1. Always take a spare inner tube and some tyre levers when you are motor-biking somewhere remote.
2. The Vietnamese people are generally incredibly friendly and helpful, provided you are prepared to smile and engage and behave respectfully.
3. Two very useful hand signs. When a Vietnamese person sticks their hand out to you, palm down, and flaps their fingers it only looks as if they are waving you goodbye. In fact they are saying ‘come here’. Yes, very confusing. The other gesture is even more useful to know and was taught to me by a nice chap from Hong Kong on the bus from Saigon airport the very first day I arrived in Vietnam. If you splay your fingers out and wiggle your hand (i.e. thumb and little finger in opposite directions), it feels as if you are saying ‘Not sure, I’ll have to think about that. Maybe.’ To a Vietnamese person, however, it means simple ‘No thanks,’ which is a very useful substitute for having to speak every time someone offers you their motorbike taxi, a rickshaw, a massage etc.
4. Too many people in the world have empty mindless jobs: security guards, roadside stall holders with no customers, bellboys, but more than this, the poor unemployed who sit around all day with nothing to do. Hell on earth.
5. Driving in Vietnam is not for the faint-hearted. There are no road rules and precious little signage.
6. Having been in Vietnam for a while one sees more clearly than ever that British health and safety concerns are waaay over-the-top (give someone a little bit of power and by god they will be sure to use it) but Vietnam could probably do with a few more concerns of its own.
7. UK travel advice can also be a bit hysterical. When I think of all the things I was warned could happen to me! Maybe they all are possibilities, but here in Vietnam life is more concerned with probabilities. In any event, in future I shall be more wary about buying expensive anti-malarial medication. I have been in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for 3 months and have not had one mosquito bite. Not one. Yet I paid £212 for anti-malaria pills and a further £140 for two injections against mosquito-borne Japanese encephalitis.
8. Vietnam is a beautiful and varied country, with cold wet mountains and steamy hot jungles, filthy noisy cities, serene villages and long beaches. There is so much more to explore.
9. The Vietnamese population has a lot to learn about energy conservation and pollution. There appears to be no consciousness that littering ultimately destroys one’s own environment. People commonly chuck their rubbish (eh, vomit on one occasion) out the window, over the side of the boat, into the sea or wherever they happen to be standing, without a thought. It is a great shame.
10. Noise pollution is not even on the radar. One day there will be legislation to cause buses and lorries to drive more safely and less noisily and there will even be a ban on using horns at night. But this is a long way off. People in Vietnam rarely seem to mind how loud everything is.
11. Speaking of which, hotels and guest houses could be much improved if they had less muzak and vacuous pop music blaring everywhere and almost all the time (and if they could just give some thought to room lighting which is usually hopeless).
12. The concept of going for a walk appears to be entirely foreign to the Vietnamese who could never understand why I might prefer to walk when I had a motorbike to carry me. When I explained that in Ang (England) we sometimes enjoy going for walks in the hills on the weekend, I was met with frowning incredulity.
13. Indochina’s history is as brutal and complicated as Europe’s with centuries of territorial wars.
14. The food in Viet Nam is wonderful, maybe a bit high on protein, but generally delicious. And the fruit…!
15. In future I shall be more careful about the massages I have, and will do my best not to gate-crash funerals.
16. Being away from ‘normal life’ perhaps always allows a person to see it more clearly and appreciate how lucky they are. I suppose, more than anything, this is what I was looking for in going away for such a long time – to be able to see and feel again, to notice the everyday taken-for-granted aspects of my life in England, things that have become routine or familiar. That and the time to think. It is obviously hard to perceive the blindingly obvious. But there is one thing about which I have no illusions – I am incredibly fortunate to have had this extraordinary adventure.
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