Third day in Vietnam, another guided tour. Despite the tour we are going to attend it is a planned touristic visit, Vietnam can surprise you in ways you do not expect, as for instance in our guide.
This good smiling easy going guy make the foreigners call him Kimi and his figure looks more like a comedian than a tour guide, although he is very well prepared.
Once upon a time there was the communist Vietnam. At the time he was studying the Vietnamese government used to financially support education, and so Kimi reached and overcame exams and interviews to go to Australia and do trainings and the mandatory hours of flight and eventually officially become a pilot.
Everything was ready, but then government changed its mind turning into a wide spread private school education system and asked for a very high fee to get the license: a prohibitive amount for any Vietnamese, therefore Kimi had to give up his dream.
After a brief tour in the vowing pagodas we go to Tam Coc, a village where nature is untouched. Here, inhabitants lead tourists on the river on small boats made of metal sheets in groups of three per boat.
Once back in the village, among local people, tourism is still perceived as something new and no one has anything to claim when we enter in the slum of the local population that is mainly composed by farmers. Welcoming us there are only barefoot children wearing western football club jerseys, their mothers and grandmothers smiling at us and some cocks here and there moving between the ever-present motorcycles.
All around paddies and green mountains.
Vietnam is a nice place.
from Venice, Italy, but currently in Rayong, Thailand
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