Back in Ho Chi Minh City - lots of photos posted
We’re back at the Thang Long Hotel, which has Ethernet wired into the rooms, which works nicely. I’ve posted about 50 of so photos online now - see here for direct link, since the photos on the blog don’t seem to be updating correctly.
Will post a few more entries later - we’re relaxing after a 7 hour car ride. We did, however book our next trip for Jan 3/4/5th, but I don’t actually know the details!
Rules of the road in Vietnam
Things here are quite different, when it comes to driving. Given that the roads are shared by people, bikes, motorbikes, cars and trucks, it can seem a bit chaotic… but it seems to be quite stable, and people get where they are going - provided they follow the rules of the road:
- Use the horn to let people know you’re about to hit them
- Never stop, unless there is a stop light (very rare)
- Don’t hit anyone, and they won’t hit you
That pretty much sums it up. When I get back to Ho Chi Minh City, I’ll be posting some videos of random intersections - it’s really quite something. I’d certainly never want to rent a car or bike here… it’s dangerous enough being a pedestrian!
Offline for a few days
We’re not dead, just offline. Earthquake in Taiwan coupled with being on the road most of the day means no Internet access, so posts will be few ad far between. I’ve also been unable to upload photos - getting text through has been hard enough.
Christmas in Vietnam
It’s been an Interesting Christmas - as much as I figured I’d be able to escape the music, lights, etc… that hasn’t been the case at all! Christmas is alive and well here - signs, lights, music, etc… about the only thing really missing are huge crowds and shopping.
I find it slightly amusing that all the signs are ‘Merry Christmas’ and nothing ‘Happy Holidays’ like they are back in Canada. They haven’t managed to water it down to ‘Happy festive non-denominational season’ or some other PC nonsense. In fact, all of the Hotels have Christmas trees decorated and lit up, and if I can get some photos posted, you’ll see Heiniken has brought Christmas to Nha Trang - in the form of a 20′ tree made out of beer bottle empties!
Christmas in Vietnam
It’s been an Interesting Christmas - as much as I figured I’d be able to escape the music, lights, etc… that hasn’t been the case at all! Christmas is alive and well here - signs, lights, music, etc… about the only thing really missing are huge crowds and shopping.
I find it slightly amusing that all the signs are ‘Merry Christmas’ and nothing ‘Happy Holidays’ like they are back in Canada. They haven’t managed to water it down to ‘Happy festive non-denominational season’ or some other PC nonsense. In fact, all of the Hotels have Christmas trees decorated and lit up, and if I can get some photos posted, you’ll see Heiniken has brought Christmas to Nha Trang - in the form of a 20′ tree made out of beer bottle empties!
1st day review
Quick recap of our 1st full day in Ho Chi Minh city (aka, Saigon):
- Karen woke us up at 9pm… thinking it was 9am. She appeared at the door all dressed up and ready to go … not realizing it was pitch black out, and she had only slept 2 hours, and not 14.
- Ordering up tea at 1am, after Van fell ill
- Waking up at 5am, so I’m nearly adjusted to the timezone
- Visiting Dung’s family, who live in a small village about 20km outside of Ho Chi Minh city. Roads are in poor condition once you get outside of the city - our van was only able to go about 25 km/hour at the most, and usually quite a bit slower. We had to hike the last few hundred feet, as the road isn’t wide enough for cars - only bikes!
- Dung’s family was great - we ate and ate.. and then ate some more - a huge feast! Van and Dung translated for us, since no-one else spoke English. I think we were the first white people in the area - we got quite the stares!
- We hitched a ride on the back of Van’s relatives motorcycles to go visit her father’s grandmother, a few km away. She’s 91, and currently not very well, but she recognized Van and remembered her from the last time she saw her - when Van was 8 months old.
That’s it for the quick recap. I’ll write more later, but it’s dinner time now…
32 hours later…
Just had a shower in the Hotel, as we finally checked in.
We were delayed an hour leaving from Toronto, but the pilot made that up by the time we arrived in Alaska. Unfortunately, someone passed our during the flight, and needed oxygen for the remainder of the flight. So he was offloaded in Alaska, however they forced us to wait 2 hours on the plane while they searched for his luggage.
So, we ended up landing about 10 minutes after our Hong Kong to Saigon flight was scheduled to take off. Not a good start to the trip.
Luckily, there were 24 of us destined for Vietnam, so they held the flight as we dashed from one gate to another. At this point, we figured we had no hope of seeing our luggage arrive with us, so we resigned to going through the baggage claim process one we arrived.
2 hours later were we stuck in an Immigration lineup in Vietnam… for an hour, even though there were only about 12 people in front of us. From watching, it looks like they do complete manual data entry on the spot, based on the forms you fill out on the plane. Not terribly efficient 
The good news, however, was that by the time we go through Immigration, our luggage showed up waiting for us on the carosel. So grabbed that, and headed out into the heat - 28 degrees. Van’s mom was waiting for us with some of her family and a big van to take us to the hotel, so we survived the trip, and have unpacked enough that I could get my laptop online and post.
Photos coming later today… stay tuned.
Benefits of Backpacks vs. other Carry Ons
Gotta love backpacks for carry on… if you keep it on, no-one asks questions about size/weight/etc… so my 22 pound spineshrinker make it through without a 2nd glance 
T minus 120 minutes
Last minute packing and bag weighing has begun. Nearly bought a 2.0x Lens multiplier, but it doesn’t work with my zoom lens - apparently only L glass users can make use of it. As I didn’t want to drop $1500 on a new lens, I only grabbed a spare battery and a Monopod/Hiking stick
T minus 72 hours and counting…
Just finishing up preparing the blog for our vacation - updating various WordPress plugins, and including the Flickr Gallery. I bought FlickrExport for Aperture a few minutes ago, so I’ll be exporting direct from Aperture to Flickr for this trip. I’m trying to streamline the upload/posting process a bit, as I don’t expect to have alot of time online - so I want to make the most of it.
Currently a single photo in the set from the CN Tower a few months ago, just to test the quality/size settings. We’ll see how this goes…
Flickr Photos
