Vietnam 9: A quick list of Vietnam thoughts

There have been a few thoughts that I'd been wanting to write about, regarding our experiences in Vietnam.  I will write this as bullet points.

-People climbing stalagmites.  In the cave that we visited by boat, there was an instance where two women climbed up pretty high on a group of stalagmites in order to take a picture.  They were promptly spotted by the guards and told to come down.  I said to Stephanie fairly loudly, "What a bunch of fucking morons."  Someone must have been from that group nearby had heard me.  He explained to me, in good English, how they had not known, because this was their first time in such a place.  He continued by saying that I had been disrespectful.  I admitted that I should not have spoken that way, and apologized.  I had no interest in escalating.

Here is the problem though.  Do they not have common sense?  Stalagmites and stalactites take thousands of years to be created.  Does it make sense to climb on them just so some idiots could post a picture to their moronic social media page?

Should signs be put up everywhere, in order to state what should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain? Having signs everywhere would completely ruin the experience.

It has become so common that hoards of tourists just go to spots of natural beauty and just destroy the place, with their pollution and blatant disregard.  I read recently that after only a few years of popularity, Iceland has already had to consider either limited the amount of tourists or levying a heavy tax to pay to control them.  None of this damage is necessary.  People just have to have regular common sense and stop only thinking about themselves.  And fuck those selfie sticks.  They should be banned.



-  We saw a man riding a bicycle selling donuts.  This, in and of itself, is not so unusual considering what else we have seen being put on bikes here.  What was unusual was that he had a portable loudspeaker repeating loud messages about these wares, reminding us of what you'd hear from an ice cream truck in the US.



-Prices of museums in vietnam tend to be either 30,000 or 40,000 dong per person, not counting discounts to children.  This is the equivalent of $1.30 and $1.76 respectively.  This is the way to do museums.  Additionally, prices of drinks and museum stores are not inflated beyond what they would cost anywhere else in town, including convenience stores.  This is refreshing, both literally and figuratively.



-Competition next door.  What we started noticing in Hue was that shops of the same type are often grouped together.  It is not uncommon to see 7 shoe stores literally right next to each other.  See a luggage store?  You are in the luggage store part of town.  See crafts?  This is the crafts part of town.  When asking our guide Lee about the logic behind it, he explained that Vietnamese like to do this so that people know where to come in order to find a certain item.  I guess that kind of makes sense...