10 Thoughts about Vietnam

10 Thoughts about Vietnam

10. Sidewalks are not safe anymore.  If there is too much traffic on the road, use the sidewalk, why not?  I almost got hit by the 3 motorbikes riding along the sidewalk, in a space that no more than 2 people could walk on.  In addition, the sidewalks aren’t very well constructed, so they are bumpy and have lots of street signs and electric poles in the way.  That being said, walking across the streets is incredibly safe.  You wouldn’t need to even look before you pulled out- people would wait for you and most times not even honk if you are in the way.  Even though the traffic is much worse here than in Indonesia (Ho Chi Mihn City has the most motorbikes of any city in the world- 7 million registered to be exact), it felt safer crossing the streets. 

9. The city is organized so well.  There are 11 sections of the city broken into districts, and all you have to say is “I’m living District 4” and people knew where you were.  Each district is also known for a specific thing, so District 1 is the tourist district, while District 4 is the food market district.  It made navigating a brand new city quite easy- I walked 12 miles around the city yesterday and only had to ask for directions once! 

8. I felt totally safe the whole time.  There are so many police, almost at every street corner, and I never felt intimidated by large crowds of people.  They were all quite friendly and appreciated me, and all of the other foreigners that I saw, were there.  Even walking back to my hotel at midnight last night felt fine, with no one looking to rob me even in a not-very-populated part of town. 

7. There are so many people from Europe.  Most times in Indonesia, if you saw a white person, they were typically speaking English, but here, there were so many different European languages spoken.  Vietnam was colonized by the French, so it makes sense the strong European influence, but I was not expecting that.  There is also every ethnicity of food available, although I stuck to the local food while I was there.

6. The English level of locals is not extremely good.  In Indonesia, I was used to people coming up and having a decent conversation, to “practice their English,” but here, that didn’t happen.  Instead, they would see me, say “hello,” and then walk away.  It happened about 5 times in the last night I was walking around the city. 

5. If you need a visa to enter a country, make sure you keep that visa with you to exit as well!  That might be common sense, but I packed my visa papers (my visa was already stamped in my passport!) in my checked luggage before I left for the airport.  When I got to customs, I had quite a scare when the officer asked me for my visa papers- I thought I wasn’t going to get out of Vietnam! 

4. The drinks here are so good!  Coffee, milk tea, bubble tea, home-brewed beer- you name it, it was delicious.  I could spend a lot of time exploring all of the different cafes and coffee shops around the city.  The food was also delicious and incredibly so cheap- 50 cents for local Vietnamese food!

3. This country is incredibly liberal- communism does not have that much control over these people’s lives.  I tried asking a few university students about their life in Vietnam, and they said they can’t vote for their president, but otherwise, life is fairly normal for them. They can use Facebook/Google, then can watch whatever movies/TV they want, they can practice a religion, same-sex relationships are allowed, the party scene is HUGE and overall, people are fairly happy.  This was a mindset change for me – I anticipated all communist countries to be quite intense government control, which is simply not true here.

2. Vietnam people still hate America for the Vietnam War.  One of the main reasons why I wanted to visit Ho Chi Mihn City (also called Saigon, if known by the French name), was to visit the Vietnam War museum.  Its current name is the “War Remnants Museum,” although it was before called “The Museum of American War Crimes,” if that tells you the focus of the museum.  There was very little background about the war; instead, the exhibits focused on the photographers who were killed in the war (How could you kill all of these innocent people who documented what you are doing to us?), the negative affects of Agent Orange chemicals (Look at how you’ve harmed our country for years to come!), and the massacres of civilians throughout northern Vietnam (You really are barbarians, aren’t you?).  The (parenthesis) are the undertones that were found throughout each of the exhibits- you can see it is clearly a work of anti-American propaganda.  They also had pictures of almost 50 countries that had protests against the war and a few pictures about the Kent State shooting in 1973; again, all about how people didn’t want the war but the US continued to fight.  Although it was very clearly anti-American, it did make me think if what America did was necessary- I guess that was the goal of the museum. 

1. This country is lost in sin.  The Wikipedia page says this country has been declared an atheist country by the government, and about 76% of people are not following a religion.  It is very obvious- the party culture is large, prostitution is huge, and the general attitude of “better yourself to put down others” was obvious even in the few days I was here.  Please be praying for these people, these warm and friendly people, that they will find God and find a greater purpose for their lives.

Day 4 of 42 completed! 

Next adventure: India

Luke Forshey

June 12, 2017