Kepfram & Ellie's Travel Journal

 Here are some things we'll miss:

• Public restrooms everywhere!
• Generally free, often with toilet paper, and occasionally with attendants
• All the unique coffee varieties 
• Besides the Robusta beans, which we think we'll continue to find in this region of the world, we've become enamored with ca phe dua (coconut coffee) & ca phe kem muoi (salted cream coffee)
• Daily soaking rains
• Not that rains are particular to Vietnam, but the rainy season is coming to a close, at least for this region of Southeast Asia, and there's something about being out in warm rain...
• Cycling on narrow cement paths through rice fields and coconut groves
• So many modes of adapted motor transport + so many disabled folks who appear to be gainfully employed (generally selling lottery tickets)
• Unfortunately, there are still 2nd and 3rd generations with disabilities related to Agent Orange exposure, and though it reflects a tragic history, many seem well integrated into society
• Motivational messages texted regularly to our Viettel phone number
• All the pre & primary schools painted with a similar color palette to the set of Squid Game
• The Roman alphabet! 
• While Arabic numerals are commonly used on money and in daily life in Cambodia, Lao, & Thailand, their local scripts predominate (even though vowel accents/tones are beyond us here in Vietnam and we've learned very few words/phrases, we at least can identify consonant sounds!)
• Understanding the money...
• Not that exchange rates are truly hard to grasp intellectually, but getting the feel for ₫25,000 being about $1, and calculating therefore how an item fit into our budget, took a while....
• Inexplicably/surprisingly free public transit in HCMC (aka Saigon)
• (As we said in a previous post, it's just a promotion until the end of the year, but in exchange for tracking travel data with the pattern of use for tap cards, we have incurred no charges!) 
• Actually having public transit!
• Almost ubiquitous WiFi
• In restaurants, shops, medical facilities, almost everywhere we go has an open hotspot or will give you network access. Even the buses in HCMC have WiFi! (We only have 1 SIM card between us, and hotspotting kills the phone battery, so even though data is so cheap in Vietnam that we could use our own hotspot all day, we're happy not to need to!)
• Dancing!!
• In Saigon we finally found a swing dance community (with dancing twice a week 😀), and it's been really fun to dance again and to meet/hang out with local people - we won't find the dance community again until Bangkok....

Labels: Musings, Vietnam