Hello from Vietnam!!!

I am very excited to be here. I arrived a few days ago, after staying in Cambodia for about a week. I ended up cutting my time in Cambodia short by a couple of days, so I will have to return soon because that is such a fun country! Getting from Kampot, Cambodia, to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, was an 11-hour journey consisting of 3 minivans and 2 buses. It was a bumpy trip… but the last 7 hours were on one bus in Vietnam and the bus itself was quite comfortable. However, I have learned that it takes a long time to travel from place to place in Asia, so despite having a natural personality of living life in the fast lane, I have had to learn to be patient. 

I arrived later in the evening, but my first full day here in HCMC was quite exciting. Out of all the cities I have visited, this is quite possibly my favorite city so far in Asia. HCMC is a crazy, intense, awesome city. The first day I walked about 10 miles all over the city and saw a lot of cool landmarks. This is a very walkable city, and in some parts of the city, it feels like you could be in a European city. Being the largest city in Vietnam, HCMC is really built up with a huge financial district with many skyscrapers. Some friends and I went to a sky bar in the evening and got some drinks on the 52nd floor of one of the buildings here- the view was awesome and the city seemed so developed from above. 

The Vietnamese people are friendly but intense. And it is a lot of fun to interact with them. It is so unlike my experience in Thailand and Cambodia. For the past six weeks, I have come to the conclusion that if I ever started a sales business I would hire someone from SE Asia- they are aggressive in their effort to sell you something, or anything. Generally, if there's a way to make money, someone in Thailand will make an effort to do so. But the big difference between here and Thailand and Cambodia is in the other countries, you could quite easily walk away and whoever was trying to sell you something would calmly move on to the next potential customer. Here in Vietnam, I was walking through the markets, and every time I stopped for a second to look at something one of the salespeople came up to me and tried to sell me something. "What do you buy? I give you good price! Want to see that in a different color? How many you buy?" If I were to inquire about a t-shirt, for example, I've learned that this only encourages the salesperson to be more aggressive in their effort (logically). Meaning that if I didn't want it, and I were to walk away, there is a good chance they would grab my arm and try and convince me to stay! I don't want to put this in a negative light at all- people are not physically harmful or being rude, they're just trying to make money. I respect the hustle. And it is quite fun to negotiate. Because the more you walk away, the more they lower their price. Someone tried to sell me two shirts for 560,000 dong (about $24) but I ended up only buying one for 80,000 dong (about $3) because I kept backing away and saying I would only pay 80,000. So at that point, she agreed and I felt it would be rude to back out. It's a nice shirt and a great deal! 

There is a lot of history here, with the war, obviously, so I am excited to explore the history further! More coming on that in the next update. 

Cheers! 

Zach