Vietnam

[Glaucus]

What an interesting place that is. A rich and turbulent history and beautiful culture with some pretty tasty food to boot. I'm sure it would be an interesting place to visit especially since I've been obsessed with the Vietnam war and have watched many movies and played many games dealing with it. Unfortunately I doubt I'll have that opportunity to do so any time soon, but my sister is currently on her way there (in fact, she's waiting for her connecting flight in Vancouver as I type). It's not really a vacation though, she's going there to volunteer her skills and knowledge as a PICU doctor. I can't wait to hear back from her when she gets there and I hope she takes some cool photos. From what little I know of Vietnam, it's been going through a bit of an economic (r)evolution similar to China. And from what I can tell, it's a fairly safe place to go to, the most one should fear is being robbed or having a purse snatched (meaning, it's probably safer then most majors US cities ). In fact my biggest worry is that something stupid will go down between the Koreas, but overall I'm not worried as she's traveling there as part of a group, one of which is a Vietnamese expat.

Anyone here ever been to Vietnam?

 

[Robert]

I've never been beyond the North-Western segment of the map, i.e. Europe, Canada, USA.

One of my best friends now lives in Cambodia and he's travelled through a fair bit of Vietnam. Said it was a beautiful country.

 

[Glaucus]

Just got word from my sis. She tells me the conditions in the picu are a bit shocking. Not enough ventilators so a grandmother of a baby girl had to repeatedly squeeze a bag to pump air into her grand child's lungs to keep her alive. Basics like pillows and blankets and even food is provided by the patients family. But they do have meds, so that's good I guess. And I always thought communist countries had good health care. But she tells me Vietnam isn't all that communist, you need private health care insurance and the kids in the hospital are all from "rich" families. The poor outside the cities don't even bother with hospitals. It seems worse then I thought in that respect. Aside from that, the fruit there is delicious.