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Sarah says:

we have just experienced something truly amazing and exactly one of the reasons we’re traveling in the first place. Since tourism in Vietnam is fairly new, there are only a few “must-see” tourist attractions and anyone who comes here as a tourist does all of them. The thing is, though, as we’re discovering, because Vietnam isn’t yet an easy or typical tourist destination, it doesn’t attract the typical tourist and it doesn’t provide the typical attactions - or so we’ve seen yet. The tourists we’re meeting are all *amazing* tourists, people who’ve been around the world 2 or 3 times, couples cycling through southern Vietnam with small children, 71 year old men with hip-replacements out climbing Vietnamese mountains. It’s been inspiring to meet the people we’ve met so far and we’ve loved every second. (more…)

Dave Says:
There are those in the traveling community who frown upon package tours. In fact, Sarah and I being of independent mind and spirit also believe that one gets to experience a little more of the host country when one can interact with it the same way it’s people do. However, there are times when logistics dictates a package tour may be in order. Navigating to a remote part of north east Vietnam is one of those times.
This particular tour is a three day two night trip to beautiful Halong Bay, a series of over three thousand little islands purportedly created by the tail of a rather angry dragon as he made his way to the sea. $55 USD buys you three meals a day, a night on a boat, a night in a hotel, hiking, kayiking, site seeing and swimming if it were not quite so cold. What it doesn’t buy you is any drinks - not even water but then trading water seems to be an integral part of the Viet economy; In America its oil, in Vietnam its water. Shows you what a country thinks is important I guess. (more…)

Dave Says:
Now, pay attention - there are 15,700 dongs to the dollar. Water costs about 10,000 dongs, beer about 15,000, tea 10,000 but a bottle of the not so finest but drinkable Vietnamese wine is priced at $10. Currency here jumps between dong and dollar partly because you can’t physically fit 1,000,000 dong on price list or label very easily and partly because the only people likely to afford 1,000,000 VND are those who think in USD anyway. You can also pay in dollars but they don’t like that very much so one is left to convert dollars to dong in ones head and then fork over millions at a time. There is also a problem getting small change. 100,000 VND ($6.36) is almost impossible to spend because nobody will give you, or has change for, such a large amount. Credit cards are accepted in some places but this is a cash based system with ATMs commonplace, which is very frustrating when the ATM spits out 100,000 dong bills and nobody will take them or your credit card.
There is no escaping the fact these are poor people and so whenever there’s a chance to exploit (and I use a small ‘e’) they do. You have your tour guide and then a ‘local’ guide, bus drivers, boat drivers and crew and everyone needs a tip. Tipping however is not like the US. These people earn next to nothing so even tipping them a dollar is huge. The average tour guide makes about $100 a month and they are relatively well paid but do work seven days a week, every week.
Then you need to check your bill and count your change carefully. Mistakes of 3000 dong in their favor are quite common. It’s important to keep this in perspective though - 3000 dong is about 20 cents so nobody is getting ‘ripped off’ but then its also important to let them know that you know you’ve been overcharged or underchanged. It is not OK to do this to tourists, in fact, it’s not OK to do this to anyone. It’s also not OK for tourists to shout and scream about the 20 cents. So there’s delicate balancing act of getting the 20 cents one thinks they deserve and giving a little to people who live a quite bare existance.

-OR- experiences in Hanoi on a scooter.
Dave Says:
Everything you may have read or heard about traffic insanity in Vietnam is true. In the city there are tens of thousands of scooters randomly moving around Hanoi in less than thousands of feet of road space. Even the normal vehicular sanctity of the freeway is a free-for-all of cars, bikes, mopeds, oxen and even pedestrians.
Imagine a system of complete highway lawlessness where road markings serve as mere suggestions of thoroughfare and road signs do nothing more than use their red and black geometry to break up the palate of soft yellowing green that blends buildings into countryside. (more…)