Good morning, Hanoi

[klongmaster]

Cheers for the info Bruce...

Note you have to get a viss before you arrive - you can't get one at the airport.

Because some of our members are Scandas it's worth noting that

Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish citizens will be exempted from requiring visas when they enter, exit or stay in Viet Nam for less than 15 days

.

[Up2U]

I'm living and working in the South of Vietnam.

Arriving in HCMC I was supposed to be met by a taxi from my (previously booked) hotel, but gave up after an hour or more. Very luckily a Japahese guy, working in HCMC, was waiting fior some of his senior people to arrive and he took pity on me and explained the score, told me what to pay the taxi, phoned my new employer and got the name of the hotel and address, so on. But I still had an argument with the taxi driver who had started at US $ 20 (No, put on the meter) went to US $ 15 (no, put on the meter) and we eventually got to the hotel for US $ 12 (by the meter). He had driven around a bit, but not too much, so I paid that US $ 12. He then got annoyed that there was no tip, but the hell with it. Let him get pissed.

Here in Ca Mau things are different - seem to be no scams - or they are very, very clever. Bread rolls I buy hot from the oven ae the equivalent of 2 baht (1,000 VN Dong). Down the road are filled sandwiches (crisp rolls - not sliced bread) of pate, chicken, assorted cut meat, tuna, etc., at around 15 baht each. In Pattaya the same thing in Friendship costs 65 baht.

I have a good Western-style meal most evenings with a beer or two for about 300 baht. Internet cafes I used before my computer was set up cost 1,000 dong (2 baht) for about 10 minutes.

But we are having power cuts for up to 12 hours a day on alternate days at the moment. There is a distinct lneed for power here, which we are trying to fill. Yesterday (Sunday) even the TV was off for the day because they obviously didn't have a back-up generator.

On Saturday Vietnam put a satellite into orbit, but they didn't say whose rocket they used (probably Russian, maybe French).

With regard to traffic, yesterday I was counting cars outside the restaurant while I was dining. One truck, 303 motorbikes, one car, about 35 motorbikes, one more car and approx. 350 motorbikes until a truck came along. So here the proportion is nearly 700 motorbikes to four closed-vehicles. And probably 100 push-bikes in the same time.