Our time in Ho Chi Min City was well spent. Helmut has a few family members who live there and teach english so we felt like we had the inside line on all things "Saigon".
The currency conversion has been really easy to figure out. It's basically 1 US dollar =22,000 Vietnamese Dong. To make it easy, i would take away the last four numbers and then divide by 2 and the price would be slightly lower that that.
So if something cost 50,000 dong, i would take away the zeroes and split the 5. A little bit less than that would be about 2.30 or so. The weird thing is that vietnamese people freak out at money that is torn, so if anyone sneaks ripped money into your change, it is practically worthless. I'm not sure if banks would take it though.
A few general observations from our 4 days there that may or may not be specific to the city:
Street food- cheap and delicious. If you go to Saigon and don't eat at at least one of those sidewalk cafes with what Helmut calls "Holly Hobby tables", then you are missing out, plain and simple.
Massages are cheap...REAL cheap. Helmut and i got hour long foot massages for the equivalent of about $4.50 each. He says his was awesome. He got an older lady who he described as "The Michael Jordan of massagers". Mine was...well...slightly below average. My masseur was a kid named "Boon" who at first claimed to be 18. We called him on that. There's no way he was older than 14. He was entertaining though, and told Helmut's cousin (in vietnamese) that he thought Helmut was very handsome. We got a kick out of that one, and didn't let Helmut live it down.
Boon's massage technique was exactly what you'd expect from a 14 year old, but hey...i spent $4.50 so who am i to complain? At the end of the massage, Helmut paid for us and included the tip, explaining to "Michael Jordan" that the extra was to be split between everyone who provided a service (i also had a pedicure which cost about $7.00). He then went to the restroom. In the short amount of time he was gone,
the other ladies tried to exploit
the fact that I had nothing to do with the payment by hustling me for more tip. I didn't fall for it, but that brings me to another observation:
Many of the people who sold goods or services seemed to jump at the chance to price gouge westerners by capitalizing on their ignorance.
Here's an example:
Helmut and i were trying to take a cab from our hotel in District 1 to his cousin's house in district 7. We made the mistake of not asking the cousin in advance how much the ride should cost us, and then not asking the driver in advance how much roughly the fare would be to that address.
I'll be honest, part of the reason we didn't think of asking the driver as we got into the cab was because we were distracted by this giant mole on his chin. Not only was it HUGE, but it had like 10 black hairs growing out of it about 3 inches long. I was preoccupied with trying to figure out how to take a picture of it without being totally obvious as Helmut handed him the card with the address. No doubt he was also bedazzled by what was surely one of those "absorbed twins" you hear about on The Discovery Channel.
I looked for teeth to confirm my suspicions, but found nothing else beyond the black hair that sprouted from it almost proudly. It was so long he could have braided it. We couldn't figure out why he didn't at least cut the hair so...
anyway...whatever. You get the point. We were distracted.
So during the ride, i noticed that we seemed to be zigzagging our way through the streets and crossed the same river twice. I busted out my phone and called up the Vietnam street map i had downloaded through the maps.me app (very useful btw and you don't need any kind of phone service to use it as long as you download the desired map in advance).
After a few minutes of monitoring our location on the map, it was clear that we were going in circles.
When we arrived at our destination, we told Helmut's cousin about our roundabout route, which resulted in a heated argument in vietnamese and eventually the driver lowered his price.
He wanted to charge us about twice as much as what the fare should be. If we didn't have a vietnamese speaking advocate at our destination (or the maps to know we were being "taken for a ride"), we would have paid the fare and been none the wiser.
We also ran into this with the street vendors. If you wait until after your meal to ask how much it costs, you will likely end up paying what i call the "roundeye tax". Ultimately, it's just a few more cents or dollars, but it's the principle of the matter.
Something i'm sure was not Saigon specific was the traffic. Like any big city, it was madness, but in Vietnam there are motorbikes everywhere! This appears to be the preferred method of transportation.
Locals had no problem with transporting just about anything on 2 wheels. Boxes piled high, a 20 ft ladder, construction materials, and even a family of 4! Seriously...it wasn't uncommon to see a man riding a scooter with a woman on the back holding a baby and a toddler standing up between the dad's feet. One family of 4 even had a medium sized dog cruising on the scooter with them! Add in the fact that there don't seem to be any real solid traffic rules, and you have a situation that would give any helicopter mom an aneurism.
This apparent lack of concern for safety seemed contrasted by the fact that the majority of these commuters would be wearing surgical masks. I assume this is to keep them from breathing all the smog, but here's the weird part...it wasn't just people in traffic wearing these. It was about 30% of the population everywhere we went! In the markets, in the country, in the airport...everywhere! 
So maybe it's to prevent germs? Stranger still, we saw mask wearers TAKE OFF their masks in the very place you would think they would need it most if germs were the phobia...On a crowded tarmac bus on the way to the plane and on the plane itself!
There was a lady sitting across the aisle from me on the plane to Hanoi who was sneezing and coughing up a storm...clearly had a bad head cold... who had TAKEN OFF HER MASK!! What? Put your mask back on lady, i've got 2 more weeks of vacation and the last thing i need is to get sick because you think surgical masks are a fashion accessory!!!
Not quite sure yet if this practice is isolated to Saigon or if it's a Vietnam-wide thing, but i guess we're gonna find out.
No comments:
Post a Comment