Du Lịch Việt Nam, Học Tiếng Việt

Travel Vietnam, Learn Vietnamese

One of the things about the Vietnamese language that I think is most interesting and culturally significant is that there is no general word for "you" as there is in English and many other languages. Instead, when you want to refer to the person you are conversing with, you must take into consideration the age of the person you are talking to, their gender and your relationship with them. For example, if you know the person is younger than you, you refer to them as em. If they are slightly older than you and female you call them chị, if male, anh. There are different words for if they seem to be around your parents age, or your grandparents age. Additionally, if you know they are the same age as you then you can use the word for friend, bạn.

Although pronouns may seem complicated, there are many things about Vietnamese that are quite simple. One of these is numbers. Elevan, twelve, thirteen, etc are not new words but are literally "ten one," "ten two," "ten three," and so on. Similarly, twenty, thirty, forty, etc are literally "two ten," "three ten," "four ten," etc. Thus, once you learn to count to ten, you can easily count to 99. Mastering numbers is essential for life in Vietnam, as you have to be able to barter without thinking about it in order to get decent prices on things. Depending on how much you are on the tourist track, street prices for fruit, jewelry, books, etc can be jacked up to two or three (if not more) times what the Vietnamese would pay. However, sometimes the sellers are not content with bringing the prices down if they know that another Westerner will naively pay the inflated price. Thus, bargaining is not as easy as one may like it to be. It's often an accomplishment to get the price to be half the originally suggested price.

Since my last blog post, my Vietnam adventure has continued happily. From then until the beginning of August my time was consumed by housesitting, volunteering, reading, and studying Vietnamese. Since we were staying in an area where Westerners don't commonly venture to, learning basic Vietnamese was essential. Before our lesson on foods, going to a restaurant in the neighborhood consisted of pointing at random words on the menu and hoping it turned out good, since almost none of the local restaurants had an English menu or any English speaking employees, and the ones that did were generally more expensive. Vegetarian restaurants are very common in Vietnam so that is what we have mostly been sticking to, and around the neighborhood we were staying in nearly all of the dishes in these restaurants had a large amount of fake meat. After learning the words for chicken and beef, we found the menus covered in them, only what they served was actually fake chicken and beef. Mock beef steak, mock pig ears, (very realistic) mock shrimp, fried rice with mock pork, mock squid... I have eaten a fair amount of these things now. Avoiding fake meat is something I try to do, but it can be very difficult when the menu is indeciferable. However, through Vietnamese lessons I have learned some key phrases to fall back on, such as mi xao rau, which is fried noodles and vegetables.

On the first of August, my mother landed in Saigon to travel with us for 2 1/2 weeks. We took off shortly after she arrived, first flying to Phu Quoc, a lovely tropical island just south of Cambodia. The day after we got there we rented motorbikes, and I finally got the opportunity to learn how to get around as the Vietnamese do. It was quite enjoyable, so much that after having a lazy beach day in between, we decided to have another motorbike day. This time we went all over the north part of the island, circling around Phu Quoc National Park, which wasn't currently allowing visitors. The "road" became less of a road and more of a rough path through the jungle for some of this journey. Sometimes it involved going over a bunch of large sticks placed over soft ground. Sometimes it was a rickety bridge that looked as though it could collapse from the weight of a motorbike. Sometimes the bridge wasn't even pretending to be functional and you had to drive through a small creek. Luckily we had only rented two motorbikes between the three of us, so I could passenge or safely walk across the barriers. My mother drove for a fair bit of it, however her bike had bad breaks so she did have a minor spill, but she only got a few minor scrapes and handled it much better than I would have. For the rest of the trouble areas, George handled both bikes while my mom and I walked.

At the hotel that we stayed at on Phu Quoc there were two pet monkeys, I'm not sure what kind, that lived in a cage that was about ten feet by ten feet by ten feet. They paced back and forth and looked at whoever walked by. The treatment of animals here is something worth thinking about. On a boat tour on the Mekong River, one of the activities was to look around someone's yard which had many large snakes, all of which were in cages much too small for them. Additionally I have seen many pet birds in small cages. The most common pet I have seen is dogs, closely followed by cats. They seem to usually be in good condition although you do see the occasional dog that looks to be in not the best shape. There are also many puppies and kittens around, which is quite adorable but does make me wonder how difficult and common it is to get pets neutered/spayed.

