Finally, I visited Vietnam. Finally, I got my first foreign assignment. Finally, I took international flights and landed my feet abroad.
Well, well, well, my Vietnamese visit last week was indeed a history to me (If you live so near to an international airport for 25 years yet never even once fly with one of the airplanes passing back and forth just a few hundreds meters above your house, you’ll understand how I feel).
Anyway, let’s talk about more important stuff, that is my Vietnamese visit.
Before flying to Vietnam, I asked my friends who have once come there how it is like. One of them said that Vietnam now is like Indonesia in 1970s.
I see what he means soon after arriving in Hanoi (capital of Vietnam), which I think does resemble Jakarta (capital of Indonesia) in 1970s in term of physical construction (to be honest, I hadn’t even born in 1970s, but I watched a lot of movies giving me pictures of 1970s Jakarta).
There are still large amount of vacant, unoccupied lands; and there are not much skyscrapers to find, a very contrast view with that one can find in overcrowded Jakarta (yes, we have both overcrowded state-of-the-art skyscrapers and overcrowded slum areas here and there).
Therefore, I dare saying that Hanoi however looks more neat.
Unfortunately, though the northern city has actually four seasons (unlike two-seasoned Saigon or Ho Chin Minh city in southern Vietnam), I did my visit during summer, and so I felt it to be no different from overheated Jakarta. The difference is while Jakarta is more humid; Hanoi is rather dry.
Before I did my flight to Vietnam, I had wished I could pay some visit to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Quang Ninh province. However, very unfortunately we didn’t have a time to go there. The picturesque bay is, by the way, as far as only four-hour drive from Hanoi.
In fact, due to my very strict schedule (my trip to Hanoi is a business trip, I only stayed there for two days), I could only visit the “Black Market” in Old Quarter in Hanoi. As a matter of fact, I don’t understand why they named it “Black Market”; it’s just an ordinary night market selling cheap clothing and other goodies, and some very Vietnam-like souvenirs tourists can bring home to show that they did have visit Vietnam.
Unique things I see in Hanoi were its unique-shaped houses, which are typically slim and tall. Perhaps because of worried that available space won’t be enough for everybody, people in Hanoi turn their supposed-to-be two-floor large houses into four-floor narrow houses.
If you still don’t understand my description, I will put a photo of such houses later on (I can’t do it today because I don’t bring my camera).
The food…I’m not sure how it tastes. In fact I turned into a vegetarian during my two-day visit there because I’m worried of ingredients might be contained in their meat-cuisines (as information, I’m a Muslim who don’t eat certain foods and beverages like pork and liquor). But, I can say that Vietnamese seem to use a lot of coriander leaves (my friend said it was the name) in their meals, and I’m not very comfortable with the taste sensation that the leaves produce.
The immigration officers at Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport, thank God, didn’t give me any difficulties as I had been earlier worried of (you know, I wasn’t so sure that they’re quite used to headscarfed women like me. But, they appeared to be quite used to, and so are other Vietnamese).
The disturbing things is that I almost failed exchanging my remaining Vietnam Dong back to U.S. Dollar because money exchangers at the airport did not want to buy it, saying they ran out of U.S. Dollar (how could they? Haven’t many foreign tourists come to them and sell their dollars?).
Thank God we can still get some Euros; money exchangers in Singapore and Indonesia don’t want to but Vietnamese Dong, what do we keep it for?
Well, that’s the report of my short visit to Vietnam, which I reckon is not quite satisfying for you want to get enough information before paying a trip there.
Chao Ong and Chao Ba! (is this the right Vietnamese words for goodbye?)
