Tomorrow morning, at 6:45 am, we fly off to a week in Cambodia for reading break. We're flying into Phnom Phen, and out of Siem Reap, getting back to Singapore on Sunday, March 1st. We're going to see a lot of really interesting things on this trip, like the killing fields, Angkor Wat, etc.
I think that this trip is going to be pretty intense. By intense I mean interesting, heartbreaking, and culture-shocking. I heard there is a lot of poverty, with many people just sleeping on the streets in Phnom Phen. Apparently it's far worse than any poverty we saw in Vietnam.....and there was quite a bit in Ho Chi Minh City.
I'm a little nervous about seeing the Cambodia Killing Fields. I have heard that from a culture and educational stand-point, it's a must see, since it is such a big part of Cambodia's history, however, I know it will be hard to see a place where so many innocent people lost their lives at the hands of monsters.
I am really looking forward to seeing Angkor Wat, as I've heard from so many other travellers that it is a "must see".
What I'm not looking forward to is getting up at 3:30am tomorrow morning to go to the airport.....gonna be a tough one.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Tick Tock, Tick Tock
Wow, time has really flown by these past few weeks. It's hard to believe it's already been a few weeks since my last post. We've spent the last couple of weekends in Singapore, and it's been really nice to just hang out here, not having anywhere that we needed to be. We went out a few nights with other exchange students that we've met here, did some shopping, went to the zoo, saw a bit more of downtown Singapore, and just took it easy.
Last week, there was an organized Internatainal Cultural Night in our residence building, where all the different countries where all the Hall 16 students are from, were on display. The five of us put together our Canada table pretty last minute, and didn't really know what to do for it. We really don't have that much "culture" that can be that easily displayed, because Canada is comprised of so many different cultures. We decided to do our best with what we had: we all dressed in red and white, had "Canadian Pizza" from one of the canteens here, which is actually CALLED 'Canadian Pizza', had a laptop going through a slideshow of Canadian scenery, and had another laptop playing a previously aired hockey game. I couldn't tell you who played...nor who won. Our booth was pretty cheesy,compared to some of the amazing displays that some of the other countries put together, but we did our best, and the 6 pizzas were gone in minutes. There was a lot of great food there that night too, and we got to try some amazing things. At the India table, there was a girl doing Henna, so Janene and I both got Henna tattoos, which are just now starting to fade.
On Monday, Janene, Tia, and I, along with Lauren and Mitch (who also go to UVic, but are attending a different Singapore university on exchange) are heading off to Cambodia for a week for reading break. Yes, I know what you're thinking "how can you need a 'break' after all the non-reading you've been doing?"....it's true, we've had it pretty good...but if they're giving us another opportunity to head off somewhere fabulous, why not, right? I can't believe that we're leaving in less than a week for this trip, when it feels like we just got back from Vietnam. I'm expecting Cambodia to be somewhat like Vietnam in terms of culture shock, and the "feel" of the country (don't ask me to explain that, because I can't), but I could be way off. We'll just have to see.
This past Saturday was Valentine's Day, and it happens to be the first time that Sean and I have been apart on Love Day in the eight years that we've been a couple. It was definitely weird to be thousands of miles away from each other on a day that we've always been together. Saturday morning, however, a bouquet of roses showed up at my dorm room door :) In an effort not to be lonely and to have someone special on this special day, Janene and I got dressed up and went to a beautiful, romantic Japanese restaurant downtown, in the Pan Pacific Hotel, called "Keyaki". The food was incredible, and I'm pretty sure most people thought that we were there as a couple. And when they didn't think that we were a couple, they were making jokes about how we didn't have 'someone special on Valentine's Day'. Thanks. After dinner we took a cab to the Merlion (a giant statue of a half-lion, half-fish that shoots water out it's mouth), and walked around the boardwalk. On our way there, the cabby (after making sure we 'didn't have anyone special on Valentine's Day') told us that the Merlion could be our boyfriend, and shouted "say hi to your boyfriend for me!" as we got out of the cab. Really? Really. We were not really phased, considering we both do have someone special, AND we were each other's 'someone special' for the evening, but imagine if we were single, and lonely, and really sensitive about it? I guess Asians think it's hilarious to be alone. Everyone's a comedian.
We got some good news last week. One of the courses we were in, and were approved to take by both our home university and our exchange university, was Financial Risk and Insurance. It's an advanced investment course that focuses on derivatives, futures, puts, calls, etc., stuff we'd never learned about prior to our coming here. We clearly don't have the prerequisites for this course, and we were all panicking about failing it because it was past the "add/drop" date in the semester. For the past few weeks we've been in discussion with UVic, asking them to allow us to drop the course, and write a paper instead, which is usually an option for exchange students who can't find enough courses taught in English at their exchange university. Finally, after several conversations about it, UVic conceded, and we are no longer required to complete the course. Whew. No matter how much I would have studied for that course, I definitely would not have been able to pass, so this is a huge relief. Now we are required to write a 6000 word paper on an aspect of Business in Singapore. It can pretty much be anything we want, as long as it meets the few guidelines we were given. I'm still trying to solidify what my topic will be, and then I'll have to start my research. I'm extremely happy that I don't have to take Financial Risk......extremely happy. School is picking up, with projects and quizzes, etc. (no midterms!!), and studying is a little challenging when it's gorgeously, scorchingly hot and sunny outside (42 degrees the other day, with the humidity!.....that's 108F!), and the pool is calling my name, but I'm not even a little bitter about it, because I don't have Risk anymore. So life is good.