After a few days in island paradise we took the ferry to Rach Gia, stayed the night, and took a local bus to Can Tho, which lies on the Mekong River. The day after arriving there we did what every tourist comes to Can Tho to do - took a boat tour of the nearby floating markets. A local woman lead the three of us down the river in a wooden boat and made us small crafts along the way. We bought some dragonfruit, pineapple, and watermelon. Although it was a very cool experience, it didn't have the most genuine feel because we were always at the markets at the same time as many other boats of Western tourists, with guides who seemed to be friends with ours. No regrets though, still very nice to get a glipse of what life is like for those who work and live on the river and small canals.

Can Tho was followed by a lazy day in Vinh Long where we broke up the time before journeying to Saigon once again. We had a day there which we used to visit our favorite cafe before boarding a night bus for Dalat in the highlands.

I've been hearing many nice things about Dalat and they are all for good reason. It's a cute town with a very French feel, mostly because of the architecture. We found a great, clean hotel with rooms for $7 - one of the best deals yet. A common thing in tourist Vietnam is "Easy Rider" tours by motorbike. They can last one or many days and they were first started in Dalat, so we decided to have a day of being toured by locals on motorbikes. My guide spoke very little English so the conversation stopped short after I used the few Vietnamese phrases I knew, but he was still friendly and taught me the names of things we passed by. The leader of the group had excellent English, a good heart and shared a wealth of information with us. We made many stops where he explained what we saw. We filled the morning seeing vegetable gardens, greenhouses full of flowers, views at the top of a hill that we climbed to get our blood flowing, coffee plantations, silkworm factories, and then the Elephant waterfall and Linh An Pagoda before stopping for lunch. The waterfall was one of my favorite parts because although you could see it from the top, there was a much better view if you climbed down for ten minutes along slippery rocks, and you could even climb behind the falls and let them spray you in their waters. The pagoda was cool as well because it was the full moon so there were many more people there than usual. Shortly after we'd started up again after lunch it started raining, we stopped to learn about ricewine production and had a coffee break to wait out the downpour. Lastly we went to the Hang Nga Crazy House, a maze of creative architure.

A few days before my mom had to go home we took a night bus to Nha Trang on the coast. There we went on a snorkling tour of two different islands. We saw many colorful fish and coral, the water was only about ten feet deep and the perfect tempeture.

On the boat ride they served us a good meal and some fruit afterwards. Although we didn't have the most exciting fruit then, there are some incredibly interesting fruits in Vietnam that must be noted. Some of my personal favorites include rambutan, lychee, dragon fruit, mangosteen, and bananas, which are much more flavorful than the ones in the States and are ripe when they are green. There's also some unusual ones, such as durian, an exceedingly odd fruit with a very strong smell. Other common fruits are jackfruit, which looks but doesn't taste or smell similar to durian, and star apple.

The next morning my mom went to the airport to fly home via Saigon and Seoul, and that evening George and I took a train to Hue, where we are now. The train was supposed to take 14 hours but ended up being three hours late to our destination. This was not surprising, as many things are more laid back and slow going in Vietnam. Trains and buses are often late to their destinations, and even if they aren't, getting there on time requires about twice as much time as it would to travel that distance in the US or a similar country (luckily, the price makes up for it). The majority of the main roads going through the country are two-laned, with no line going down the middle and no shoulder. They can be very curvy and there are often many motorbikes, so drivers must exercise caution and go quite slow. For trains, communities are built right up against the tracks, sometimes with houses being only ten feet away. Playing on train tracks is not considered as dangerous as in Western countries.

Although the traffic does go at a much slower pace here, accidents are certainly not uncommon. I think since arriving here I have seen six accidents, most of them being a couple minutes after it happen, but for some I have seen the whole misfortune unfold. There have been a variety of combinations: motorbike vs. bicycle, truck vs. bus, taxivan vs. motorbike, bicycle vs. truck, etc. Most have not been fatal but some certainly have, and for many I have not known how bad the damage was. I have been directly involved in a few: a truck backed into the first overnight bus I took, causing a thousand cracks to appear in the (mainly passenger side) of the windshield without it cracking. The ride was extended by four hours because they kept pulling over to tape it up enough to continue. Another time in Saigon, Lauren, George and I were crossing a street when a motorbike going too fast swerved to avoid us while making a sharp left turn, hitting a bicyclist instead. She seemed in pain, possibly having broken a leg.

I am having a wonderful time in Vietnam, but also long for a new adventure and change of setting. I have heard many wonderful things about Laos and it sounds more rustic, less populated, and even more relaxed than Vietnam. I hope to travel there in the coming weeks (or months), after exploring some of northern Vietnam.

Greetings to all on this side of the world and the other, keep reading!