Hello Vietnam!

Crazy streets of Vietnam

Hello Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam!

Leaving Cambodia was a bit difficult for both of us.  We had such a good time in both Laos and Cambodia and saw so many amazing things, that we were a bit nervous to go a different country, especially since we'd heard so many differing views on it.

This is the traffic crossing on a red light.

And, man, it was such a culture change.  Cars were zipping everywhere and in between the cars, scooters were taking up every inch of open space, including the sidewalk.  Amongst the crazy traffic were the shops.  Seriously, they had every luxury store you could even think of.  In addition to that, locals were sitting on every street corner eating food or drinking, sitting on possibly the smallest little chairs imaginable.  AND THEN, people are blindly walking into traffic and the cars and scooters just go around them, like they aren't even there.  It was, by far, the strangest thing ever.  Its so crazy that there is literally a intersection called the 'Roundabout of Death'.  We never saw it as the name did not have us running out to rent a scooter.

Expensive rooftop beer.

We got to our guesthouse, which was right in the heart of backpacker central, and decided to venture out to attempt to cross a busy street, something everyone in Ho Chi Minh MUST do.  After a couple tries, we made it unscathed, though I kept my eyes closed the entire time and Allan was almost taken out by a scooter.  We decided to celebrate our victory by having a beer at a very well-known spot overlooking the entire city.  It was definitely the most expensive beer (at $8 a pop for the local brew) but the Rex Hotel bar was by far the nicest view we'd seen.

Yummy Pho

After our super expensive beer, we hightailed it out to find a cheap thing to eat for dinner and found this great pho joint that used vegetables to make the noodles instead of rice.  The noodles were all different colors and was one of the betters pho soups we'd had.

View from the Rex Hotel.

We had a great day.  So far there was nothing to worry about, coming to Vietnam.