When I get back from Cambodia, March 1st, I will be at the halfway mark for this exchange. It's incredible to think that I've been out of the country, away from home, living in Asia for two whole months. I miss home, but I'm going to miss it here too....and I'm not quite ready to think about leaving yet. I'm sure I'll be ready to go once the four month mark hits, but for now, I'm enjoying it as I know the second half (only 71 days left!) is going to fly by even faster than the first.
Last week, there was an organized Internatainal Cultural Night in our residence building, where all the different countries where all the Hall 16 students are from, were on display. The five of us put together our Canada table pretty last minute, and didn't really know what to do for it. We really don't have that much "culture" that can be that easily displayed, because Canada is comprised of so many different cultures. We decided to do our best with what we had: we all dressed in red and white, had "Canadian Pizza" from one of the canteens here, which is actually CALLED 'Canadian Pizza', had a laptop going through a slideshow of Canadian scenery, and had another laptop playing a previously aired hockey game. I couldn't tell you who played...nor who won. Our booth was pretty cheesy,compared to some of the amazing displays that some of the other countries put together, but we did our best, and the 6 pizzas were gone in minutes. There was a lot of great food there that night too, and we got to try some amazing things. At the India table, there was a girl doing Henna, so Janene and I both got Henna tattoos, which are just now starting to fade.
On Monday, Janene, Tia, and I, along with Lauren and Mitch (who also go to UVic, but are attending a different Singapore university on exchange) are heading off to Cambodia for a week for reading break. Yes, I know what you're thinking "how can you need a 'break' after all the non-reading you've been doing?"....it's true, we've had it pretty good...but if they're giving us another opportunity to head off somewhere fabulous, why not, right? I can't believe that we're leaving in less than a week for this trip, when it feels like we just got back from Vietnam. I'm expecting Cambodia to be somewhat like Vietnam in terms of culture shock, and the "feel" of the country (don't ask me to explain that, because I can't), but I could be way off. We'll just have to see.
This past Saturday was Valentine's Day, and it happens to be the first time that Sean and I have been apart on Love Day in the eight years that we've been a couple. It was definitely weird to be thousands of miles away from each other on a day that we've always been together. Saturday morning, however, a bouquet of roses showed up at my dorm room door :) In an effort not to be lonely and to have someone special on this special day, Janene and I got dressed up and went to a beautiful, romantic Japanese restaurant downtown, in the Pan Pacific Hotel, called "Keyaki". The food was incredible, and I'm pretty sure most people thought that we were there as a couple. And when they didn't think that we were a couple, they were making jokes about how we didn't have 'someone special on Valentine's Day'. Thanks. After dinner we took a cab to the Merlion (a giant statue of a half-lion, half-fish that shoots water out it's mouth), and walked around the boardwalk. On our way there, the cabby (after making sure we 'didn't have anyone special on Valentine's Day') told us that the Merlion could be our boyfriend, and shouted "say hi to your boyfriend for me!" as we got out of the cab. Really? Really. We were not really phased, considering we both do have someone special, AND we were each other's 'someone special' for the evening, but imagine if we were single, and lonely, and really sensitive about it? I guess Asians think it's hilarious to be alone. Everyone's a comedian.
We got some good news last week. One of the courses we were in, and were approved to take by both our home university and our exchange university, was Financial Risk and Insurance. It's an advanced investment course that focuses on derivatives, futures, puts, calls, etc., stuff we'd never learned about prior to our coming here. We clearly don't have the prerequisites for this course, and we were all panicking about failing it because it was past the "add/drop" date in the semester. For the past few weeks we've been in discussion with UVic, asking them to allow us to drop the course, and write a paper instead, which is usually an option for exchange students who can't find enough courses taught in English at their exchange university. Finally, after several conversations about it, UVic conceded, and we are no longer required to complete the course. Whew. No matter how much I would have studied for that course, I definitely would not have been able to pass, so this is a huge relief. Now we are required to write a 6000 word paper on an aspect of Business in Singapore. It can pretty much be anything we want, as long as it meets the few guidelines we were given. I'm still trying to solidify what my topic will be, and then I'll have to start my research. I'm extremely happy that I don't have to take Financial Risk......extremely happy. School is picking up, with projects and quizzes, etc. (no midterms!!), and studying is a little challenging when it's gorgeously, scorchingly hot and sunny outside (42 degrees the other day, with the humidity!.....that's 108F!), and the pool is calling my name, but I'm not even a little bitter about it, because I don't have Risk anymore. So life is good.
