1. “They honk when they wanna honk.” And they really-really wanna honk. It’s like everywhere people have just installed a new honk in their cars and motorbikes, and would like to see whether the thing worked, in case they need to return it for a new one. It really is loud on the streets. And they seems okay with it. Nobody is yelling “SABAR DONG!” like back home.

2. “Cross the streets carefully.” I also read in a blog somewhere that give you tips on crossing the streets. They have instructions like, “while crossing make sure you don’t stop, or change pace, or change directions, or you might end up DEAD!” Yeah right, easy on that my ‘I- live-in-a-developed-country-where-people-cross-the-road-at-crossings’ blog writer. I snickered at his comment, since I thought, “Hey, I’ve lived in Jakarta long enough. I stared death in the eye crossing the streets in Grogol and Roxy. I know how to cross the street!” I was wrong. Here it’s like you are walking in a circus ring with the stunt motorbike drivers are coming to you from all four sides, barely scraping your skins. They come at you at sidewalks, at crossings, on the corners. They don’t care about the intersection lights, they don’t care about one way street. Motorcycles are everywhere, heading all directions. Me, a Jakartan, is terrified. I need to hold my wife’s hands crossing the street.

3. “They eat like goats.” Meaning, there’s veggies everywhere. And it’s true. There’s vegetable and leafs and onions and bean sprouts everywhere you go, whatever you eat. I kept thinking, “Geez, they must’ve had huge lawns…”

4. “The bread and coffee is heavenly.” The sandwich, or called Banh Mi (pronounced bahnh moi) is excellent. The bread is delicious, everywhere you had the bread, it is superior than anything back home, even on the street stalls. It’s fragrant, sweet, crunchy and soft on the same time. I only remembered having this kinda bread in Italy. And the coffee, oh my, the coffee. They have it dripped on your mug, espresso size. It’s rich, earthy, and to my surprise, is thick n silky. It’s kinda you are sipping chocolate. And it’s not bitter at all. Better ask them how to prepare it, since I already bought loads of beans. Maybe I need to get one of those drippers.

Well, there you have it, the mini truths on what people is saying about Vietnam. It’s only my first day, maybe I’ll discover more.

Oh yeah, on a last note, somehow all the Pho I had here is pretty dissapointing. This being it’s birthplace, I kinda expect it to be ‘ultra awesome’ on the awesomeness scale. But it’s only on the ‘okay’ level. They are all still ery far from the best Pho I ever had in my life, in Hùng VÆ°Æ¡ng, Footscray Melbourne – http://bit.ly/aTpjsC – lemme see those hands who agree Melbournians?! Well, maybe I will find ‘the one’ later on my journey.

And as a little compensation for listening to me yapping all the way, here’s a video of what the traffic is like in Saigon. Actually there are far-far more crazy intersections that I forgot to video since I was laughing so hard seeing how the motorcycle drivers wanna kill themselves. I’ll try to get the footage today.

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Cheers from Saigon,
Edward

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