Vietnam adventures week one

Day 5 of our Vietnam adventure is coming to an end. The trip has been amazing so far. I am travelling through Vietnam with two of my roommates, Judith Calkhoven and Wendy van Donge. Our trip started on the 8th of July. Wendy and Judith travelled by train to the Schouten home town Alphen aan den Rijn where me and my mom waited for them in the car. From Alphen my mom drove us to Dusseldorf, Germany. After checking in our bags we waited for our first flight from Dusseldorf to Munich. There was no turning back. From Munich we travelled to Abu Dhabi and our last flight was from Abu Dhabi to Ho Chi Minh City. It sounds horrible but to be honest it wasn't that bad (probably because I slept for almost the whole way). At HCMC we had some problems. I wasn't always the best in math class but I was sure that 1+1+1=3, but here it didn't add up. We still had 3 girls, but only 2 backpacks. After the conclusion that one got lost we stepped in a cab and sang some karaoke with the cab driver. Nothing like singing I will always love you by Whitney Houston with three girls and one Vietnameze guy. Ho Chi Minh City Have you ever heard of the game frogger? If not, here is a short explanation: it's a game where a frog has to cross the road on a super busy street. There is very little space between the cars to cross but only one way to get from A to B. This is exactly how it feels like to cross the road in HCMC. There is no such thing as rules. Just find the right time to start moving and DONT STOP. Keep moving, the traffic will find a way around you. We went to the Ben Thanh market. Pretty amazing how many clothes they can fit in to such a small place. Here i bought a real fake north face day pack and managed to get the price down from 20 dollars to 13. If you like strange smelling and weird looking food than this is also the place to be. After the market we walked to the notre dame and to the central post office. Pretty impressive. So much walking really makes you hungry so we headed over to the mc donalds. A mc chicken has never tasted better than the one i had here in ho chi minh. In the evening we had some supper for 2 dollars a person. The the first day was over and it was time to sleep. At the hotel the nice young man gave us the great news that Wendy's backpack had arrived. So we were compleet and 1+1+1=3 again. On the second day in HCMC we went for a massage. This was a whole experience by it's self. I will spare the details but let's just say that I won't be going back to that place again haha. It was super cheap, but everything here is cheap so I don't know if that says anything. It's crazy how many scooters there are here. Every vietnameze person has a scooter, but i have noticed that only the parents wear a helmet.. If i had a kid I would make sure that my kid would have a helmet even if that means I wouldn't but here there are small children on scooters, even babies sometimes, without a helmet. Maybe it builds character. Oh and if you thought the correct amount of people for on a scooter was 2, you were wrong. The corect amount is 4. Hanoi Hanoi is a very different city compared to Ho Chi Minh. If i had to compare the cities with the vibe of a different one HCMC would be more New York and Hanoi would be more like Barcelona. It has a much more Vietnameze vibe to it. But the traffic is the same. Still scooters with 4 people, kids without helmets and 24/7 frogger marathon. We did a lot of things in Hanoi. We went to a few museums. The Vietnamese Women's Museum, Vietnam National Museum of History. Super crazy that the war took place here. Can't even start to imagine it. We walked back to the hotel through a park. The street life is very active here. Everybody is outside having fun even though the weather is really hot and makes you sweat while you're sitting. They roller skate, play soccer and badminton. There is also a weird kind of badminton that i have never seen before. You play it with your feet. The people wear special shoes for it too. Looks pretty cool, i would definitely like to try it before we leave. We also had some lunch in a french restaurant. I think it was pretty fancy because the people looked fancy and had expensive clothes on and the girls painted their face white. It's pretty funny how western people paint their face orange with foundation to look pretty en here they want to be as white as possible. On the second day we visited the temple of literature and got some ink in the evening after watching a water puppet show (don't worry mom, it's Henna). We are saying goodbye to Hanoi for now and are on our way to Halong bay, Cat ba island and Sapa for the next week.