When I get back from Cambodia, March 1st, I will be at the halfway mark for this exchange. It's incredible to think that I've been out of the country, away from home, living in Asia for two whole months. I miss home, but I'm going to miss it here too....and I'm not quite ready to think about leaving yet. I'm sure I'll be ready to go once the four month mark hits, but for now, I'm enjoying it as I know the second half (only 71 days left!) is going to fly by even faster than the first.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Vietnam
Well, we are back in Singapore, safe and sound, after a ten day expedition through Vietnam. As I mentioned in my last post, I was expecting a culture shock on this trip, and I got one. It was a really great trip, but after ten days, I was more than happy, make that ecstatic, to come back to Singapore which has so quickly become "home".
I'll start from the beginning. We left Singapore on Thursday, January 22nd, in the afternoon, and flew once again with Tiger Airways (budget). All 5 of us girls rocked our hot pink "Happy Family" T-shirts that we made (with a permanent marker), which made it ridiculously easy to spot each other in the airport. Also, we had "Made In Canada" written on the back, so to make sure we weren't mistaken for Americans. :) You might be wondering what this "Happy Family" business is about. Let me explain. The first day we checked into our residence building on campus here in Singapore, we were walking the halls trying to find the elevator to get us to the cafeteria (naturally, because eating is our favourite hobby here....I'd have to say even above shopping.....you'd be shocked at the amount of food we eat on a daily basis here). Anyways, we passed a clothes drying rack in one of the hallways with a towel drying on it that said "Happy Family" on it. We thought it was pretty funny, and walked around for the next few minutes saying "Happy Family". About five minutes later, still in the hunt for this cafeteria, we finally realized we had walked in a circle, because we once again passed this towel. From then on, for some reason, we've started calling ourselves (the five of us, who generally travel in a pack) "Happy Family", of which I have been dubbed the mother.
So, anyway, we arrived a few hours later in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon) and after finally getting our Visas, we got a cab to take us to Luan Viu Guesthouse, where we we staying for the next few days. I can't even put into words the traffic chaos that takes place in this city. It's UNbelievable. To illustrate this, while driving to our guesthouse, we saw a man covered in blood being pulled off the road after being hit by some type of vehicle, and we're pretty sure he was dead. We were pretty shaken up by that. There are literally HUNdreds of motorbikes, and some cars, just weaving and swerving all over the roads in this city, with absolutely no regard for other motorists, or pedestrians. Once we got near our guesthouse, we got to the fun part: crossing the street amidst this chaos. I have never been so terrified. Nor have I ever been so close to being run over, as I was so many times in Ho Chi Minh. Our Guesthouse was really nice and clean, exactly what we needed, and I'd recommend it to anyone. The staff were friendly and helpful, and it was in a good location. We found some dinner at Aleez Boo, a restaurant nearby, which we frequented frequently over the next few days. We gained a valuable tip from one of the waitresses there: don’t eat the chicken in Vietnam. Apparently when it’s in a dish, it’s ground up, bones and all. And when it’s not ground up I guess it’s just poor quality? We weren’t completely sure what the deal was with the chicken, but we were more than happy to stay away from it based on her warning.
Friday morning we had breakfast at our guesthouse, and decided to find the market, which we had heard good things about. Shopping? Us? Like moths to a flame. The market took us a while to find, and it involved crossing the street to get there......several times......during which we would all link arms, while shuffling and whimpering, until we made it safely to the other side. One of the roads we had to cross was particularly scary, and we spotted a few guys who looked like they were tourists too. We somehow managed to use them as human shields, and got them to cross the road with us. Over the next few hours, we actually bumped into these guys (5 of them total, from Australia) a few times, and ended up talking with them a bit, which led to all ten of us hanging out for the next 2 days that we were in Ho Chi Minh City. They were all really nice guys, we all got along well, and it was nice to have some males looking out for us in the city of Chaos.
We eventually found the market, and shopped, shopped, shopped. The knock-off bag selection was incredible, and it took us a while to get tired of it. Once we did, we met the guys and went for lunch. After lunch we were in the hunt for a spa, because someone had heard there was a place where there were blind masseurs, which was supposed to be amazing. After about an hour of walking aimlessly through Ho Chi Minh in hunt of this place, and just as we were giving up, we stumbled across a beautiful spa where most of us ended up getting massages. Janene and I somehow ended up booking what seemed like a couples massage, facial, and body scrub, for three hours. Great way to de-stress from a long day of shopping and road-crossing.
That night, all ten of us went out for dinner, and everyone (save for me, Janene, and Heather) did a shot of snake wine. Don't know what snake wine is? Let me enlighten you with the Wikipedia definition: "Snake wine is an alcoholic beverage that includes a whole venomous snake in the bottle. It originated in Vietnam and can be found around Southeast Asia. The snakes, preferably venomous ones, are not usually preserved for their meat but to have the snake poison dissolved in the liquor."
Mmmmmm......I bet you're thirsty now, aren't you?
