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COMMUNICATIONS |
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Mail can take anywhere from four days to four weeks in or out of
Vietnam; from major towns, eight to ten days is the norm. Most main post
offices are open daily 7am-8pm; some may close at lunch while others
stay open until 10pm. Rates for all post office services are posted up
in the main halls. Poste restante services are now available in major
towns, including Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang, Hué, Hoi An and Da Lat.
Mail is held for between one and two months. If you want to leave a
message for someone in poste restante, you have to buy a local stamp .
When sending parcels out of Vietnam take everything to the post office
unwrapped and keep it small: after inspection, and a good deal of form-filling,
the parcel will be wrapped for you. Some parcel counters are only open
in the morning and note that you'll need your passport. Surface mail
takes between one and four months. Receiving parcels is not such a good
idea. Some parcels simply go astray; those that do make it are subject
to thorough customs inspections and import duty.
International calls are best made from the post office; they cost $3-5
per minute, with cheaper rates from Mon-Sat 11pm-7am, all day Sunday and
on public holidays. To call abroad from Vietnam, dial 00 + country code
+ area code minus first 0 + number. There's no facility for
reversed-charge calls but you can almost always get a " call-back " to
the post office you're calling from, for the price of a one-minute call.
In theory you can dial abroad direct from a public telephone, but
they're usually unbearably noisy. Calling direct from hotel rooms costs
at least an extra ten percent and there's a minimum charge even if the
call goes unanswered. At a few luxury hotels, and at major post offices,
it's now possible to use chargecards , such as AT&T Direct, billed to
your home account at less extortionate rates, though at present only the
USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore and Korea are signed up.
Long-distance domestic calls are best made from the post office; cheap
rates apply between 10pm and 5am. There's a three-minute minimum charge
for local calls made from a post office or phone box, but in theory
they're free from private phones (including hotels and restaurants). The
better hotels should have up-to-date directories; otherwise, try asking
in the post office, or calling general enquiries number (tel 108 or
116). Public phones (all card phones) are only found in the main cities.
Phone cards (international, $15 or $30; domestic, $3-5) can be purchased
at the post office.
International and domestic fax is available at many hotels, but cheaper
at post offices, which charge per page. Both hotels and post offices
charge for receiving faxes on your behalf ($0.50-1 per page); post
offices will deliver them to your hotel (if specified on the fax) for no
extra charge.
In Vietnam you can connect to the Internet - and your Hotmail account or
equivalent - from a growing number of travellers' cafés in major tourist
destinations.
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