Vietnam travel tips

• Go to Saigon, Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Sapa, Nha Trang, Hue and Dalat if at all possible. Take the train from Saigon to Hanoi, there's great scenery of rice paddies and hills and buffalos.
  
• Don't drink the water or anything with ice, for this will end up with you hugging the toilet bowl, or worse, the squat toilet on the side of the road where the plumbing is a hole running down the mountain. FYI, a litre of water with one teaspoon of table salt and eight of sugar plus lime for flavour makes for a decent rehydration solution. Says Wikipedia, so it must be true.
  
• Speaking of which, always bring your own supply of tissues and toilet paper. And work on your thigh and ankle muscles, you'll need em for squatting.
  
• Do buy one of those face-mask type things that everyone wears. Helpful if you want to take a ride on a xe om ("hug taxi" - hop on the back of a motorbike and hold on for dear life. Quickest, cheapest, funnest, most lung-blackening and dangerous mode of travel). Also helpful if you're in the doctor's lounge in a hospital, and a senior surgeon is chain smoking in this small closed room with the windows shut, and you're too polite to leave. (PS. ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION!) If you're a smoker, this is your paradise.
  
• Avoid raw vegetables and seafood if you're careful. Do try some of the street foods like sticky rice and noodle soups.
  
• If you're on a tour and stop at a beach resort, remember to bring get your bathers from your suitcase, especially if the bus is parking 20 minutes away. Otherwise, an XXXL men's souvenir t-shirt will suffice, though beware of transparency and cling when wet. Whether you wear knickers with this ensemble is up to you - you need to make the choice between modesty in the ocean vs sitting on a bus for the next five hours with a wet bum - or commando. (hint: breezy!)
  
• If you're an Asian girl, be prepared to be stared at like you're some kind mutant freak because of your Australian Weetbix-and-Vegemite-fed height ("are you a basketballer?" at 165cm!) - and, alas, girth.
  
• If you're white, be prepared to be stared at like you're some kind of mutant freak...just because. And be prepared to be ripped off by every friendly-seeming local. There are actually different price lists printed for "international guests", and that's when they're being nice. Travel with a trusted local if you can. Take Vinasun taxis, they're the most reliable.
  
• When you're feeling like a stranger in a strange, busy, hot, dirty land full of skinny little people who speak a language that's half familiar and half gobbledegook (racistpunlol), whose culture seems alien, and you are reduced to nodding and smiling like a dimwit bobblehead doll...be reassured that some things are the same everywhere. Anatomy. Hospital politics. The fact that surgeons wear those bandanna-like caps in theatre, while nurses and others wear the much less badass, but much more hygienic shower caps. The questions general surgeons always ask post-op: "have you been eating? pooing? peeing?".
  
• If you're working in a hospital and you thought you knew Vietnamese, you don't. Buy a medical English-Viet dictionary. Curse yourself for learning a dead language for six years (no, not French! heh) instead of something useful. (ahh it was fun though)
  
• You may want to reconsider going to Vietnam for a rotation if your patership is a very visible dissident in exile, because your host's pathologically jealous and delusional husband may follow her to a (chaste) nocturnal meeting with your uncle and accuse him of bringing news from patership with whom she's (falsely) alleged to be having an affair. Othello may then raid all of his wife's emails and mobile phone, call up her family and colleagues to badmouth her, change all the phone numbers in the house so no one can contact her, and forbid you to stay with them for you are the spawn of That Man. Worst of all, poor Des can't leave because if she does, he threatens to denounce her to the cops for her (non-existent) political connection with said armchair revolutionary - and people have been imprisoned for less in this land of justice and freedom for all (*cough*). Seriously, one of patership's colleagues - an Australian citizen! - was recently hauled in for questioning. Consider writing to the Australian embassy to explain the situation in case Grand Frere decides to mess with you or Des for shits and giggles.
  
• An iPod or similar is a must if you're touring in a bus in which the driver plays Vietnamese folk music at full blast. Earplugs are recommended if you're staying in Saigon, because the blast of motorbike horns never stops, even in the middle of the night.
  
• Wear sunscreen. Don't wear any precious jewellery or carry a handbag - try putting your stuff in a strong shopping bag. Keep a sharp eye on your belongings when on the move.