An interesting thing about Vietnamese culture is that fact that marriage at a young age is expected. Many times while I have been here I have been asked...."you married"? No? "you have boyfriend"? "why you no married"? "How old you"? "31 - and you no married"? "where your boyfriend"? "why not he marry you"? And yesterday I was told that I was an old maid and if were Vietnamese I would practically be shunned for not being married with children at the ripe old age of 31. Although the same guy who said this to me also asked if it were legal for me to live with my boyfriend/partner without being married. When I said - yes, of course - he then said - "oh wow - I move to your country". According to this guy if you are caught living with your partner without being married you and your family receive a huge fine. I guess that's an incentive for marrying young!
Anyways - yesterday I took a tour to an area in north eastern Vietnam called Perfume Pagoda. It was a great day with beautiful scenery! To get there I traveled by car about 2 hours outside of Hanoi and then took a paddle boat about an hour on the river. We ended up on some island that is a major tourist attraction for local Vietnamese. Thousands of people go there every day to see the Buddhist shrines - which are actually located inside of a cave on top of a mountain. It was pretty cool to be amongst the locals. I did see some pretty DISGUSTING skinned animals though. They were hanging all over the place. Some of the animals included squirrel and these small jungle/forest dear and one animal that looked kind of like a lemur. I have no idea what it was. I guess the locals go to these restaurants and buy chunks of the animals - they cook 'em up and serve them right there. (I'm a bit queasy thinking about it).
Today I took the walking tour of Hanoi - this is one crazy city. I wonder how many pedestrians are hit by cars and bikes in this city. I have a feeling it's quite a few every day. I lost count of how many times I have almost been hit by a moving vehicle. Today this car almost hit me in the cross walk and then had the audacity to honk at me. I had to hold back my normal response to such an act. Although if looks could kill he would be very dead! Saigon also has really crazy traffic but it's more organized and people seem to be very focused, whereas the drivers in Hanoi don't pay any attention - they eat, talk on the phone, smoke, etc. They completely expect the pedestrians to jump out of the way at the last moment.
Oh by the way - finally figured out the ATM issue. I guess I wasn't using the right cash machines (I tried 4 completely different machines and none of them worked). I called the bank and they said everything was right on their end. I finally found a Citibank and the card ended up working. It was sooo nice to see the money come out. It is not a comfortable feeling being in a foreign country with limited money! I took out 4 million Dong so I'm set for the rest of the week...yay!
Enough for now...tomorrow I'm headed off to Halong Bay for a night on a junk boat! Very excited!
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