Feelin' Bloggish

I got back from Vietnam about a week ago. I'm trying to get over the jetlag and catching up on the internet, which I barely went on while I was there. After all, if you had to choose between sitting in a hot room with a slow computer in a tropical country, and laying down in the comfort of an air conditioned bedroom, you'd probably choose the latter too.

The total plane ride was around 20 hours long, if you include the transfer between Hong Kong and Vietnam. I was surprised at how Hong Kong's airport was surrounded by mountains. I wish I had a chance to explore the city.

Our trip felt more like business than a vacation, since we had to deal with family and house issues.
(OMG my grandpa has a mistress DRAMA DRAMA)

This year my aunt and cousins in Maryland came too. One of them brought along her boyfriend. Being Caucasian, he got many stares, which was amusing (and I was relieved I wasn't the only one), but it also worked against us. You know how natives will take advantage/rip-off off tourists.

For example, one of the tours we went on, to the Củ Chi tunnels (used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War), charges a low entry fee for Vietnamese people, and triple that for anyone who don't answer back in Vietnamese (aka tourists/white people). Since we at least spoke the language, we paid the lower price.

We did a repeat of the Nha Trang and Dalat tour. At Dalat, I fed an elephant, but I didn't ride on it like last time. Once is enough for the experience.

I also got to eat deer and porcupine here. Yes, porcupine. I didn't really like the skin on it, but it was edible.

On a related note, on my last day in Vietnam, I finally achieved my dream of eating KANGAROO. I am so happy; it's been my goal for so many years. I would have gone to Australia just for it. I also ate some alligator. It was similar to pork meat, which I don't like (although I'll eat other random parts of a pig). My new goal? Horses; I'm comin' for ya.

Quite frankly, if it's not poisonous, I'll eat it. I want to eat everything that Andrew Zimmern has eaten on his show. But let's save my food discoveries for another time.

Oh, I got my hair straightened early on in the vacation, and cut it to above my shoulders.

Okay, not a good picture. I just wanted to show off the hat
(And I was pissed in the before pic 'cause my mom wanted to take pics after a long-ass flight.)

I was so sad that I couldn't pet all the dogs I saw, 'cause most of them are dirty and probably flea-ridden. People in Vietnam don't treat pets the same way we do. So when I come across a clean, cute dog that rolls over for me, damn right I'm gonna pet it.

The buses here are better than I imagined. The good ones even have ACs. But they will not stop for long, and I mean it. We had to run for them, and climb on while the bus was still moving. It barely even slowed down for us!

And when it comes to traffic, motorcycles generally win since they can weave in and out between cars.

Check out the side of the bus. I don't think this was even rush hour.

I also attended my mom's friend's wedding. First was the ceremony in the biggest church in Vietnam, where most of us wore an áo dài, a traditional Vietnamese costume. The following day was the wedding reception.

I really didn't want to leave Vietnam. It's just so different that I can't help but like it, despite the heat, mosquitoes, sun, dust, I could go on and on... I sprayed my feet with mosquito repellent every night, covered myself in sunscreen before I left the house, and wore a mask and sunglasses to protect myself from dust whenever I rode on a motorbike.

But still, my vacation was like one of those movies where a city girl moves to a rural area and starts to enjoy it.

Tiny pineapples!

(for my previous Vietnam posts, check out my Vietnam category)

Happy 4th of July!

I came back to New York over a week ago and spent most of the week in school helping out my friends with stuff (apparently, I can make a pretty authentic formal letter and certificate... XD).

I miss Vietnam, despite how dirty and third-worldly it can look sometimes. I feel like time passes slowly there, but that was probably because I woke up at the crack of dawn and went to sleep around ten at night. Now, I'm back to my habits of sleeping at three or four in the morning.

Anyway, as I said in my last post, I went to Nha Trang and Dalat. It takes about eight hours to get from Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) to Nha Trang by car.

Nha Trang is a popular tourist area because of it's beautiful beaches.

