By Dad
After a month of driving on the left side of the road (in taxis) with the driver on the right side…it was a shock to arrive in Vietnam this evening to be back on the familiar side of a car. It felt backward and disconcerting, as 40+ years of life experience had seemingly been erased in a month. We arrived in Hanoi after 10pm, so today’s blog was written by me instead of the kids.
There is not much to say about our day of travel, leaving Chiang Mai via a two-hour layover in Bangkok. There was not much food choice, so we had our first McDonald’s in almost 2 months and took a picture with a (very creepy) Ronald McDonald statue. The flights were on time and without incident (aside from the expected confusion of a foreign tourist in a place with few English words, or even Latin characters). It was refreshing to at least be able to read the lettering of signs once we deplaned in Vietnam, even if we don’t yet know the words. That said, the currency conversion is wild. Our Grab (taxi) ride to the Airbnb was pretty long…about 24 kilometers…and cost $328,000 dong. That sure sounds like quite a bit to spend on a cab…but in US dollars it is only about $13.
I feel like I should take this moment to list a few things that I found surprising in Thailand:
- No chopsticks. Apparently, we have all been unknowingly racist in assuming that all Asian food is eaten with chopsticks. Forks from now on at Thai restaurants!
- Pad Thai, my favorite Thai food in America, is never meant to be a spicy dish (sad) and is actually much better back home. I am not sure what the flavor here was (maybe a lot of shrimp paste?)…but I kept trying it all over the country and never found one I liked. That said…there is a lot of GREAT food in Thailand…but for me, not Pad Thai.
- I have always thought that Thailand is the place for the spiciest food on earth. It turns out that the food is not actually any spicier than back home (when requested), but the difference is that over here spicy is the assumed default unless you request it not to be. Also, they have some very small red peppers that are pretty darn hot!
- In Thailand, there is a 7-Eleven on almost every corner. They are more pervasive than Starbucks in the USA. This is a great feature, as they all have a novelty ice cream chest…which we all have enjoyed on many days. (Interestingly, there are NO 7-Elevens in the entire country of Vietnam…but they have CircleK.)
- The drivers are aggressive to a level that makes Houston look like a peaceful jaunt through the countryside. Cars and mopeds cut and merge and veer into and out of lanes (and non-lanes) with a fluid kamikaze motion…yet surprisingly, there is no honking. Back home, I would expect a nearly continual horn blow for even 1/4 of the interactions…but the roads are pretty quiet. This did not stand out until we got to Vietnam, where the driving is similar but the horns sound like NYC x20.
- There are SO MANY Buddhist temples (Wat). When we were in Chiang Mai, there are hundreds of temples. From our Airbnb, there were 3-4 within a 3 block radius. And they are all ornate beautiful works of art. It is in sharp contrast with the often run-down homes and businesses. Right next to buildings that (back home) would be condemned and torn down as a public nuisance or hazard, are glittering pristine temples. Almost as many as there are 7-Eleven.
- The people are all very polite and kind, but it is clear that English is not taught in schools here. We pretty much got by on homemade sign language.
- Thailand has a monarchy. We had no idea…but there is a King (and Queen). Their photos are displayed as huge billboards everywhere.
- The busy tourist season in Thailand is November-January. Anyone reading this who wants to come here…pick those months! It has been around 107-degrees pretty much every day for a month. This is NOT normal…we researched ahead of time and it should be much more tolerable 90s…but southeast Asia is having an “unprecedented heat wave” just as eastern Europe did last summer when we went there. Apparently we are heat magnets. That said, there is good air conditioning and we have been having a great time in spite of all the sweat.
- Sprite and Coke are both primarily the “sugar free” variety over here. These sodas are readily available, but always in their sugar-free form. There is also a lot of Fanta.
Ok…that about wraps it up for today. We plan to keep it pretty chill tomorrow…explore the new neighborhood and get our bearings…and then start actual tourism probably the next day.