Day Eight in Paradise; of Motorcycles and Buying Things

So it's been that long, I guess. It's surprising, waking up and realizing I've been in one place this long. It's sort of an unpleasant reality to have to face, but Tet is tomorrow. Things should get interesting starting very soon.

The last two days haven't been particularly eventful, but I did go to see a pagoda this...afternoon, I think. It was interesting, and I got photos of it, but it's been stressful trying to write posts sort of "around" photos; further difficulty when I try to keep things in chronological order and everything. If you look at the post history from my journey thusfar, you'll see that initially I wasn't able to upload photos and embed them into my posts, and then it began to be more and more photos as I went on. This trend has correlated with difficulty getting the posts up on time, splitting the posts up, and while it leads to a lot of gorgeous content that you won't see this post, it kind of bogs me down.

Editing photos, even simply exporting them for web usage, takes a long time, and compared to simply composing a text post, ends up being much more complicated and difficult. I realized slowly that this was a pretty difficult thing to do, so today's post will be uncoordinated, text-only, and probably go anywhere from Hanoi to now in the space of a sentence or two. Even given all that, my hands are getting heavy.

One of the things that just struck me as hilarious when I first got to Vietnam was the motorcycles. It strikes an American as downright unsafe, but in a way, I'd feel more comfortable driving a motorcycle in Vietnam than in the United States. If you've ridden bikes at all, or spent any amount of time coasting through red lights or weaving around cars and pedestrians, it's not a whole lot different. Also, it's not terribly fast; I was riding on the back of Mr. Tham's motorcycle yesterday and he was going no faster than 40 km/h most of the time. The rest of traffic was rarely faster, and this on one of Vietnam's larger highways.

Among the things you'll see on the roads in Vietnam are primarily motorcycles. Motorcycles with one person, two people, three people, four...maybe five. Motorcycles with trees mounted on the back. Motorcycles with refrigerators on the back (there's a home appliance store in Ninh Binh that we passed; they were loading at least one small-medium sized such appliance onto the bikes outside).

Some of the most startling things you see in Vietnam are mothers with their young children (sometimes toddlers or younger) simply sitting behind them on their motorcycles. I don't think it makes much sense to get upset or try to do something about it, so I kind of just acknowledge it. I guess I should probably treat it more seriously than I do, but there's so much different and completely weird about Vietnam that you can't be outraged every time someone puts a baby on a motorcycle.

I've never seen a crash in Vietnam; I took this as a sign that Vietnamese riders are just that good at avoiding others, but I've heard a couple terrible stories about collisions and the response Vietnamese sometimes give such accidents. Neither of these are happy stories.

Still, I've been in Vietnam almost two weeks, and haven't yet seen a single collision. It's not a perfect world, and Vietnamese probably aren't technically any better with motorcycles than anyone else in the world, but I think they do a good job. Biking through busy streets in Tam Coc isn't difficult. It's the occasional unpredictable movement that could end in disaster.

Motorcycles in Vietnam can be hilarious, though. It's like the melting pot of the most wonderful or stupid (we don't know yet) ideas of what to do with motorcycles.

Today, I was in a restaurant in Tam Coc, when a motorcycle with a couple of guys on it passed by; initially, it looked like the back guy was guiding a single dumpster behind them while they rode, but the fact was that both his hands were tied up leading two dumpsters behind him and his partner on the motorcycle.

Frequently you'll see a bike being led behind a motorcycle or one of the electronic bicycles they have here. I'll have to show you guys a photo of one of the electronic bikes they have here. They're kinda weird.

I bought a Tintin in Vietnam t-shirt in Hanoi, which was Medium, and yet too small for me (I almost couldn't get it off). I decided to try buying another one today in the storefronts in Tam Coc, and soon enough I found a store offering it. They had a "display model" mounted on the ceiling, hanging down, and then there were stacks of them back under the ceiling. I compared the shirt I got from inside to the one outside, thinking something was amiss, but they were close, if not identical. I paid (he offered the price of $5, I counter-offered 100,000 dong, not much less, and he smiled and agreed, simpering, "Alright, happy Tet for you."), left, and was on my way. I wanted the shirt then so I could take a shower and get my clothes cleaned.

When I arrived at the hotel again, I compared the two Tintin in Vietnam shirts I'd gotten, and then I found the difference. Not all merchandise in Vietnam is equal. In the case of the two shirts, the latter one is correctly sized and has a passable impression of Tintin and Snowy on it, but the one I purchased in Hanoi had a clearer, more accurate representation of the two, and had a single font for the text rather than two separate fonts. The difference is fairly stark when they're next to each other.

Further, the Lonely Planet guide I bought in Hanoi for the four countries initially on my itinerary, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, was photocopied. The quality was sufficient to read the text and probably use the guidebook, but the pages were in black and white, not color, as the Vietnam guidebook was.

The bottom line is that if you buy something in Vietnam, know what you're getting before you even start trying to barter. Once you start negotiating, the quality of the product is no longer in question in your mind, as you're experimenting and having fun haggling with a Vietnamese man. Whether the product is good enough or not isn't in question anymore.

You can definitely inspect merchandise on the street before buying it, and if you're not sure it's good, you can always walk away. Make sure you're getting what you want. If you're not, you should probably just walk, because I don't know how Vietnamese take lowballing.

That said, you can get good, real copies of Lonely Planet guide books or phrasebooks for really good prices, and sometimes you get a book which you don't really need the real copy for, as you'll read it once and give it away.

Anyway, I've still got something of a cold, despite a couple cups of ginger root tea and several servings of pho, some potato soup a couple of times, and the occasional pretty dang hot dish.

I'm well otherwise, and will try to keep you guys informed and updated.

As of now, plans are to remain here. Tet begins tomorrow, and hopefully I'll participate and enjoy it a ton. I've learned a bit about the customs during Tet, and I'll hopefully respect one or two of them.


!Noah!