Eric in Viet Nam

.Welcome to my site.
This site will cover the duration of my trip to Viet Nam 15-12-2003 to 15-04-2004. I will be posting photographs of my trip and also stories of things that happen as I travel around... I will be doing quite a bit of travelling as one of the reasons that I am here is to take as many photographs as I can, but the main reason that I am here is to wait for my fiancée to finish her Law Degree in February then we are coming back to New Zealand to get married...

This is my second trip to Viet Nam, the first time I came here was to get engaged... I fell in love with Lê again when I came here, but I also fell deeply in love with this country, it is so warm and friendly and so beautiful and the food, wow the food is out of this world... Not only is it cheap it is probably amongst the healthiest food in the world... The doctor says that my cholesterol level has dropped, not that it was high to start with but the lower the better...

There are so many memories of my first trip to Viet Nam... the people, the food, the scenery, the heat but the one that is foremost in my mind as I write this is the TRAFFIC!!! Oh My God!!! the traffic is unbelievable... for a while I was almost to scared to cross the road... the traffic does not stop, and you just keep walking and it all goes around you... one of the tricks is to walk very deliberately and do not stop... and to remember to look... especially to be careful of the fact that the traffic is coming from a different way to what I am used to... because they drive on the other side of the road... just as you think you have a grip on it and you think you can see a pattern, it changes... hahaha... and then at night you think that it is easy because you can see the headlights, wrong... coz only half of them use headlights... wow... if I did not have Lê and Tùng to help me around I would have only seen half of what I saw coz I would be too scared to cross the road... but the biggest difference between Vietnamese traffic and New Zealand traffic is NO aggression... thats right there is none... all of the people just get on with it and give way to each other and it works... sure there are accidents... but the people get around with no big hassles, everyone seems to respect everyone else's space and just gives way... the drivers in New Zealand could sure benefit from a time in Viet Nam... it truly is great to watch, and 100% different to our way of driving...

There are many, many wonderful places to go in Viet Nam... some of my favourites are Hoan Kiem Lake or the Lake of the Restored Sword... it is Viet Nam's version of King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake... and then there is Ha Long Bay... which is a World Heritage Park and is incredibly beautiful... and of course Cat Ba Island... Cat Ba is an Island sort of like Waiheke Island where I come from in New Zealand that people go to for holidays... I will be going back to these and many other places during my second trip...