Generalizations

We escaped the madness of Ho Chi Minh city after a couple of days and headed down to the Mekong and Can Tho. Glad to get out of the city and into a smaller less insanely intense environment. The hardest part about Vietnam for the tourist and, I imagine, the resident, is the constant barrage of sound and the intense commercialisation of everything.

One has to admire the success of Vietnam. It’s only been about 45 years since the end of the American war yet the economy seems to be booming, the Vietnamese are buying scooters by the truck load and everyone is an entrepreneur. There’s not a place in the country that looks different than the place one just left behind. The same stores and markets selling the same stuff and, some of it, made in Vietnam. Every street bustles with small shops selling everything from children’s toys to fruits and vegetables to e-scooters. It’s ubiquitous from one end of the country to the other.

Along with all that is the madness on the streets. Scooters going everywhere all the time weaving in and out of buses, cars and trucks. Here’s a video taken while sitting in the barber shop waiting to get my hair curled!

Yeah we had just returned to Ho Chi Min from Can Tho and Connie figure this was a good place to get my haircut – took him literally 2 minutes to finish the job. Kind of knew what was coming after watching two previous customers get stripped! Wow…however my main reason for posting this was that the next pic is a video of the traffic outside the barbeshop at rush hour – phew (big blank here trying to figure out how to get a video taken from Connie’s apple phone on to my tablet – aargh – I did it finally)

Okay, so how did we get from Can Tho to Ho Chi Minh – amazing – they do have this incredible bus service on ‘sleepers’. They are double decker buses with lie down beds similar to a business class seat on an airplane. For $15 we had a 3 hour sleeper to take is from Can Tho to Ho Chi Minh City. The following day we were headed Siam Reap.

Here are a couple of photos of the sleeper – why can’t we have these in Canada?

There are hundreds of these buses going everywhere in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Okay on to Angkor Wat