Saturday we met the guys for breakfast, and then went to the Vietnam War Memorial Museum. I knew very little about the Vietnam War before going, and I learned a lot about what took place, and how the Vietnamese people were affected by it, not only at the time, but for generations. It really opened my eyes to the terror that these people have faced, and it gave me a lot more respect for their culture and ways of doing things. To be honest, it was actually very emotionally difficult to go through this museum and look at some of the pictures that I saw. I hadn't been prepared to be so moved by it, and although I was a little shaked after seeing some of things I saw there that day, I'm glad we went.
Saturday night, we said goodbye to the guys, and got on an overnight sleeper bus (a bus with little beds on it, making the 12 hour bus ride far more bearable), to go further north to Nha Trang. We got a great spot on the bus at the very back, where there was a row of 5 beds next to each other, and extra room to put our carry-on bags behind us. Before I left Canada, I got a prescription filled for Immovane, a very strong prescription sleeping pill that my doctor prescribed me last summer when I had bad insomnia. Each of us took half of one of these magic blue pills, and slept pretty well, considering our bodies were literally launched in the air a few times from the bumpy roads. So well, in fact, that at 6:30am the next morning when we arrived in Nha Trang, we woke to find that the bus had stopped, and everyone had already gotten off the bus, leaving us sound asleep at the back in a group spoon. Nice.
In Nha Trang Heather and Janene stayed at the Backpacker's Hostel, which they really liked, and Tia, Danielle, and I stayed at a nearby guesthouse, which we really liked as well. After a short nap (since we were a little groggy from the sleeping pills, and because it was too early for anything to be open yet) we went out to get some breakfast, which we discovered was amazing, and soon became our favourite meal of the day. The weather in Nah Trang that day was apparently the worst they had experienced for a looooong time (I heard someone say 'years'!), and it was just overcast, a little cool, and it rained for lweather wasn't nice enough to really do much, and being that we have internal magnets for this type of thing, we found a nice little spa, and booked ourselves in for mani's and pedi's. Tough day.
That evening happened to be Chinese New Year's Eve (which is a big deal). We went out for dinner, and then to a bar for a bit of dancing, where we met up with a large group of people also staying at the Backpacker's Hostel. Then we set off for the beach, where there were thousands of people waiting for the fireworks show to start at midnight. While waiting for them to start, we decided it would be fun to play in the ocean (in our clothes), which soon became quite the novelty because of how strong the current was, and how big the waves were. We had a lot of fun being five year olds, and then watched the fireworks, which lasted about 20 minutes, and were way better than our Canada Day fireworks that we have every year in the inner harbour. For 30,000 Dong (about $3 CAD), we bought a big paper lantern to light and send off into the sky, which was a lot of fun. Our evening was filled with hearing a lot of “Chuk Mung Nam Moi”, which means “Happy New Year” in Vietnamese. In addition, we fell in love with our new favourite song, called “Happy New Year” by ABBA. If you haven’t heard it, you should download it and give it a listen. It is the cheesiest song we have ever heard, and it was playing ALL over Vietnam for the full ten days that we were there. Somehow we’ve never gotten sick of it, and although we don’t know all the words, all five of us would break into loud, flamboyant song whenever it came on....which was usually several times a day. However, somehow Happy Family didn’t get offered a record deal. Hmmmm.
The next day, we slept in a bit, had a late, and amazing, breakfast, and then hit the beach which was located just down the road from where we were staying. After a few hours of paradise, Janene, Heather and I went to the mud bath and mineral water outdoor spa for the afternoon, which Danielle and Tia rented motorbikes to take themselves on a little tour a few sights they wanted to see. Before long, Tia’s motorbike was on top of her, and their tour was cut short. She was okay, but got a scraped knee out of the deal.
Our final day in Nah Trang we had booked ourselves on a private day tour. It was the smartest thing we could have done, because it was amazing. We left around 10:30 in the morning, and had our own driver and a local tour guide named Viet.....from Vietnam....which we thought was pretty funny. Viet taught us a lot about the government and the way the country is run. He really emphasized that the government doesn’t care about the people at all. If the government wants to take over land, and there are people living on it, the government displaces those people, takes the land, and doesn’t provide them with a new place to live. Pretty brutal.
Viet took us to a small fishing village first, where we got to see the harbour. The shoreline was filled with garbage. It was unbelievable. Apparently since this particular village is not a tourist village, the government provides no means of waste management, and the garbage from the village just gets thrown into the ocean, because they have nowhere else to put it. I kept thinking of the Sustainability Club and what we could do to help organize some kind of waste management system. Maybe an international field-trip project wouldn’t be such a bad idea sometime in the future...hmmmm...
Next, Viet took us to what he says is the most beautiful beach in Vietnam. Blue water, white sand, what could be better? So, we march out onto the beach, strip into our bikinis and set up camp on our towels, play in the waves a bit, and enjoy the beach. This didn’t last too long before we had a group of locals come up to our tour guide and ask if they could take their picture with us. Since they asked (most people here don’t, they just snap), we didn’t mind. We actually got a really cute group shot with them. However, over the next half hour we started noticing a lot of cameras coming out of the woodwork...and not just still cameras. Video cameras. Viet did his best to try to shoo them away, and tell them in Vietnamese that they were not allowed to film us, but there were so many of them, there was not much we could do about it. We noticed that we were not only the only white people on the beach, we were also the only ones in bathing suits. There were lots of people playing in the ocean, but they were all wearing pants and shirts, even in the water. After several failed attempts to get the cameras to go away, we decided it was time to leave.
