Fun facts about Vietnam

Back in Australia since Saturday morning. Don't know if I like it. Vietnam was as perfect as it could be, which is quite impressive considering the class I travelled with... Some of the reasons I actually had a great time are the good Vietnamese guide, the teacher from our university college in Norway who came all the way to Vietnam to be with us, and the cool Vietnamese students who helped us every day.

During my stay in Vietnam I've done a lot of observations. And our guide Dong, who travelled with us half of the time, had a lot of interesting facts that he shared with us. I liked listening to him, but travelling in Vietnam was exhausting, so unfortunately I often fell asleep on the bus while he was talking. But I've still managed to make you a list of fun facts about Vietnam:

- Chaos in the streets! Motorbikes and scooters everywhere. One, two, three or four passengers, but never more than two adults:

- Everybody has a hand placed over their horn. If there's somebody in their way, they toot. If there's nobody in their way, they still toot. Just to say "Here I am, move away!". But since everybody does it, nobody pays attention anymore.
- You need a licence to drive a motorbike/scooter, but nobody's got one.
- We crossed many of these streets. Without traffic lights. A wonder nobody got hurt:

- It's common to eat dog and cat meat. But you cannot eat dog meat in the first ten days of the month because it brings bad luck the rest of the month. But if you eat it in the end of the month it brings good luck for the next month (I never stop getting surprised over what some people actually believe in...). Dog meat is never eaten during summer because it makes you warm.
- English language skills are poor. Very poor.
- We always brought our hotel's address with us, because if we tried to ask for the way in English, nobody would understand.
- The first thing I did on Vietnamese ground was exchanging Australian dollars for Vietnamese đồng. I got 3.500.000!:

- A taxi costs less than 1 NOK per minute. The most we ever paid for a taxi was 135.000 đồng (about 5 €) for 45 minutes.
- People eat their meals on the street or sidewalk. When they own a shop it closes late, so they don't go home and cook dinner, they just eat it on the sidewalk outside their shop while still being at work.
- Noodlesoup can be eaten for every meal, just like bread in Norway.
- Other normal food is rice, spring rolls, seafood (tried my best to like it, but I didn't succeed), chicken, beef, fruit for dessert and other desserts that look like jelly and tasted very jukky. My favourite in Vietnam was vegetable spring rolls:

- Desserts can often have green bean or rice flavour. We bought ice cream with these flavours, which doesn't taste so bad:

- It's very hard to learn Vietnamese. It isn't related to any other language. We've had two lectures about Vietnamese language, but the only words I remember are "thank you" (cảm ơn), "noodles" (phở), "my name is..." (tên tôi là...) and "hello" (xin chào). A vowel can have six different tones, so the word "ma" can be said in six different ways with six totally different meanings. Help!?

- Vietnam has their own version of the latin alphabet because Portuguese missionaries thought it was easier than the Chinese-like script. The letters f, j, w and z are not in use. See the whole Vietnamese alphabet here.
- Vietnamese people call themselves "children of dragon and fairy".
- There's not much sun in Hanoi because the air is polluted from millions of motorbikes. The population of the capital city is somewhere between 3 and 7 million, but most sources say 6,5. EDIT: After some research for my essay, I found out it's 3 million.
- Fishing and seafood is an important income for many people.

- Việt = the people of Vietnam, Nam = south. Vietnam = land in the south that belonged to the Vietnamese people.
- Hà = river, Nội = inside. Hanoi = city inside/surrounded by the river (the Red River)
- In the North of Vietnam, for example in Ha Long Bay,  the tide comes and goes only once a day. I don't think this happens anywhere else in the world.
- There are three skinny things in Vietnam: the people, the houses, the map.

- Men don't get much facial hair. They have it only on their chin and upper lip, but very thin. Read this funny story (the rest of this blog is quite good as well).
- Schools close at 5 degrees celcius. They don't have heaters, and they're not prepared for cold temperatures at all.
- In Hanoi you can get fluffy egg coffee. I didn't have the chance to try it, but I wish I had, because it sounds good. When I googled it, there seems like there's something called Norwegian egg coffee as well, but we don't drink this in Norway. It's something that was brough to the US by Norwegians around 100 years ago.
- You should always bring toilet paper when going somewhere. If you're unlucky, which can happen very often, there's no paper when you go to the toilet.
-Vietnamese people love taking pictures with white tourists! Here with Kristina:

And here with me and some other tourist. The Vietnamese were wearing a national costume because it was their graduation day:

Here are the pics I wanted to put in my last blog post, but my tablet refused. Asus Transformer Pad TF300T = not my best friend. I had to go to the library and use a good old computer with Windows to upload the pics. This was my day six:

View over Hanoi from 10th floor at the Foreign Trade University:

Overweight Mona Lisa:

I wanted to buy this painting! <3 But I couldn't, so instead I post it here for Thomas:

Sweet Anh helped us with our christmas shopping when trying to bargain a good price. But not only that, she is also very funny to hang out with. Hope to see you again! Here's a normal sized Norwegian and a normal sized Vietnamese at a restaurant. Some difference in body size, yes!:

Beautiful red lanterns outside almost every shop and restaurant:

The sweetest hotel security guards ever shared their food with me (if you ever go to Hanoi, stay at An Hung Hotel!!). Delicious cheese sticks, Vietnamese fast food:

Bought this supercool owl necklace at the weekly night market for 110.000 dong. Helps me remember what time it is at home <3: