemask and looked at him (probably a bit sleepy-confused) and he made big eyes and gestured to his phone strangely. At the next stop he got off and I noticed that pretty much all seats behind me were empty - so it was additionally strange that he had chosen to sit next to me. Scary!
Just recently I had heard about other travellers who had been pickpocketed while sleeping in a bus... Maybe after all it's not so bad that I practically never can find sleep in buses (and airplanes).

After a few more hours, around 3:30am nighttime we arrived at the bus station in Puerto Princesa. The problem was that I had not yet organized an accomodation as I had decided quite spontaneously to leave that evening already and a good place that my host knew down there was only available for the next night. I had hoped for other travellers that I could just join or a group of locals trying to sell their rooms. However that did not work out and instead there was only a bunch of tricycle drivers aggressivley trying to sell their service to the arriving people. So I approached one and asked if he knew a good accomodation for 500pesos (~10€) for a single room and I added that I would not take anything else or anything more expensive - if he's really sure that he knows a room for this price (beware of scams!). He said sure, sure and as I expected that he knew some place where he would get commission for bringing me I asked if the ride would be free and he agreed. So far so good.
Then we arrived at a guesthouse and the receptionist wanted to sell the room for not under 800 :-/ So we moved on... The next place was 750 and the next one was booked out. Thanks man, good job!
As I was really getting tired, I finally gave in and accepted the next places 700peso room - at least it's my fault not having organized something before. But when I said goodbye to my driver he complained that I hadn't paid him yet. What the fuck!? (You remember - he had agreed to drive me to a 500peso hotel for free) I was still curious though, how much he would demand (I had read in a guidebook that the usual price for a ride around town is 20pesos). So he said his price is 650 pesos.
Well, you know that I pretty much never get angry.
But that was a bit too much. So after some heated discussion I told him to piss off, just walked off to my room, locked the door and went to sleep furiously.
Not the best start in Puerto.
It didn't really improve matters that I didn't have a mosquito net in my room (the receptionist had told me that's no problem) and after a few minutes I saw those beasts flying all around me :-/
But the next day got much better and I got a pleasent acoomodation, started the day with a nice massage for 6€/hour (massage counter: 3) and strolled around the town a little.

tricycles everywhere

and everywhere

not the best area, slums in the background

In the evening I went to a bar to meet some locals and this time someone succeeded in stealing my money.
The value of around 50€, fortunately only the cash, no cards or other valuables.
Great!
I like to trust people and generally believe in the good nature of people. And in terms of this, Taiwan had been such a paradise - everyone you could trust, really everyone!
But in the Philippines now, it had become hard for me to trust anyone. Not a nice feeling.
So at this point I was kind of fed up with the Philippines.

The next morning was my flight to Manila.
However, I had heard some really crazy stories about taxi drivers. For example that after loading your bag in the trunk, they would drive off, or that they would spray some narcotic through the airconditioner to make the passenger unconscious and then rob them,or after a short ride just inviting a guy with a gun in who makes you leave all your stuff in the cab and then drive off without you.
In short, I had become a bit paranoid.
So I decided to take an expensive shuttle service from the airport to my hotel, sent the plate number to Karl after getting in and switched off the airconditiong - better safe than sorry, right!?
And finally arrived at my 4-star hotel in Manila.
What a relieve!
Karl had opter for the luxus and I had originally argued for a cheaper accomodation. but now I was really happy in the comfort of the hotel.

Except for a short walk to an ATM and to get some dinner (plain rice and some plain veggies, thanks to the wide selection of vegetarian dishes -.-), I didn't leave my hotel room for that day.
It seemed the surrouding mostly consisted of various banks protected by heavy-armed (shotguns or M16 assault rifles) security guards against all the poor people living on the streets. And those were really lying around on the street everwhere. I have never seen such a misery.

Ankers flight from Hong Kong was supposed to arrive quite late, after midnight - the receptionist was supposed to call me, when he would arrive - and around 11pm I fell asleep on my bed.
Then, suddenly I woke up from someone entering the room! A bit confused and pretty thrilled I called "Who is this?!", and the person left again. Then I heard voices on the floor and someone asking cautiosly "Lino?"
And Anker came in!
It had been Anker all the time what I had not recognized without my glasses on. Scared from my resolute call, he had retreated the first time :D
I'm still laughing when I think about this. The Philippines just fucked with my mind. Damn!

The next day after a good round of sleep we started the day with a nice lunch buffet from our hotel and then went of for some sightseeing. (Of course only taking as few valuables with us as possible) First was an old fort and the historic part of the city which turned out to be quite nice.

However, after leaving the by entrance-fee restricted area of the fort, things got pretty fucked up again and we experienced continuing upsetting situations.
A tricycle driver that didn't leave our side for about 15minutes, all the time proposing a tour and completely ignoring our rejections.
And then slums everywhere around and poor people living on the streets and probably most sadly: A small child in torn lumps and covered in dirt.
Some of these people seemed to have lost their humanness to some degree. Living more like animals, day by day in the dirt, no planning for the future, probably very limited social interaction, beeing completely on their own, derived of their dignity as humans.
On the same time, we got to feel shame just for the fact that compared to them we were the rich and that most of this is probably due to the bare luck of beeing born in a different country. We thought that they must think about us the same way, that we think about the super-rich in Western countries that invest a fortune in a stupid sportscar, expensive dinners or redundant other luxuries.
And further there is a social coldness. Most people treated us very submissive, but without any warmth or honest appreciation.
Our minds just filled up with negative emotions. Distrust, anxiety, shame, pity, anger.
And now imagine all those people living their whole live there.

We didn't really take many pictures of poor people and slums because we felt uncomfotable about doing this. But at night this is a home for some people. 

a tricycle driver and his son

I'm pretty sure that the root cause for all the misery is the massive corruption taking place in the country. I've heard outrageous stories about it and it seems that corruption is rooted so deep in society that you endanger your life with the simple act of speaking out against it. This of course goes hand in hand with massive inequality and the rich using their money and influence to get richer and richer and the poor beeing on their own. It's not that whole Manila is a slum, right next to some slums are massive shopping malls and vast mansions surrounding by high walls and armed security.
It's just outrageous and for me seeing this made me want to somehow fight for some change. It's just how? What can you do? If you give people on the street some money, does it really do any good? If you get a massage for 3€/hour or a tricycle ride for 0,10€ is that exploitation or do you support the people? What can you do politically without risking your life? Should we pressure our homecountries governments to speak out against those grievances?
Tough questions but I think it's good having to think about them.
In general these experiences I've made felt pretty shitty. But after all, I guess it's good I made them. It gives a new perspective. Maybe these places would not exist if everyone got to see them. Go and travel!

I also seriously think about donating some money to those four countries I'm travelling to now, as they are all pretty poor and my money surely has more value for the people there than for me. But again the difficult question is to whom and how to donate it. I talked to some people about this issue and everyone has different opinions. I haven't made a decision yet but it's keeping me occupied.

To be upfront, I feel a bit uncomfortable about writing so much bad stuff about a country but this is just what I've experienced and I just want to be authentic about my feelings.
It might be biased from some particular experiences and places I've seen. At least my friend JiaXiaSha after school spent a voluntary social year in Manila and he could stay a whole year there - for me pretty much one day was too much^^

The next morning we finally got our flight to the next destination, Vietnam.
I have never been so happy to leave a country.