I even got to go parasailing with my dad!

it makes me never want to go to Coney Island again! And our hotel was a block away from the beach, so that's a plus (and free wireless internet too!).

It's also the site of the Miss Universe 2008 pageant (airing July 14th). I passed by the Diamond Bay resort where it will take place, and it was still under construction, with less than a month to go. There are posters with the previous winner, Riyo Mori (from Japan), everywhere in Vietnam. I wish I could go...

We only stayed in Nha Trang for two days before leaving for Dalat. Between the two cities, you gotta pass through winding roads on high mountains, and you can see the aftermath of rockslides covering the road. They don't use machines to remove the rocks, but backbreaking manpower.

Dalat (Đà Lạt) is another major tourist area because of its climate (you need a jacket at night) and waterfalls.

On one island, I got to ride on an elephant!

The guy who was "driving" it said she was rescued from hard labor where she had to pull trees and logs and was barely fed. On the island, you can also buy honey wine with like, the bees still in it... the wine itself is supposed to have health benefits.

That's most of the fun stuff!
Now that I'm home, I feel like I have so much to do.

I only have about a week left in Vietnam, but at least I have a chance to post something while I'm still here. I'm in Nha Trang right now, but I'll write about that later.
I went to so many places in Vietnam this time around!

I went on a tour around the Mekong Delta (đồng bằng sông Cửu Long) for a few days. There were around 20 British, Australian, and Dutch tourists on that tour as well, splitting from the group and heading for different areas.

Heehee, I got to hold a snake at one of the restaurants. I was born in the year of the snake. I love snakes! They're so cute! Solid Snake!

I went to many floating markets, such as the one in Cai Be (Cái Bè), where people can buy food and other goods off of the boats on the river. The tour guides kept emphasizing that the floating markets in Vietnam were real, and that Vietnamese people make a living of the floating markets, while the floating markets in Thailand were for tourists only.

I even got to sleep on a boat in Sa Dec (Sa Đéc); it wasn't grand like those luxury liners though. Everyone slept in the same room on bunk beds, and my bed was on top, near the lights. There are these insects that love light, and they kept flying around the light and falling on my bed. It was kinda annoying.

When I woke up, I had mosquito or insect bites near my eye and nose that became pimples. I thought it was just acne at first, but a few days later, I had insects bites that became pimples on my leg. I never get pimples on my leg! Freaky ass bugs!

After the Mekong Delta tour, I went to Vung Tau (Vũng Tàu), where there's a beach. Didn't do much here, other than eat seafood and go swimming. I finally got a noticeable tan here, after about two weeks in Vietnam.

I also went to a place called Monkey Island, in Can Gio (Cần Giờ) province. There, monkeys (macaques in particular) roamed freely and guests are allowed to feed them, right out of their hands.

Now, these monkeys are total thieves. I was feeding some monkeys when a big male monkey came towards me, jumped up, and snatched a bag of food right out of my hand. Caught it on camera too!

But it's not just food they steal; they'll steal hats, bags, cameras, anything they can run off with. One monkey jumped on top of the taxi driver's wife (they're family friends) and tried to steal her hat, and he managed to scare it off.

So scary! It's even scarier when they follow you because they know you have food. You have to carry a stick with you to scare them off. You're allowed to taunt the monkeys here. The taxi driver (a friend of my aunt) used a big branch and waved/smacked it in the monkey's direction to keep them at bay. The people who work there also have a ghetto slingshot made out of rubber bands; they'll hold it up and the monkey sees it and runs.

Sometimes, you'll see a monkey with a baby clinging to it. Baby monkeys are sooo cute! But one of the monkeys I fed had a baby clinging to it, and it watched me take food out of my pocket. When I turned around to feed another monkey, the mother monkey jumped at my pocket to get at my food!

And later, a big male monkey saw me hold a bag of food and started running at me! I was so scared, I ran backwards, then I threw my bag of food at it. If I took a few steps more backwards, I would have fallen into the water!

