This morning we caught our bus to Dong Ha - Vietnam which is near the DMZ (demilitarized zone) that used to separate North from South. Once we were in Dong Ha we booked our ticket North to Hanoi that night and wandered around while we waited for our night bus. Our first experience of Vietnam was quite overwhelming. There were thousands of motorbikes, a few cars trucks and bicycles. The general road rules here are that there are no rules except you must honk your horn as often as possible at everyone and even at nothing and you must talk really loudly!! As we wandered everyone stared at us, but we stared more as the women were all covered from head to foot with masks and long gloves as well as long pants and sleeves. They really don't want the sun to touch any part of them and it was quite a sight. After the initial shock of the noise and crowd we realised how well dressed these people were and how nice their scooters were. We also learnt that Vietnamese are quite quick to anger. Everything such a far cry from their chilled out Buddhist neighbours we'd just visited. We also had an encounter with some children begging. As we said, "No" and walked off and one little boys grabbed my butt so I scared them off by throwing rocks and was feeling quite flustered. Our night bus to Hanoi was almost 12 hours helped along by valium, but interrupted by the rest of the bus filling up at 10pm.About 15 Vietnamese people pushing and shoving each other and fighting over space to put their bags like an angry musical chairs session. Crazy! I was wondering how I would adjust to Vietnam, but Ben was just going with the flow like normal.
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