We then went to a tiny little local “restaurant” (it was basically the front livingroom of someone’s house), and had some amazing local Vietnamese food, which we all ended up feeling sick from later, but it was good at the time. After the restaurant, we went to a mountain to hike up to a waterfall, which we swam in. Definitely a cool experience. The water was really, really cold, but it was worth it. We had a lot of fun. The best part was on our way back down, we ran into a group of local boys, ranging from age 9 to about 14. They didn’t speak a word of English, and we didn’t speak a word of Vietnamese, but we sang together all the way down the mountain. It was incredible. One of the boys would make some random sing-song sounds “boo-lay boo-lay boo-lay BOOO!” and we would echo back to him, all together. It was so fun, we laughed the whole way down.
That night, we had our last meal in Nah Trang, and got on another sleeper bus. This time we popped our magic pills a little earlier, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about not waking up in time to get off the bus at our destination. This time, we slept like babies, again in the back row all together, and again, snuggled up to each other. We arrived in Hoi An around 7:30am, and checked into the nicest place we stayed our whole Vietnam trip, the Southern Hotel and Villa. We had a great buffet breakfast at the hotel, and then spent the day walking around downtown. It’s a very small town, so it was a pretty chill day. All the girls got clothes made by the local tailors, which is apparently the thing to do in Hoi An. That night, we all took a Vietnamese cooking class, where we learned how to make various Vietnamese dishes. The chef was hilarious, and the dinner was really good.
The next morning, Heather, Janene, and I left the hotel early to catch a one hour flight to Hoi An, while Tia and Danielle got on a 17 hour bus ride to Hoi An around 1:30pm. When the three of us arrived in Hoi An, we checked into our hostel (the Hoi An Backpacker’s Hostel) and then walked around town for about 8 hours. The biggest priority that day was to find warm clothes to buy. We were leaving the next morning for a 3 day, 2 night boat tour around Haloong Bay, and we heard it was ridiculously cold there at night, and we didn’t really have much in the way of warm clothes. It probably wouldn’t have been such a hard thing to find if it weren’t still Tet holiday, which is the Vietnamese Chinese New Year holiday that goes on for......who knows how long. It seems our entire trip in Vietnam was Tet. When we were looking for clothes in Hoi An it was “oh, not many places are open, because it’s the first day after Tet.” A few days later it was “well, it’s the third day after Tet, so....” I kept wondering when Tet ends, and I think the answer is: whenever they feel like it. It definitely made it challenging, but we managed to find jackets and sweaters, and leggings from street vendors, and thank goodness we did, because it sure did get cold on that boat at night.
The next morning, Tia and Danielle met us at the hostel early in the morning, and we left for a 3 hour drive to Haloong Bay, where we got on a three-level, wooden boat and cruised for about 2 hours, during which time we passed more than 2000 limestone islands. It was beautiful. When we got out there, we kayaked around the islands for about two hours, and then had dinner on the boat, and mingled and got to know the other people a bit. We were woken up the next morning by blasting music at 7am, got up and had breakfast, and packed up our stuff to leave the boat. We got off the boat and onto Cap Ba Island, where we were taken to a mountain to hike. We hiked all the way up (which was pretty steep in some parts), and the view at the top was amazing. That afternoon we had a “free” afternoon to do what we wanted, and we stayed in a 3-star hotel, which was pretty comfortable. For our free afternoon, we just took it easy; had lunch, went to an internet cafe, had some tea on the rooftop patio, and had a nap. For dinner we went to a local restaurant with the 20-person group we were travelling with, and then went to bed.
The next day we went back to the boat in the morning, cruised for a few hours back to Haloong Bay, drove three hours to Hoi An, and then went to the airport for our trip back to Singapore.
I love Vietnam, had a great trip, and saw a lot of amazing things, but I was thrilled to come back to Singapore, and never realized before how much I truly love Singapore. It’s so developed, and beautiful, and safe here. I’ve always said that I could never picture living anywhere else than Victoria. However, if I had to live somewhere else for a few years for whatever reason, I think I could live in Singapore and be quite happy. Don’t worry Mom, I’m not moving anywhere, I’m just saying..........
10 days in Vietnam was definitely the perfect amount of time, and I’m glad we went. It was definitely a bit of culture shock, and more of a culture experience than we had had to date, and it is a trip I will always remember.
For reading break, at the end of February, we are going to do a week in Cambodia. I’m looking forward to seeing what that will be like, and I’m sure I’ll have some stories from that trip.
This weekend we’ve stayed in Singapore, which is abnormal for us, and I’m loving it. Janene and I went out for dinner with some people from school last night downtown, and the scenery was beautiful, the vibe was amazing, and we fell in love with Singapore all over again.
