Vietnam Travel Tip: Shopping for DVD's

Answer :I live in Hanoi and buy DVDs on a regular basis. The shops seem to be of much the same standard regarding quality of DVDs. If you just buy and take home you find about 10% don't work and the rest work perfectly. You can check the DVDs in all the shops I go to and I suppose if you're worried about the 10%, you should. You'll find that the newest releases are often not "proper" copies. That is, they're made by some guy in a Cinema with a video camera and hence sound quality is poor and you can see people getting up to go to the toilet etc.!

So its probably best to buy the movies that have been out a few months and have had a chance to be "properly" copied i.e. burned from DVD to DVD. They cost between 18 to 20 thousand dong a DVD, less if you buy in bulk. That's a little over a Dollar or about 75 pence.

I have never taken them back into The UK but know people who have. They have had no problems and one muppet actually declared them! As long as its obvious you're not taking them back to sell, I think the customs guys have got more important things to worry about. Like 7 down in the Sun crossword, "4 letters Cats and - - - -"