Why do you travel? You want to experience the new things; you want to get away from the busy and chuffy life? You want to learn about the other culture? It does not matter what your reason why you are going to travel, you will still meet lots of new things which may shock you and one of the things is the culture.

First of all, from the point of view from a person who comes from a developing country, I was shocked when I came to New York. Everything here is totally different. They do not have any motorbike or even if they have, those motorbikes are much bigger than in Vietnam where I come from.

The first thing I shocked me is the traffic system. I come from the place where people say the traffic is the craziest in the world. However, I am used to it, I find it normal, and it is just different here. Everything is organized, everything is very fast. The cars here travel very fast, it is about 100 kilometers per hour while in Vietnam even on highway, cars travel at the speed of 60 kilometers and in the busy streets they travel only at 40 kilometers.

Also, in our country everything is messy, and we do not often follow the traffic rule that strict. People can cross the street even if we do not have crossing line. In our country, if people cross the street, other vehicle keep going as nothing happens. However, here if someone crosses the street, every vehicle will stop right away. It looks like they have problems. The first time I crossed the street, I was so surprised because I saw so many which were running stopped right away when they saw me. I thought maybe their cars had problems or anything like that.

Also, what surprises me is the cleanness of the streets. In our streets, we will see lots of trash or things like that along the way. People are eating, and then throw it right away on the street. People just do not care about their environment and act like that they will not be any problem out of them. However, here, I find people care more about their environment than ever. They eat, and then they put the can into the trash bin. I like it more than just throw them to any place on the street.

Secondly, I find the restaurant and markets here so different. In Vietnam, we have street life. You can buy anything you need on the pavement of the street, from grocery to food, from your house facility to anything. Whenever we are hungry and we need anything to eat, we just go out at the front of our gate, there are plenty of street restaurant and they are so cheap and delicious.

Also, for market, we can buy anything within 5 minute walk. Everything is very cheap and fresh. The fruit is sold within a day, the vegetable is also sold within a day. However, here is so different. I still cannot make myself used to the fast that we have to drive one hour to get to the market and usually the food here are frozen and we will have to buy food for a whole week, which means we will put them in a fridge for another week.