Wow. That’s seems to be the only word that sums up my impression of Hanoi. The city is huge in some regards, with a population of about 4 million people it probably isn’t that large by some regards, but where you’re right down on the street you become overwhelmed by the shear volume of people. There are motorcycles everywhere, they’re on the road, on the sidewalk, going into stores, I mean everywhere. Just walking around you get a sense of sheer terror because the motorcycles don’t follow any rules. They zip where they want and at the speed they want with the only warning you have that you are going to be run over is a horn. The problem with the horn is that there are so many horns going off all the time you can’t tell if it’s for you or some other poor soul near you.

Sun 04/01/09 23:39

Vinh is straight out the 70’s, it’s poor, depressing, and had some of the friendliest people we’ve been in contact with yet. The town is not on the regular tourist path so the people of Vinh don’t see very many Westerners. The people seemed to be genuinely curious about us, maybe more than we were of them this was demonstrated when we would be outside. Just walking around we would be approached by the locals, sometimes it was just saying hello, other times it was asking for a handshake. One girl on the tour, Carina, was at a market buying snacks, and the cashier just kept staring at her with a stupid smile, the cashier would give her candy and not ring-up her purchase. Carina got the feeling that the cashier thought that she was a fairy or something. Most of us though didn’t get that type of treatment, I had people coming up to shake my hand, and people everywhere saying hello. Our group was followed by three Vietnamese women after I took their picture. They must have followed us for about 5 minutes just giggling. It was really an experience though, our group of about 12 people walking along the road, with motor bikes going by, people waving at us and yelling hello as they rode by. It felt that we were a parade going along the sidewalk.

From Vinh we headed to Hanoi at about 8pm that night.

Something that should have taken about 1 hour to do, has finally been completed after about 2 weeks. I don’t know why it became such an ordeal to get the visa, but at least it’s over.

Back in September when I first decided to go to Vietnam, I knew that I was going to have to get a visa, but I thought that I’d have time, so I ended up procrastinating until about 3 weeks ago. I headed to the consulate here in Dubai only to find out that it had been closed and the only Vietnamese consulate in the UAE was in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is about 100 miles away, and it costs 500Dhs to hire a taxi for a round trip. That seemed high to me so I decided that I would rent a car instead, but I had to get my UAE drivers license first. So I did that, and then tried to find a car rental place that wasn’t too expensive, found one. So I called them up and they told me that I needed to come in to fill out the paperwork. They told me that they’d send me a map via email. I waited a couple of hours, no map, so I called them again and they said that they’d get one to me asap. No map arrived, the next day still no map, then I called them again, and gave them a hard time about it. So they sent me a map again… this time it was corrupted, so I called them again and they sent a new one… this one was corrupted as well. Then during December there are holiday’s, there was one last Tuesday, and then on from Sunday to Wednesday… Anyway, during the holiday I decided that I would just pay for the taxi and go to Abu Dhabi this morning.

The whole process of obtaining the actual visa took 15 minutes. No lie… 15 minutes. I’m just glad that I have it and as far as I can tell I’m good to go for my vacation in 8 days.