When visiting Vietnam....

Galloping water buffalo and other hazards best avoided
Saturday November 18, 2006
By Audrey Young

The New Zealand Embassy in Vietnam publishes a very detailed and colourful cautionary guide for New Zealand visitors to Hanoi.

As well as explaining that 29 offences are punishable by death by firing squad - including robbery, fraud, drugs and embezzlement - it says some executions are carried out using remote controlled heavy-calibre machine guns.

Included in its other cautions:

* Visitors are not permitted to invite Vietnamese nationals into their hotel rooms. Visitors are not allowed to stay with a Vietnamese family unless they have obtained prior permission from the local authorities.

* In central Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city there are some traffic lights and the traffic sometimes even obeys them - but not always. A red traffic light is considered only a "suggestion" to stop.

* The speed limit in Hanoi is 30km/h for motorbikes and 60km/h for cars. Water buffalo, horse-drawn carts and cyclists please themselves, but we suggest you stay well out of the way of any galloping water buffalo.

* Police do have some hand-held speed radar units and sometimes use paint ball guns to tag motorbike speedsters for later apprehension.

* During the average daily rush hours, every kilometre length of sealed road in Hanoi will contain 435 cars and 4520 motorbikes. On average there are 48 fatalities and 117 head injuries every day.

* Visiting journalists and reporters must be licensed. Reporting and interviewing without a licence are breaches of public security and the penalties are severe.

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Hysterical! I certainly would not want to visit that country without reading that first! :o

Can you imagine police firing paintball guns onto speeding motorcyclists here? (Ouch!).
:)