Goodbye Vietnam

Today after nearly ten weeks I left Vietnam, I only intended to stay for one month so that probably tells you something about how much I love that country. If you ask people about places they'd go back to a fairly common response is that there are too many places to see to warrant going back anywhere. Vietnam however definitely makes my list of places to revisit, especially once they get the bullet train and you can travel from Hanoi to Saigon in 10 hours instead of 36!

There's far too many things to list that I'm going to miss but some of the random things that are popping into my head right now are;

• The amazing scenery from beautiful mountains to coastline and the MANY rice fields. So very green and I love all things green.
• The onezies that the ladies all wear. OK so they aren't really onezies and in fact would be better described as PJs. It seems wearing matching tops and bottoms is the thing to do. Well for the slightly middle aged to older lady anyway.
• The food. I could just leave it there really but to elaborate a bit as I'm good at waffling (no pun intended), I love how fresh and clean tasting everything is. That's kind of hard to make sense of but it's all the herbs and spices they use like coriander, mint, lemongrass and ginger. 
• Vietnamese coffee. Best. Coffee. Ever.
• How 'fruity' the fruit tastes. Like the bananas REALLY taste of banana and the mangoes REALLY taste of mango and well you get the picture. Makes our stuff seem like props that have been painted to look like fruit.
• That cheers sounds like chipmunk.
• Pho - Morning, noon or night it always tastes good.
• The youths (god I sound old!) who I met in various places along the way who were so keen to find out about where you were from and all about you and generally just to practice to their (very good) English. 
• Finding two other people who call 'genie trousers' 'poo trousers/pants' and doing lots of pointing and laughing. OMG people look in the mirror you actually look like you are wearing a giant nappy full of your own poo. Stop this MADNESS now. Although it did cause us many many a laugh. And not just localised to Vietnam, I know I haven't seen the last of these beauties. I also know it's bad to judge but sometimes you just can't help it and sometimes people really need a wake up call.
• That they actually wear those conical hats.
• That I got wear those conical hats.
• The handy carry handles on the big bottles of water - when it's hot you really want a big bottle to carry round and they have these little plastic handles around the top of the bottle. Not seen them anywhere else yet on my travels, come on people catch on.....
• Vietnamese sandwiches, OK so the French have some influence here with the baguettes and the pate but the rest of the filling is a mix of of a variety of vietnameseness. Herbs, salad, more meat, some kind of chili sauce, some kind of other sauce that I think is hot and sometimes a slice of cheese. They usually cost about 15,000-20,000 dong which is in the region of 50/60p and they are AMAZING. Generally speaking all the street food here is amazing.
• Same same, but different. 

A few things I wont miss, the hawkers (get them everywhere though), the various scams (get them everywhere though), the 'sleeper' buses and the hagglers. I suspect I haven't seen the last of a few of those things however.....

Perfect example of Poo Trousers. Nappy not required.