That's all for today! I'm at a hotel right now, and I'm going to Dalat tomorrow. I'll write about Nha Trang and Dalat next time!

Ha! I got this up just before October, just like I said.
I thought about not posting it, 'cause it's embarrassing that this took so long. I also avoided writing about my first day of school and my Saturday classes at FIT because I was lazy *sigh*. But then I looked back on the stuff I wrote last year, and it was fun reading about what I did and what was on my mind back then. Well, that's the point of a blog right? So here's the rest:

July
14 : Met a funny cabbie while we were looking for food at night. He knew alot about Vietnamese celebrities and places to eat. My uncle got along real well with him, and invited him to come and eat with us. After that, my uncle told him to just drive around 'cause we didn't wanna go home yet. The cabbie started pointing out random places and talking about some of the weird people he had to drive around (like us, hehe). My aunt asked him to drive to the streets where all the hookers hung out, but it was just a joke since there were kids in the car.

15: Went to got to an outdoor buffet thing called Bình Quới. The cabbie from the previous day drove us there, then he went back to work (but he came back to pick us up at night). There were alot of tourists there (actually, I think just about every visitor there was a tourist or came with one). The scenery was, for the most part, great (excluding the circus-like tents)!

^ Dragonfruit!

There was so much food there! I ate a kazillion snails, which were oh-so yummy!

We washed our hands by using a ladle made from a coconut shell to scoop out rainwater that had collected in these huge jars.

There was also a guy making a bunch of adorable things from palm leaves. I got this cute cricket or grasshopper:

16: Went shopping, shopping, shopping. It never stops.
In many stores, they have this wine that has snakes, lizards, or scorpions in the bottle. It looks pretty cool, but I wouldn't drink it. It promises to cure a bunch of diseases. Bullshit.
I also saw a bunch of interesting pictures in one store. Then I realized that they were made of little butterfly wings. My cousin Ngoc Y was horrified, shouting "How would you feel if someone ripped out your arms and sold them in souvenir shops?"
At night, a dragonfly flew into my mom's cousin's house (wow, lots of bugs and animals in this post). All the grownups started talking about how they used to play with them when they were young, by tying a string to their tails and flying them around like kites. I caught one by its wings while my aunt tied it with thread. It didn't really fly so well; I accidently bent its wings a bit when I grabbed it. But I was totally enamored by it.

It was so cute, and its legs tickled me (this is the weirdest post ever). But then my little cousin yanked the string when it was clinging onto my shirt, and part of its tail came off. I was so pissed! The dragonfly was still alive though, so I put it in the bushes when my little cousin wasn't looking.

17: Left at 5 AM to visit relatives in Huế; (sounds like whey), in a poorer part of VN. The ride was 2 1/2 hours long. We had breakfast in a restaurant that had animals in a cage like at a zoo, but they looked so sad.

I caught this guy on camera yawning twice, but my cousin was frustrated 'cause his camera was too slow:

Near the end of our trip, we went on a ferry to cross the water, which was a brownish-red, rusty color.

When we got to our destination, my mom gave our relatives lots of candy. She had planned on visiting her uncle's grave, but it had rained beforehand so the gravesite was too flooded for her to go. There are all kinds of chickens, everywhere! Some of them are scrawny, but some are gorgeous! When I was eating in the kitchen, a couple of 'em came in and had to be shooed out.

While the grownups talked, me and my cousins went and watched a cockfight. The men who owned the roosters tied metal spurs to their legs. The winner had a broken leg, while the loser died sometime after the fight. He probably got eaten.

I took alot of decent pics in Huế. Here's one of a "sensitive plant." That's what they're actually called in English... but the translation from Vietnamese would be "shy-leaf", which sounds better in my opinion so I'm just gonna call it that. Moving on, the shy-leaf is fun to play with. Give it a tap and its leaflets close up. So cool.

Here's my cousin Ngoc Y with one of my relatives.
The little girl is so cute! She looks like Tweety Bird and she carries around a toy parasol. I hope they don't mind me putting up their pictures...