Today we’re finally taking Janene to the zoo. Right now she’s picking out her outfit for the penguins. That’s right. She’s been thinking about her Penguin outfit all week. She’s wearing a white dress with black buttons down the front and just asked me “do you think the penguins will think I’m one of them, and come play with me??” I don’t know how to tell her that I don’t think so.......it’s bound to be an entertaining afternoon.
I'll start from the beginning. We left Singapore on Thursday, January 22nd, in the afternoon, and flew once again with Tiger Airways (budget). All 5 of us girls rocked our hot pink "Happy Family" T-shirts that we made (with a permanent marker), which made it ridiculously easy to spot each other in the airport. Also, we had "Made In Canada" written on the back, so to make sure we weren't mistaken for Americans. :) You might be wondering what this "Happy Family" business is about. Let me explain. The first day we checked into our residence building on campus here in Singapore, we were walking the halls trying to find the elevator to get us to the cafeteria (naturally, because eating is our favourite hobby here....I'd have to say even above shopping.....you'd be shocked at the amount of food we eat on a daily basis here). Anyways, we passed a clothes drying rack in one of the hallways with a towel drying on it that said "Happy Family" on it. We thought it was pretty funny, and walked around for the next few minutes saying "Happy Family". About five minutes later, still in the hunt for this cafeteria, we finally realized we had walked in a circle, because we once again passed this towel. From then on, for some reason, we've started calling ourselves (the five of us, who generally travel in a pack) "Happy Family", of which I have been dubbed the mother.
So, anyway, we arrived a few hours later in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon) and after finally getting our Visas, we got a cab to take us to Luan Viu Guesthouse, where we we staying for the next few days. I can't even put into words the traffic chaos that takes place in this city. It's UNbelievable. To illustrate this, while driving to our guesthouse, we saw a man covered in blood being pulled off the road after being hit by some type of vehicle, and we're pretty sure he was dead. We were pretty shaken up by that. There are literally HUNdreds of motorbikes, and some cars, just weaving and swerving all over the roads in this city, with absolutely no regard for other motorists, or pedestrians. Once we got near our guesthouse, we got to the fun part: crossing the street amidst this chaos. I have never been so terrified. Nor have I ever been so close to being run over, as I was so many times in Ho Chi Minh. Our Guesthouse was really nice and clean, exactly what we needed, and I'd recommend it to anyone. The staff were friendly and helpful, and it was in a good location. We found some dinner at Aleez Boo, a restaurant nearby, which we frequented frequently over the next few days. We gained a valuable tip from one of the waitresses there: don’t eat the chicken in Vietnam. Apparently when it’s in a dish, it’s ground up, bones and all. And when it’s not ground up I guess it’s just poor quality? We weren’t completely sure what the deal was with the chicken, but we were more than happy to stay away from it based on her warning.
Friday morning we had breakfast at our guesthouse, and decided to find the market, which we had heard good things about. Shopping? Us? Like moths to a flame. The market took us a while to find, and it involved crossing the street to get there......several times......during which we would all link arms, while shuffling and whimpering, until we made it safely to the other side. One of the roads we had to cross was particularly scary, and we spotted a few guys who looked like they were tourists too. We somehow managed to use them as human shields, and got them to cross the road with us. Over the next few hours, we actually bumped into these guys (5 of them total, from Australia) a few times, and ended up talking with them a bit, which led to all ten of us hanging out for the next 2 days that we were in Ho Chi Minh City. They were all really nice guys, we all got along well, and it was nice to have some males looking out for us in the city of Chaos.
We eventually found the market, and shopped, shopped, shopped. The knock-off bag selection was incredible, and it took us a while to get tired of it. Once we did, we met the guys and went for lunch. After lunch we were in the hunt for a spa, because someone had heard there was a place where there were blind masseurs, which was supposed to be amazing. After about an hour of walking aimlessly through Ho Chi Minh in hunt of this place, and just as we were giving up, we stumbled across a beautiful spa where most of us ended up getting massages. Janene and I somehow ended up booking what seemed like a couples massage, facial, and body scrub, for three hours. Great way to de-stress from a long day of shopping and road-crossing.
That night, all ten of us went out for dinner, and everyone (save for me, Janene, and Heather) did a shot of snake wine. Don't know what snake wine is? Let me enlighten you with the Wikipedia definition: "Snake wine is an alcoholic beverage that includes a whole venomous snake in the bottle. It originated in Vietnam and can be found around Southeast Asia. The snakes, preferably venomous ones, are not usually preserved for their meat but to have the snake poison dissolved in the liquor."
Mmmmmm......I bet you're thirsty now, aren't you?
Saturday we met the guys for breakfast, and then went to the Vietnam War Memorial Museum. I knew very little about the Vietnam War before going, and I learned a lot about what took place, and how the Vietnamese people were affected by it, not only at the time, but for generations. It really opened my eyes to the terror that these people have faced, and it gave me a lot more respect for their culture and ways of doing things. To be honest, it was actually very emotionally difficult to go through this museum and look at some of the pictures that I saw. I hadn't been prepared to be so moved by it, and although I was a little shaked after seeing some of things I saw there that day, I'm glad we went.
