Goodbye Vietnam

Goodness, I can't believe I've been here for a month! I was so petrified of Vietnam when I first arrived and now I've grown accustomed to the noise, hassles, suicidal cyclists--I think I'm going to miss the chaos a bit, it makes life exciting despite the stress. I made a list of things I want to remember about Vietnam since there's so many things that I observe while traveling that I'll probably forget. A small sample includes:

--How moto drivers say "yes yes" to wherever you say you want to go and then drive a block and ask a buddy what the hell you're talking about
--In restaurants, food comes out at different times, people just eat whenever they get the food
--The negotiating--they give you a price, you say 1/3, they laugh at you in disgust, you walk away, they grab you back and negotiate better.
--The bathrooms are horridly made, with the shower over the toilet and incredibly slippery floors
--Things are horridly misspelled on the menu so you have to use your imagination to realize that "eutard affle" is "custard apple".
--The lack of copyrights so its not common to see a good shop or restaurant with a knock-off copy next to it with the exact same name.

In any case, I've been surprised that I will miss Vietnam. My last days have been great, I went to Dalat, a french town in the mountains (only place in Vietnam under 90 degrees), where I went abseiling down a huge waterfall and went with an "Easy Rider" to tour the countryside. The Easy Riders are guides in Dalat who give you great tours to small less touristy niches, all on the back of a motorcycle and for a cheap price. They are quite funny informal guys, though they are pretty aggressive in following you around town trying to get you to sign up, but it really was worth while to do.

I went to a silkworm farm/factory, vegetable/flower farms, coffee plantation, waterfalls, pagodas, and "Crazy House", a hotel that is like Gaudi on crack. My tour got combined with another girl's which was nice, so I got to do it all with an icelandic girl Sara, who has proclaimed herself to be the future president of Iceland in 16 years. She and I had a great time and the guides, Hip and An were really interesting. They were surprisingly quite giddy about the US since they loved that "Clinton opened doors to Vietnam, business and money come! Good for Vietnam! I want Hilary Clinton now for president!". I had to disappoint him by giving him the news about Obama.( "Always men, we need women for change!"). It was interesting to their stories, like one of the guides had fought with the US in the war and then was sent to a "re-education" camp for two years. In any case, it was one of those days where I wanted to remember every detail, good times!

Here are pics:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2083567&l=b3d63&id=1700835