Unforgettable experience of Vietnamese tourists in Cuba, scarce and expensive goods

Traveling alone to Cuba is not as difficult as rumored, just have good preparation of the schedule, familiarize yourself with the dry food so you can wander around.

Cuba has had internet since 2013, but its infrastructure has not been developed synchronously, even Havana, not all households have internet installed. If in Vietnam visitors easily connect to free wifi, in Cuba, it is a luxury service.

During my backpacking days in Havana, like many other travelers, I had to find wifi cards at a limited number of spots.

Visitors present their passport and can only buy two wifi cards priced at US $ 1 / card, and an hour later can buy another 2 cards. Cubans know how to do business before the need to use mobile wifi of tourists, so they buy and then sell for $ 5 / card, every day if they sell 10 cards, they have enough money to spend for the whole week.

Around the center of Havana, there are often a group of young people who welcome visitors to buy wifi cards, they sell wifi like the street vendors in Vietnam sell bread.

In fact, the wifi card only connects at locations with broadcast stations in close range, in addition, the mobile phone will lose the signal when moving away from the broadcast location. Wifi packages allow to use for an hour, but most only use about 30 minutes to run out of money.

I met a handyman who sold wifi cards in front of Melacon Square. This person sold me 3 wifi cards priced at US $ 10. But even if it was very economical, I could not use it much when connected to the internet to find my way with google map, view news, or talk on viber phones and messenger.

Goods are not plentiful and expensive with tourists

Line up in the butcher shop.

In most shops and supermarkets in the center of Havana, people have a habit of queuing, though less or more crowded, and all wait patiently in the hot weather.

I also stepped into the queue at a butcher shop, just to be curious and to experience the feeling, but I bought it myself at the hotel for nothing, especially without a separate kitchen for processing. .

When it was my turn to stand in front of the meat scale, the clerk asked how much I bought, I answered to buy about 100 grams of meat, they said I could not sell that much and pointed to the remaining quantity of meat to buy.

In front of me, the amount of pork in the counter was nearly exhausted, so I happily yielded to a nearby Cuban person who bought the rest, about 600gr or 700gr of meat.

Fresh meat is gone so the next people can only buy frozen meat. I left and looked at the fast food stores, who also continued to wait for my turn because it was lunch time.

In summer, fresh cream in Cuba is crowded, I also want to enjoy the taste of ice cream, but can not wait because it is too hot outside, I had to buy two bottles of mineral water to drink.

Eat snacks while waiting in line for the supermarket.

The price of food and drink is only cheap for indigenous people because Cuba uses two currencies at the same time, domestic people use the national peso (CUP), and tourists pay in convertible pesos (CUC).

The same sandwich sandwiches the same, but visitors pay 5.6 times more than the national pesos. Bread in Cuba is quite hard, all types of pastries are also available. Cuban fruit is like in our country. There, I prefer to drink mango juice rather than eat the whole fruit because it is big.

In supermarkets, there are no plentiful goods, more meat food than fish, normal consumer goods such as soap, toothpaste ... all kinds of surprises me a little because before going, the information On the internet, there is a shortage of this type in Cuba.

So much so that when I arrived in Canada, I went to a supermarket to look for some toothbrushes, ice creams, lather, so I could give presents to someone in need or give them to my hotel waiter, but Now I see that becomes redundant.

Consumption costs in Cuba are generally not high, but in every transaction, visitors must pay in CUC, equivalent to the US dollar, making the money I exchange at the Canadian airport from the euro to the peso depleted quickly. Unexpected spending.

Short tours from Havana to nearby attractions or games show tickets are priced on par with the US and Canada, though the service is average.