I stayed in Vietnam's most cosmopolitan city for only a short time. But while there was overwhelmed nonetheless. There are traffic lights and walk signals but no arrows or anything and few traffic lights at that. Many people cross the street against traffic on the condition that you walk slowly and make eye contact with the various cars, taxis, cyclos and mototrbikes all racing down the streets. They avoid you and you walk slowly. It was a little scary at first but one gets the hang of it pretty easily. Apparently accidents happen a lot, but I've only seen one so far and it was far from the city.
The weather was hot, humid and dry. There's every kind of food you could want and motorbike drivers are on every corner offering you a ride.
In a sentence it was maximum Asian madness. Lots of traffic, lots of people, lots of scents from everywhere and nowhere all at once, lots of stray dogs all around, lots of vendors, lots of tempting food and mostly friendly people who are too busy to care much about another foreigner walking down their streets.
I feel it was as warm a welcome to the region as one could ask for.
Photos to come soon!
