My girlfriend and I have been in Vietnam for 5 days now and the culture shock is still abundant.
We left our sleepy little town of East London, South Africa and traveled to Johannesburg for a 9 hour lay over before travelling to Dubai. We arrived in Dubai sleep deprived after flying through the night with no sleep and had 3 hours to find our terminal and boarding gate. After napping on our luggage, as us South Africans are always paranoid of theft, we boarded for Vietnam. We managed to get some sleep on this 8 hour flight and arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at about 8pm (Vietnam time). We got through customs without much hassle and proceeded to buy sim cards for cell network and Burger King - worst Burger King ever; but any food was good at this stage.
An Uber picked us up and took us to our hotel for the night. We stayed at The Airport Hotel and I highly recommend it as it was cheap, clean, comfortable, and close to the airport - both domestic and international (these are two different airports by the way). The next morning an Uber picked us up and took us back to the international airport. We were meant to be at the domestic airport to fly from Ho Chi Minh (SGN) to Vinh City (VII). Once we found this out we "amazing raced it" to the other airport about 1.2kms away with all our luggage loaded in trolleys. We eventually arrived and checked in at the right place as a "last minute passenger" (you get a sticker plucked on you) and proceeded to get rushed through to security to our plane.
You can imagine our relief when we finally sat on our flight to Vinh City knowing that we made it. We flew with Vietnam Airways and they were great.
We made it to Vinh City with all our luggage still intact and untouched ( we were worried about theft as always). The school I am working for was waiting for us at the entrance with name signs and excited smiles. They loaded us up into a new Ford Ranger and we started our one hour drive to Ha Tinh; our new home.
Upon arrival they took us to a small room with a bathroom, double bed and A/C - this description already makes it sound far to glamorous, but it was free. We showered and brushed our teeth and got ready for a Welcome Lunch, "Vietnamese style". We sat at a table with 4 ladies from the school and awaited the deputy and head academic managers of the school. They ordered 9 different meal which I thought would be a lot of food; boy was I wrong. Shortly after this, the academic managers arrived and the food arrived. The staff were very welcoming and pleasant and interacted with us professionally. They also didn't laugh at our poor chopstick skills. The food was a lot of smaller meals consisting of vegetables, tofu, a dissected frog, a dissected chicken (including head, eyes, feet, beak) and fish on a bed of veg. As our first Vietnamese meal it was definitely a doozi.
I'm going to sign off from here as this post is getting long - I'll post links to youtube videos soon!
using chopsticks is an art form.. ahha nah, just keep using it... you'll be pro in no time.
Haha! Thank you @foovler :D
My meals in Vietnam improved a hundred fold when I started ordering most of my meals without meat. The locals will look at you funny, but it will reduce the chances of finding strange animal parts in your bowl.
A lot of the food in Vietnam was good, but I hate the way they cut their meat. They mostly use big cleavers and just chop big chunks of animals into your bowl. I get grossed out by bones, ligaments, eyes, and organs, so removing the meat from my meals improved my culinary experience dramatically.
Have fun out there! I'm looking forward to reading about your life in Vietnam.
Edit: Don't forget to set your profile picture. It will help you get followers.
That's the route my girlfriend, Ashley, has taken! I am getting most of my nutrional protein in the form of boneless chicken breasts and eggs from a local upmarket supermarket near my school.
Thank you for the advice and tips!!
Sounds like an interesting adventure! Must be fantastic to experience first hand how different living standards are across the world. And hopefully you'll get better at using chopsticks as well! ;)