V is for Vietnam...V is also for Visa

Motocycles snake up the side of the road as the rest of traffic is snarled up
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Feb 9, 2007

V is for Vietnam Visa

O is for Oops! We forgot to get them!

T is for Two extra days in Thailand as a result

Baguettes for sale on the side of the road with traffic meters away
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$ is for the extra money a ‘fast visa’ costs.

Yes, it was the night before our departure for Vietnam. Our bags were packed, we were ready to go. While David watched the news on TV, Barb checked to see what the Lonely Planet Guide had to say about our next leg of the journey. Horrors! It says do not even think of going to Vietnam if you don’t have a visa, and it takes 5 to 8 working days to get one!

By now it is after 9:00 pm and the one travel agent still open on our street in Bangkok confirms that, no, we can not go to Vietnam on the 9:00 am flight tomorrow. We must have visas first. Hmmm. We let the kids know that they can sleep in tomorrow as we’re not heading to the airport at 6:00, and get out the head phone to Skype Barry. Barry, of Fairwinds Travel in Vancouver, is always our advisor when we’re stuck in our travels. He has been the mastermind behind the complicated itinerary of our Round the World tickets, and he can be counted on to return our cries of desperation within hours. Sure enough, by the time we woke up the next morning he had our flights canceled and re-booked for a few days later! How did people do it before there were travel agents with email?

Night scene with motobikes everywhere
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The moral of the story is that there really are countries that require visas to be arranged prior to arrival at the border (though Vietnam was the first country we have encountered on our trip so far). Vietnam and China are two of these countries. We will be very sure to have our visas ready in a more timely fashion before our flights to Beijing in March.

So and what were our first impressions of Vietnam when we finally did get there? Ho Chi Minh City has a population of approximately 8.5 million people and 4 million motorcycles. That’s a lot of bikes, and they all seem to be out on the streets at the same time. It is almost mesmerizing to watch the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon, as the locals call it). It flows, it honks, and it is a constant river of sound and motion. Motorbikes carry entire families of 2 adults and 2 children or loads of an endless variety of cargo. We have seen furniture, live ducks (a dozen tied together by the feet on each side of the driver), dogs, small trees, huge baskets of produce, steel bars, counter tops - almost everything and anything can be carried or delivered by motorbike. We were amazed and not a little perplexed. How would we ever manage to get across a street with the endless river of motorbikes flowing by us? There didn’t seem to be any cross walks and not even a lot of traffic lights. We couldn’t imagine getting to the other side of streets alive. But then we called to mind Lonely Planets advice; don’t run, walk slowly and look directly at on-coming traffic. They will steer to miss you and drive around you. Amazingly, that’s exactly how one does cross a street in Vietnam! Wait for a slight break in traffic, take a deep breath and step out. Walk slowly but steadily forward and the stream of traffic flow around you like water flowing around rocks in the river. Crazy but true.

An example of the narrow buildings one sees in Vietnam cities
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Another peculiar thing we noticed in Saigon right away was the many tall skinny buildings. In terms of big cities, there really didn’t seem to be a lot of high rises in Saigon. Six stories is normal. What is also normal is that each floor has only one or two rooms. As a result there are rows of tall thin buildings the width of a single house. It is as if people bought enough property to build a house but then decided to build 6 stories on that house – very interesting! What was also interesting is that in every little guest house or hotel our assigned rooms were always on the top floor. We thought we were traveling light, but it sure wasn’t light enough when you have to lug your pack up 12 zig-zag levels of stairs to get to the 6^th floor! Elevators you ask? They must exist, but we haven’t seen one yet in Vietnam.

And finally, we learned very quickly that Vietnam is cheap! Almost embarrassingly cheap. A two day trip to the Mekong River Delta costs 16 USD per person including bus and boat tours, hotel, one breakfast and one lunch. We have eaten good dinners for about $2 per person. The best pineapple smoothie in the world costs only slightly over a dollar. They say that you get what you pay for. It remains to be seen what exactly we will get in the next four weeks in Vietnam. We’re game to see.