21: Woke up at 4 AM for a 9 hour ride to Nha Trang, a popular seaside tourist area. Alexandre Yersin, a famous and beloved physician, lived here so you'll see his name alot if you visit this place.
Nha Trang has a nice beach with very salty water. Me and my mom looked out of place with our lifevests on (we didn't bring them all the way from NY for nothing!). She swims like a turtle by the way. I love my lifejacket; it was damn relaxing to just float in the water, like I was laying on a waterbed.
When it was time to leave, my aunt gave me a baby crab she caught. She had put it in a plastic cup. I brought it back with me to the hotel we were staying at, but I felt guilty after the dragonfly incident so later at night, I went all the way back to the beach to set it free (everyone was laughing...).
At night, we ate at a restaurant (it's like we never cook at home in Vietnam). It was crowded so we thought the food might be good. But we ordered pan-fried noodles and got the instant noodles kind, for 30000 VND. Ripoff! We didn't eat much of it and after we left, a poor woman sat down and ate our leftovers, which was a little weird for me.

22: Boat ride to nearby islands. It almost seems like all boats have the same blue, white and/or red paint and tires on the side.

Look at this lovely crystal-clear water:

On one of them, there was an aquarium.

Thes pics came out good even though they were taken in a dark area:

I wish I can boil all of this and eat it (not in the aquarium anymore btw):

These kids saw me taking pics of them and came over asking for food money. I was amazed they could manuever those things standing up and not tip over.

My cousin bought this annoying horn that he kept blowing, even in the car. I just wanted to shove that thing up his ass! Later in the day, we paid money to take pictures at some kind of rock formation. My aunt said it used to be free, but they blocked it off to make money from entrance fares. The little souvenir stands there sold the same stuff as the ones on the street too. Another ripoff!

^ Look at my little cousin. I, uh, can't remember how to spell his name in Vietnamese, so that's his nickname for now. He loves the camera, oh yes. He and my mom take advantage of every photo-op.

Crap! There's more to add, so I didn't make it to my October deadline after all. Damn... Ok, my new deadline is November. Yeah! Gives me plenty of time to get over the 4+ hours I spent on this post!

I wanted to finish this up before it became September's news, but that didn't happen... then I wanted to update by the time school started... well, missed that deadline too, hehe. I'm gonna post about the rest of my vacation in Vietnam and get it out of the way.

July
3-4: Long airplane ride (about 21 hours) that totally messed up my sense of time. Watched 'Daisy,' a Korean movie, on the plane.

5: First day in Vietnam (I'll write VN from now on). Relaxed at my grandparents' home and spent the day playing FIFA Street. Ate out at a restaurant with toilet paper in place of napkins (my mom wasn't kidding about that after all).

6: Spent two hours at an internet café. It had dial up, so I couldn't do much (didn't bring my USB cables or my flash drive), so I just watched videos on Youtube. On boring days, I went there, but my Runescape addicted cousin went almost every other day.

7: It rained that day, while we were eating outdoors at the market.

^ See the water falling into the bucket? That was used to wash the dishes and bowls that we ate out of (and it might have been used in the soup too). That's pretty resourceful.

The rain left giant, brown puddles that evaporated with the sun. It's really easy to walk into one of these puddles whenever it rained, which was often. My cousin Ngoc Y always got brown spots on her legs no matter how carefully she walked.

8: Went shopping at one of those fob stores. Passed this familiar movie ad:

Ate at a restaurant with lots of Coca Cola propaganda. I mean, the label was everywhere; on tables, posters, toilet paper holders (the one in my last post was from that restaurant).

^ Drank some passion fruit juice (try it with the seeds; you can crunch on them as you drink).

^ Under the table, the leftover scraps from the previous diners were still there. Gross!

Even stranger, that night, we ate at a restaurant with with PEPSI everywhere, even on the stools.

