Vietnam & Cambodia

Our flight from Jordan to Vietnam goes via Thailand, so we take the opportunity to spend a few days in Bangkok. Since Thai massages there are much cheaper than expected (6 francs per hour), we leave Thailand with an excess of cash (the equivalent of 65 francs). When we exchange this remaining money for local currency (the Vietnamese 'Dong') on our journey to Vietnam, we are amazed: we are handed 1.5 million Dong :-) However, the initial euphoria quickly subsides when we arrive in Vietnam's capital Hanoi: a 60-minute massage costs 300,000 Dong (!) – fortunately that's only 13 francs. But it still feels like a lot of money, as the massage costs twice as much as in Bangkok.

We quickly realize the reason for this in Hanoi: there are a lot of tourists here! From every hidden street, white people with shorts and cameras around their necks emerge at regular intervals. Accordingly, the majority of businesses in Hanoi's Old Quarter are hotels, travel agencies, restaurants - and massage parlors. Not only tourism, but the entire economy of Vietnam is booming (growing by 6% annually since joining the WTO in 2007). Vietnam's hunger for growth, combined with the negotiating skills of its 95 million inhabitants, makes us feel more like living ATMs rather than guests and explorers of the country.

In order to stick to our small budget in seemingly cheap Vietnam, we switch to saving mode and stay in the cheapest possible Airbnb accommodations. Of course, this comes with a price, as the nights in Hanoi's streets are short and noisy. This is mainly due to the fact that the entire life of the locals takes place on the street - more precisely, on the sidewalk. Whatever the original idea of the sidewalks was: they are not meant for walking, but for living: snack stalls and vendors use them as selling areas, locals gather there on small plastic chairs to eat, drink and chat - and residents and food couriers use any other available space to park or pick up their motorcycles. It is delightful to watch this hustle and bustle and dive into it! Wherever it smells delicious or many Vietnamese queue up, we get ourselves a plastic chair, get a lot of food for little money and never have any stomach problems. This is partly because most sidewalk restaurants sell only one dish and therefore rarely have stale ingredients. The limited selection has the pleasant side effect that you never actually have to order: you just sit down -and voilà! - you already have a noodle soup or a grilled pigeon on your plate. The main thing is fresh!

One evening we are out late looking for dinner. We decide on a restaurant that specializes in 'Bun Cha' (grilled pork and fat in sweet broth with rice noodles and salad). We are lucky and still get a portion while the landlady starts cleaning the kitchen and the floor next to us. A few minutes later, surprisingly, another guest - a Vietnamese man - joins us and asks if there's still a portion of Bun Cha for him. The landlady nods, comes to us, says 'Excuse me', reaches into our salad bowl with her hand and takes about half of the salad away. To make the hole in our bowl look less desolate, she reaches in a second time and uses her fingers to arrange the leaves so that at least the eye can eat. 'The main thing is fresh!' we think and are glad that we don't have so much salad on our plate anymore.

The great disadvantage of the very lively sidewalks is that as a pedestrian, you are forced to walk on the road if you want to get from A to B - which makes the traffic hectic and more unpredictable. Because all road users constantly have to avoid each other, cars have not prevailed on the streets of Vietnam, but motorcycles have. This in turn means that traffic lights and police officers in the country cannot really enforce themselves because motorcycles can weave their way everywhere. For motorcyclists, a green light means 'Go', orange means 'You can still go', and red means 'Just go!'. As a pedestrian, you have no choice but to look for gaps with good timing and pray that you don't collide with one of the many 4-person families on motorcycles. We don't know exactly how the Vietnamese deal with the stress of traffic, but one thing is certain: over 80% of Vietnamese are not religious - a legacy of Vietnam's communist regime, which has been in power for over 40 years and still does not tolerate any other parties in the country.

After a few noisy and hot days in the city, we head into the countryside to the famous rice terraces in the northern highlands. 'The smart one travels by train', we think and book an 8-hour overnight train from Hanoi to Sapa. 'This way we save time and even get an extra night!'. However, the switch from the road to the rails quickly turns out to be a disappointment: the train ride is so loud and bumpy that we can hardly close our eyes and almost fall off the sleeping bench several times. So we arrive in Sapa early in the morning, completely exhausted, head not to the beautiful rice terraces, but to our room, pay an early check-in fee, and catch up on 8 hours of sleep.

After that, we have better control over our means of transportation, renting a motorbike for 5 francs a day for our excursions and exploring the farming villages in the area. We notice that here in the countryside, all members of a family work together to secure the family's survival. We see very old people and very young children working everywhere. While the grandparents sell food and souvenirs, the children collect firewood after school, support their parents on the farm, act as an additional 'point of sale' for their grandparents, or simply babysit for a few hours. When we get lost again looking for a roadside restaurant 30 kilometers outside of Sapa, we meet an old lady who looks at us kindly but surprised. With gestures and sign language, we explain to her that we are looking for a restaurant. She signals us to follow her with her hands and a few minutes later we find ourselves at her family's home, where they are preparing lunch and invite us to eat with them. There is fish, tofu, vegetables, rice, and beer - and with the help of the Google Translate app, we even have a lunchtime conversation without hands. We are impressed by how warmly and unconditionally we are received and can appease our guilt after this free meal by buying a self-embroidered handbag from the grandmother's souvenir bag.

When we want to return our motorbike in Sapa, Marco realizes that the shop is already half-closed and the shop owner is not present. Only a boy of about 5 or 6 years old is sitting on the steps in front of the shop entrance. When the little boy sees Marco approaching the shop with two helmets in his hands, the boy gets up, goes into the shop, and retrieves Marco's driver's license, which we left as a deposit. Marco places the two motorcycle helmets on the table, thanking the boy and is about to take his driver's license. But the boy shakes his head, raises his finger, and says 'Eh-eh!' - ah, of course, he also needs the moto key! Marco takes it out of his pocket, hands it over to the boy, who acknowledges the whole thing with 'OK!', runs back to the shop entrance, and sits down on the steps. In Vietnam, no one is too small to be a businessman!

We continue our journey to Halong Bay, where 3000 limestone islands rise from the sea over an area the size of the canton of Zurich. We spend three days mostly on the water in glorious sunshine... knowing that immediately afterwards the rainy season will begin throughout Vietnam. Instead of traveling through the rain for a week towards the south, we spontaneously take a flight from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's largest city. Until 1975, it was called Saigon and was under long-term French colonial rule. After the French and later the USA surrendered in the Vietnam War in 1973 and withdrew from South Vietnam, it took the communist North Vietnamese only a month to capture all of South Vietnam, including Saigon. In honor of the deceased North Vietnamese head of state Ho Chi Minh (short: 'Uncle Ho'), the city was immediately renamed after him, although many locals still call it Saigon today. One advantage of the turbo invasion back then was that the city was hardly damaged and many historic buildings from the colonial era still shine in their old glory. We immediately notice that many people in Saigon are richer than in Hanoi. And we notice that after 2 weeks in Vietnam, we are quite a bit poorer than planned. To at least gain some wealth of experience, we spontaneously decide to make a short detour to Cambodia, as the world-famous temple complex of Angkor Wat is practically around the corner. The temple city is impressive: 1000 years ago, about 1 million people lived here (at that time, London had only 50,000 inhabitants). But we are even more impressed by the extremely friendly and helpful Cambodians, who have suffered from wars and famines even longer than their Vietnamese neighbors (until the 1990s). As a result, over 70% of Cambodians are younger than Marco. 'Well,' says Yumi rather unimpressed when we read this information on a sign at a memorial site, 'you're not exactly the youngest either'.