Arriving in Ho Chi Minh: First impressions and culture shock

Arriving in Ho Chi Minh

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh last night. The city is too hot and humid. It is also incredibly busy and loud. Arriving from a quiet village in Canada where we do not hear a car honking, to Ho Chi Minh is quite an experience. To be honest, I panicked multiple times this morning when we went out for a walk, but I guess I will get used to it after a while.

Keeping Eastern Time schedule

Gab is working in the Eastern Time so he has to function based on that schedule, and I decided to keep the same rhythm as him to keep him company and to encourage my man 🙂 Also , keeping the Eastern Time rhythm will prevent going through a severe jetlag when we get back home. So everything sounds a bit unnatural when we are not following the local life rhythm, but we will probably get used to that too.

Speaking of jetlag, since we couldn't sleep well during our flight to Japan and then to Vietnam we are so disoriented. Gab sleeps very well, and he is already recovered, but I am a terrible sleeper and I am missing hours and hours of sleep. As I am writing these lines, I feel almost sedated by the melatonin naturally produced by my body. So I am resisting sleeping a lot now to keep the rhythm of BC, and I find it tough. So right now, a part of my brain is off and on top of that, I have a hard time focusing because Gab is talking to me nonstop :))) so keeping my focus to write is even more challenging.

Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh: Two different worlds

One thing that has been on my mind since my flight yesterday from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh: The flight was about 4 hours, but it felt like we left one world and landed in a completely different one. These two countries have nothing in common. The culture, the way people treat themselves and others, is so, so far apart.

What is normal?

Here is a concrete example: Today we went to a supermarket and on the way out, there were so many scooters parked at the entrance that you literally could not get out. There was only one way to exit the shop and that was to jump over the scooters but then on the other side, was a steep drop leading to a parking lot so it was dangerous to jump. I was small so I could manage to get out without jumping but this situation could probably be avoided, yet they did not seem to care about that, not in a bad sense. I am not trying to say that Vietnamese people are careless, no. My point is that they are so used to this kind of thing that it is considered normal.

Anyway, we decided to come to Vietnam because we heard beautiful things about it. It is a different world and this difference can be valuable. This is another way of looking at situations, and not every culture has the same solution to certain challenges. This is a difference in mindset, both cultural and individual mindset. And that is interesting.

Discipline while travelling

All right, now I will try to slow down a bit before I drain all my brain power. I would like to follow a couple of videos in my online course on portrait photography. I need to finalize my favourite courses before my free LinkedIn Learning subscription is over ;)

Have a good day or night, everybody, depending on where on this planet you are right now.

Best