Then we went to a large bookstore, where I bought some of those little notebooks and memo pads with cute characters and engrish on them. They were pretty cheap, from about 25 cents to a dollar or two. In those little shops in chinatown, they cost more, except for maybe the shitty looking ones.
This store wasn't just a bookstore though, it also sold CDs, DVDs, and random merchandise from box cutter knives to teacups. My cousins bought CDs that looked more bootlegged than the ones you find on the streets in NY:

Oh yeah, speaking of music, while I was looking around, BSB's "As Long As You Love Me" came on over the speakers, and people throughout the store started singing along, even the middle-aged folks who were shopping there. This guy standing next to me was singing too, but stopped when my cousin joined in on the fun. It was just... odd but cool, seeing how pop culture can affect a country like VN.

Anyway, back to the CDs. When we tried them at home, they turned out to be VCDs. And some of the compilation ones had the weirdest shit on it. For instance, on one, there were Korean breakdancers with a random track playing. Another had some music playing to a clip of Tom and Jerry. There was one with anime too.
My youngest cousin bought a Pokémon VCD. It was just the Japanese version of the show, with the volume turned down and Vietnamese narration dubbed over it. It let Pikachu keep it's name, but some pokémon were called "the 7-tailed bird" or "the big-mouthed bird."
It kinda sucked, but I didn't understand it too much so I might have missed out on something.

Later at night, my cousin caught a baby lizard. Look how tiny it is:

So cute. We let it go after playing with it a bit.

13: After being sick for a few days (I slept with the air conditioner pointing at me. It's tempting, but best avoided), I went shopping once again with my family. Ugh. But we rode on one of those tricycle bikes where people pedal you around. That was scary but fun.

Those people have the same reflexes as bikers. Oh, and for some reason, I took lots of photos of some cows near my grandparents house. They were just so out of place:

^ This girl lives nearby. She's mentally retarded but I think she's cute, although everyone else thought she looked like an alien. She always called me "Ma".

That's it for now! Hopefully, I'll be done by October.

Actually, I returned like, 2 weeks ago, but the heat wave combined with my sheer laziness kept me from going near my computer. I mean, it was actually hotter in New York than it was in Vietnam, and I don't have an AC in the living room where my computer is.

I also spent a day or two cleaning up some of the photos I took there; I hope they don't seem too over-saturated or anything. Oh yeah, I posted the first quarter of this post by accident a few days ago, before attempting to upgrade my blog ('cause I got like, 4000 spam comments again).

Before I talk about some of the random stuff I did on vacation, here's some of the stuff I've noticed in Vietnam:

- It's hot and humid in the south. No duh, but I hate leaving the house before 13:00 because of the heat. Plus, that kind of climate makes for A LOT of MOSQUITOS. At night, you can sleep with a mesh tent to keep them away. Sunscreen and insect repellent were my best friends here. And the electric tennis racket bug zapper too. Best invention ever (If I can find the one I have at home, I'll take a pic)! Bug killing should be a sport. It's totally intense, like you're waiting for the enemy to burst out of nowhere so you can whack it down before it lands on you or something.

- Another common pest is the lizard. Little milky-green lizards. You can find them almost everywhere. I was told they bite, but my aunt could've been messing with me. Anyway, they eat bugs and like to hide under posters, clocks and whatever else is on the wall. They're not really pests I guess, since they don't seem to bother humans. But sometimes, they'll run across the floor and under the nearest covering, like mice, and give you a bit of a scare. I like to scare them back though; when they gather on the walls, I make a motion like I'm gonna smack 'em and they scatter. Very fun.

- The main form of transportation in Vietnam is by motorbike. Not the scary-looking hogs with the leather-clad bikers like you see on tv though. Naw, in Vietnam, they're called Xe Honda (sound familiar?), and the laws are different there (either that or the cops are corrupt. I think it's both). See, you don't have to wear a helmut or any protective gear. You can squeeze babies and children on the bike (the most crowded bike I've seen had 5 people; children included), and the police won't even blink.