Saturday night, we said goodbye to the guys, and got on an overnight sleeper bus (a bus with little beds on it, making the 12 hour bus ride far more bearable), to go further north to Nha Trang. We got a great spot on the bus at the very back, where there was a row of 5 beds next to each other, and extra room to put our carry-on bags behind us. Before I left Canada, I got a prescription filled for Immovane, a very strong prescription sleeping pill that my doctor prescribed me last summer when I had bad insomnia. Each of us took half of one of these magic blue pills, and slept pretty well, considering our bodies were literally launched in the air a few times from the bumpy roads. So well, in fact, that at 6:30am the next morning when we arrived in Nha Trang, we woke to find that the bus had stopped, and everyone had already gotten off the bus, leaving us sound asleep at the back in a group spoon. Nice.
In Nha Trang Heather and Janene stayed at the Backpacker's Hostel, which they really liked, and Tia, Danielle, and I stayed at a nearby guesthouse, which we really liked as well. After a short nap (since we were a little groggy from the sleeping pills, and because it was too early for anything to be open yet) we went out to get some breakfast, which we discovered was amazing, and soon became our favourite meal of the day. The weather in Nah Trang that day was apparently the worst they had experienced for a looooong time (I heard someone say 'years'!), and it was just overcast, a little cool, and it rained for lweather wasn't nice enough to really do much, and being that we have internal magnets for this type of thing, we found a nice little spa, and booked ourselves in for mani's and pedi's. Tough day.
That evening happened to be Chinese New Year's Eve (which is a big deal). We went out for dinner, and then to a bar for a bit of dancing, where we met up with a large group of people also staying at the Backpacker's Hostel. Then we set off for the beach, where there were thousands of people waiting for the fireworks show to start at midnight. While waiting for them to start, we decided it would be fun to play in the ocean (in our clothes), which soon became quite the novelty because of how strong the current was, and how big the waves were. We had a lot of fun being five year olds, and then watched the fireworks, which lasted about 20 minutes, and were way better than our Canada Day fireworks that we have every year in the inner harbour. For 30,000 Dong (about $3 CAD), we bought a big paper lantern to light and send off into the sky, which was a lot of fun. Our evening was filled with hearing a lot of “Chuk Mung Nam Moi”, which means “Happy New Year” in Vietnamese. In addition, we fell in love with our new favourite song, called “Happy New Year” by ABBA. If you haven’t heard it, you should download it and give it a listen. It is the cheesiest song we have ever heard, and it was playing ALL over Vietnam for the full ten days that we were there. Somehow we’ve never gotten sick of it, and although we don’t know all the words, all five of us would break into loud, flamboyant song whenever it came on....which was usually several times a day. However, somehow Happy Family didn’t get offered a record deal. Hmmmm.
The next day, we slept in a bit, had a late, and amazing, breakfast, and then hit the beach which was located just down the road from where we were staying. After a few hours of paradise, Janene, Heather and I went to the mud bath and mineral water outdoor spa for the afternoon, which Danielle and Tia rented motorbikes to take themselves on a little tour a few sights they wanted to see. Before long, Tia’s motorbike was on top of her, and their tour was cut short. She was okay, but got a scraped knee out of the deal.
Our final day in Nah Trang we had booked ourselves on a private day tour. It was the smartest thing we could have done, because it was amazing. We left around 10:30 in the morning, and had our own driver and a local tour guide named Viet.....from Vietnam....which we thought was pretty funny. Viet taught us a lot about the government and the way the country is run. He really emphasized that the government doesn’t care about the people at all. If the government wants to take over land, and there are people living on it, the government displaces those people, takes the land, and doesn’t provide them with a new place to live. Pretty brutal.
Viet took us to a small fishing village first, where we got to see the harbour. The shoreline was filled with garbage. It was unbelievable. Apparently since this particular village is not a tourist village, the government provides no means of waste management, and the garbage from the village just gets thrown into the ocean, because they have nowhere else to put it. I kept thinking of the Sustainability Club and what we could do to help organize some kind of waste management system. Maybe an international field-trip project wouldn’t be such a bad idea sometime in the future...hmmmm...
Next, Viet took us to what he says is the most beautiful beach in Vietnam. Blue water, white sand, what could be better? So, we march out onto the beach, strip into our bikinis and set up camp on our towels, play in the waves a bit, and enjoy the beach. This didn’t last too long before we had a group of locals come up to our tour guide and ask if they could take their picture with us. Since they asked (most people here don’t, they just snap), we didn’t mind. We actually got a really cute group shot with them. However, over the next half hour we started noticing a lot of cameras coming out of the woodwork...and not just still cameras. Video cameras. Viet did his best to try to shoo them away, and tell them in Vietnamese that they were not allowed to film us, but there were so many of them, there was not much we could do about it. We noticed that we were not only the only white people on the beach, we were also the only ones in bathing suits. There were lots of people playing in the ocean, but they were all wearing pants and shirts, even in the water. After several failed attempts to get the cameras to go away, we decided it was time to leave.
