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First we were very afraid of the horrible traffic here in Vietnam. Thousands of motorbikes are on the roads and whole families take place on it. It is no problem for them to sit with 4 or 5 persons at the bike and circle nearly relaxed trough the traffic chaos. In the large cities there are more motorbikes than space on the roads. If they are not constantly driving around, the bikes are directly parked in the living room or on the sidewalk in front. Most of the sidewalks here are parking places for the lots of motorbikes. For the petrol, there are everywhere odd filling stations. 

Vietnam is a great paradise for fruit lovers. Here grows nearly everything that we can by at home very expensive at special fruit shops or markets. Now in March and April it was harvest time for the dragon fruit which grows on a kind of cactus and is plant on large fields. It tastes wonderful, like between Kiwi, Mango and pear. Of course, there are also all other tropical fruits, too like pineapple, Jackfruit, Durian, star fruit, Mangos and naturally bananas those are green, but although tasting wonderful.

The whole life takes place in or on the roads and sidewalks. Everywhere you can find small "mobile kitchens” and food stalls, with its little plastic chairs, serving usually the national meal called "POH". It is a noodle soup with beef and is offered the whole day/night. But also nearly everything else which you can eat is offered, too. Generally here in Vietnam the food is very good, but not as spicy and hot as in Thailand. It has more Chinese characters. Here the people eat their meal with chop sticks and in addition they drink the really good national beer.

In complete Vietnam you can find numbers of art galleries. Wherever you stay in Saigon, Hanoi or Hoi An everywhere there are small galleries which offers beautiful paintings of young Vietnamese artists. The motives show usually the country life, sometimes modern, sometimes traditionally, everyone can find here its favourite painting to reasonable prices, between 50 and 300 US dollar. We saw the most beautiful paintings in Hanoi and Ho An, but did not buy one, because we thought that at the end of our journey, in Saigon, we could by such paintings, too. But this was wrong, in Saigon there are also nice paintings, but the colours and motives were completely different.

You must really buy always everything immediately! We were very angry about our stupidity!

Beside the normal galleries there are also Copy- galleries, where paintings of all famous Artists are offered. These paintings are simply "legally" copied by the original. Here you can find the paintings from Mona Lisa, the sunflowers from Van Gogh or in addition, paintings of Monet and so on. This was very interesting.

For us, the Vietnamese women are the most beautiful women in Asia. They are like porcelain, charming and gracefully, not least by wearing the Ao Dai. This elegant silk dress consists of two pieces, a trouser and long shirt, which is highly closed and 2 long slots at the sides. The Ao Dai is not only the school dress, it is also a festival dress or a dress for all the day, too. We liked it very much!

For many families, particularly in the country, the production of fumigating sticks is an additional income.

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