Seriously, I passed some policemen with creepy, blank looks on their faces as they watched the traffic flow. Anyways, the elderly can also drive motorbikes and once I saw a monk on one too...
The other vehicles on the road are mostly taxis, followed by vans, trucks, buses and normal cars (depending on where you are. This is pretty true for Saigon, I think).

- Another thing related to transportation: Traffic lights, or lack thereof. It's not like here, with traffic lights at the corner of every block. You can go for a while without seeing one, (again, depending on what part of Vietnam you're in). That translates into lots of accidents. I can't count the number of times I've seen a motorbike stuck under the front of a tourist van. And when I first came to Vietnam, I was overwhelmed by fear and nervous laughter whenever I looked out the window of a taxi to suddenly see a motorbike coming at me, only to have it swerve or slow down and stop two feet away.
These people have mad skills.

^ Shots of people stopping at one of the traffic lights in the city. Some folks don't even bother to stop though, they'll just go on driving though the red lights.

- Everything is pretty cheap, at least for foreigners. You can buy alot with only a dollar, but in the end, it all adds up.

- The Korean wave has hit Vietnam. Korean dramas are broadcasted on TV and Bi (Rain) is in almost every magazine. (Click here to see an example; it's two different articles on two consecutive pages of one mag.)

- Fob clothes and bootlegged brands are everywhere! In fact, they go hand in hand with each other. Oh and, my God, Bebe is on half the clothes here! When you go shopping for clothes, some of the sellers will even recommend it to you. Some brands are mixed together too; like sandals that say 'Bebe' on the insole and 'Gucci' on the upper part near your toes.

It's actually kind of fun to go shopping, just to look at the weirdness they have. Normally, I don't like to go because everything's so overpriced (over $50 for a pair of jeans? That's normal, but something about it doesn't seem right. They even have these prices in some of the more uh, prestigious malls in Vietnam but you usually find tourists shopping there), but in Vietnam, you can get a pair for less than $10 and they're not on sale. Of course, the quality probably sucks, but the sellers will just tell you something like "Even if the clothes fall apart, you can just buy new ones because they're so cheap!"

- Before you buy, you've gotta haggle! The sellers often double the price, but you can whittle it down if you try. If you still can't get the price you want, just walk away and they might shout out a lower price to win you back. Time-consuming, yes, but again, it pays off in the long run.

- Everywhere you go, you will encounter lottery ticket venders. They range from women holding their babies in one arm and the tickets in the other, to the elderly. Tickets are about 5000 VND (I'll check that later), and they go around selling until they run out. They'll come up to you in restaurants, while you're walking in the street and they'll knock on your window while you're waiting in the car.

Me and my cousins made friends with some kids that lived near my grandparents' house; played badminton with them from time to time. There was a girl with at least 6 siblings, and I think they all sold lotto tickets. Not sure, but one of the younger ones that was 9 did, so I'm guessing the older ones do too. They walk around selling at night too. If they smiled, I think they would make more.

It's disheartening really, but I'll admit, it's just plain gross when the amputees stick their missing limbs in your face for money. And it's also immature of me to admit that it's pretty freaking cool when they hold tickets in their prosthetic arms and ask you to help them to they can get more artificial limbs. It makes me realise that not all people spend money on booze and drugs. Stupid media stereotypes!

- If you have white skin, people will fawn over you. I was pale with a sickly white complexion and when I walked around in public, people would turn their heads and stare at me. I mean, I know I'm paranoid, but when my relatives notice it too, I know it's not just me. Once, when I was sitting down, taking a break as my mother and aunt shopped, a woman walked past me, pinched my cheek, said something like "Such pretty white skin!", and continued walking with her little daughter in front of her. That's just one of those WTF moments that had me and my cousin cracking up. Same thing happened at the mall, without the pinching, and in random other places, but I won't delve into that now. Now I've got a slight tan, but my legs are still deathly pale. I still feel the stares... Oh, the paranoia... My God, what has this vacation done to me?