We then went to a tiny little local “restaurant” (it was basically the front livingroom of someone’s house), and had some amazing local Vietnamese food, which we all ended up feeling sick from later, but it was good at the time. After the restaurant, we went to a mountain to hike up to a waterfall, which we swam in. Definitely a cool experience. The water was really, really cold, but it was worth it. We had a lot of fun. The best part was on our way back down, we ran into a group of local boys, ranging from age 9 to about 14. They didn’t speak a word of English, and we didn’t speak a word of Vietnamese, but we sang together all the way down the mountain. It was incredible. One of the boys would make some random sing-song sounds “boo-lay boo-lay boo-lay BOOO!” and we would echo back to him, all together. It was so fun, we laughed the whole way down.
That night, we had our last meal in Nah Trang, and got on another sleeper bus. This time we popped our magic pills a little earlier, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about not waking up in time to get off the bus at our destination. This time, we slept like babies, again in the back row all together, and again, snuggled up to each other. We arrived in Hoi An around 7:30am, and checked into the nicest place we stayed our whole Vietnam trip, the Southern Hotel and Villa. We had a great buffet breakfast at the hotel, and then spent the day walking around downtown. It’s a very small town, so it was a pretty chill day. All the girls got clothes made by the local tailors, which is apparently the thing to do in Hoi An. That night, we all took a Vietnamese cooking class, where we learned how to make various Vietnamese dishes. The chef was hilarious, and the dinner was really good.
The next morning, Heather, Janene, and I left the hotel early to catch a one hour flight to Hoi An, while Tia and Danielle got on a 17 hour bus ride to Hoi An around 1:30pm. When the three of us arrived in Hoi An, we checked into our hostel (the Hoi An Backpacker’s Hostel) and then walked around town for about 8 hours. The biggest priority that day was to find warm clothes to buy. We were leaving the next morning for a 3 day, 2 night boat tour around Haloong Bay, and we heard it was ridiculously cold there at night, and we didn’t really have much in the way of warm clothes. It probably wouldn’t have been such a hard thing to find if it weren’t still Tet holiday, which is the Vietnamese Chinese New Year holiday that goes on for......who knows how long. It seems our entire trip in Vietnam was Tet. When we were looking for clothes in Hoi An it was “oh, not many places are open, because it’s the first day after Tet.” A few days later it was “well, it’s the third day after Tet, so....” I kept wondering when Tet ends, and I think the answer is: whenever they feel like it. It definitely made it challenging, but we managed to find jackets and sweaters, and leggings from street vendors, and thank goodness we did, because it sure did get cold on that boat at night.
The next morning, Tia and Danielle met us at the hostel early in the morning, and we left for a 3 hour drive to Haloong Bay, where we got on a three-level, wooden boat and cruised for about 2 hours, during which time we passed more than 2000 limestone islands. It was beautiful. When we got out there, we kayaked around the islands for about two hours, and then had dinner on the boat, and mingled and got to know the other people a bit. We were woken up the next morning by blasting music at 7am, got up and had breakfast, and packed up our stuff to leave the boat. We got off the boat and onto Cap Ba Island, where we were taken to a mountain to hike. We hiked all the way up (which was pretty steep in some parts), and the view at the top was amazing. That afternoon we had a “free” afternoon to do what we wanted, and we stayed in a 3-star hotel, which was pretty comfortable. For our free afternoon, we just took it easy; had lunch, went to an internet cafe, had some tea on the rooftop patio, and had a nap. For dinner we went to a local restaurant with the 20-person group we were travelling with, and then went to bed.
The next day we went back to the boat in the morning, cruised for a few hours back to Haloong Bay, drove three hours to Hoi An, and then went to the airport for our trip back to Singapore.
I love Vietnam, had a great trip, and saw a lot of amazing things, but I was thrilled to come back to Singapore, and never realized before how much I truly love Singapore. It’s so developed, and beautiful, and safe here. I’ve always said that I could never picture living anywhere else than Victoria. However, if I had to live somewhere else for a few years for whatever reason, I think I could live in Singapore and be quite happy. Don’t worry Mom, I’m not moving anywhere, I’m just saying..........
10 days in Vietnam was definitely the perfect amount of time, and I’m glad we went. It was definitely a bit of culture shock, and more of a culture experience than we had had to date, and it is a trip I will always remember.
For reading break, at the end of February, we are going to do a week in Cambodia. I’m looking forward to seeing what that will be like, and I’m sure I’ll have some stories from that trip.
This weekend we’ve stayed in Singapore, which is abnormal for us, and I’m loving it. Janene and I went out for dinner with some people from school last night downtown, and the scenery was beautiful, the vibe was amazing, and we fell in love with Singapore all over again.
Today we’re finally taking Janene to the zoo. Right now she’s picking out her outfit for the penguins. That’s right. She’s been thinking about her Penguin outfit all week. She’s wearing a white dress with black buttons down the front and just asked me “do you think the penguins will think I’m one of them, and come play with me??” I don’t know how to tell her that I don’t think so.......it’s bound to be an entertaining afternoon.
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