I write from my metal box/apartment in Korea about the second half of our great trip to Vietnam! (Only kidding - I love my apartment :P).
The Trips
The White Sand Dunes
We began organising our excursions like anyone else would: by inquiring at the reception in our resort. As it turned out, they had cancelled all their excursions for some reason and recommended we take a taxi... Great service there Amaryllis! If we hadn't have been into town the previous day we wouldn't have noticed the 10 or 20 different local tour operators nearby and so through ignorance we might've been forced to take a ridiculously expensive taxi ride for a good 3-4 hours. As it happened, we did notice these tour operators and after another painful conversation trying to interpret their 'English' we managed to squeeze that blood out of the stone and finally got the resort to call and book a tour for us.
We decided to go for a jeep ride instead of a van, purely because I thought it would be cooler. It was cooler, much cooler, and I even got a good picture out of it:
Sarah in the jeep minus comb
So, after a 30-40 minute drive through the rural dust of Mui Ne we made it to the beautiful white sand dunes.
We had read that there would be loads of kids trying to sell us stuff, which after China we had a lot of experience in, but there wasn't really. I mean, there were some kids but they didn't really hassle us like I thought they would. My theory is that they thought Sarah was local - a reoccurring theme during our trips to both Vietnam and China - and so decided we were too wise to their ways be bothered with.
As we walked up the stifling hot sand dunes we were excited by it's beauty. With it's vast, rolling pits of sand with a blue sky backdrop on one horizon and a large lake with slight forestation on the other, it was great to behold. But we were also curious as to how out of place the whole scene was; a giant patch of sand dune, with an oasis-like lake nearby, set within eyeshot of the sea - it was all rather odd. Definitely worth the trip :)
Sarah even got something for free! I mean, the sand was quite difficult to walk through so Sarah thought it a good idea to take off her flip-flops... Two minutes later she stepped on gum; GUM in this vast expanse of beauty all caught between her toes:
Unlucky
Lee and the white sand dunes, plus cool Saigon t-shirt.
The Red Sand Dunes
... weren't that special. Stayed there for about 15 minutes before leaving. Still cool to see though, but after the white sand dunes it wasn't that great.
Not that red.
Fishing Village
Apparently we couldn't actually get down to the fishing village itself in the jeep, so the driver just dropped us off at the side of the road to take a few pics.
Me and some fishing boats.
Some fishing boats.
Fairy Stream
Now I wasn't sure what to expect from the Fairy stream, so I didn't question anything when we turned up at a little trickle at the side of the road next to a convenience store.
Some kids told us to follow them down a precarious looking bunch of steps that led into the river itself. They were knee deep in the river and were beckoning us in. We stopped, looked around and asked if they were serious. They were and we were thankful that we wore shorts that day (there were some Germans behind us that wore jeans... not sure why; it was sweltering hot). Here's a video of the first few minutes into the stream:
From my experience traveling (Turkey comes to mind), I knew that we'd probably end up having to pay these kids something for helping us, but we had no idea where we were going so we just let them lead us into the unknown and we'd throw 'em a bone later.
The stream was actually very beautiful, much more than I expected, and I could see why it was on the tourist map. Now that I think about it, it was probably one of my favourite parts of the whole holiday. The kids were guiding us away from particularly deep parts of the stream which was nice (there was a Korean couple in front of us with a toddler and, because they didn't recruit the help of the local street urchins, they were struggling a bit - it was funny to watch at times :) ). We saw some beautiful butterflies lit up by the sunlight streaming through the gaps in the trees. The rock formations nearer the end of our little trek, but by no means near the end of the stream, were gorgeous. Here are some pictures:
Lee and Sarah in the Fairy stream
Fairy stream
Nice rock formations.
Sarah and the rock formations.
It was great :)
On our walk back to the jeep our child guides, as predicted, asked us for cash. Now you can buy a pretty decent meal for around 100,000 Vietnamese dong (around $5 (3 pounds)) and we thought that was a generous amount to give.
So I said 'Yeah, thanks for your help, kids!' revealed the 100,000 dong and they looked at me as if I had just called their mother something rude!
They were all saying 'Oh, no sale! No sale! We need to go to school! We need more.. Come on!'. (Inside I was thinking 'No sale? We don't actually HAVE to give you anything..')
I felt sorry for them so I picked up a little bit more of the small change from my pocket and said that's all I could give them and they walked off as if it wasn't even enough to bother with!
I turned to Sarah and said 'Well, beggars can't be choosers,' and put the cash back in my pocket.
They kept turning around and asking for more but I was like 'Nope! It's that or nothing.'
They kept walking off and coming back. By that time, I knew their game...
I said to Sarah 'We could've gave 'em 500,000 dong and they still would've reacted like this. Good tactic but we're no fools.'
As we we're nearing the jeep one of the kids finally came up to me and said 'You're good. 100,000, OK.' So I gladly gave them the cash, because they were helpful to be honest, and they said thank you and waved us off.
Cheeky little gits ;)
Takou Mountain
Another day, another excursion. We went through the same company and rented another jeep. This trip was a tad more expensive because it took longer to get there (about an hour and half) but it was definitely worth it.
The entrance to Takou mountain was almost theme park-esque. The mountain was actually quite large so despite Sarah's slight apprehension we took the cable car to the top.
On the cable car
At the top in the semi-wilderness.
Reclining Buddha
Above is a video of the reclining Buddha so you can see how big it was.
Lee in the clouds.
When we left the mountain area, the jeep driver dropped us off at one of the MANY dragon fruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_fruit) groves we passed on the way there. It was quite random just wandering onto someones dragon fruit patch :S
Random dragon fruit grove
Random dragon fruit grove with Takou mountain backdrop.
The dragon fruit was grown by the Vietnamese in a very interesting way; I mean, I'm not an expert on how it's grown, it could be grown like this all over the world for all I know. Anyway, they stick a pillar of concrete into the ground and the dragon fruit plant is forced to grow around it. I guess it makes it easier to harvest or maybe they do it so each plant doesn't have to compete for sunlight or ground space with it's neighbouring plant... Guesswork.
After being randomly dropped off here, we got randomly dropped off at this place:
The place we randomly got dropped off at :S
Don't ask us where it was, because we couldn't tell you, but we got directed to a market area for some reason. I thought the market was quite cool actually. A bit too smelly and graphic for Sarah, I think - there were all kinds of animals and fish gutted and up for sale. Things that stick in my mind was the tail of an unidentified animal and these strange fish that I've never seen. We didn't stick around long enough to take pictures, as you can probably guess :P
Next stop was the Poshanu Cham towers that were actually quite close to our resort. Can't remember much about them except that they were from the 9th century. They seemed well preserved and were nice to look at :) We were surprised they hadn't weathered more, especially considering the powerful winds from the sea and the horrendous monsoons they get there.
Ancient-ish tower
Final words
Overall, we loved Vietnam. It would've been nice to have seen more of it actually (Hanoi, eastern coastal cities etc) but we definitely made the most of the area we stayed in :) I know one thing for sure, the shock of returning back to work was real... We sure relaxed out there in the 'Nam :P
Me having a sip of my coconut juice.
It was Pho-bulous :)
(If you want us to send you any pictures in particular then just let us know :) )
During a jeep ride back from the White Sand Dunes in Vietnam, I had this idea for a travel blog. I wanted to write a blog with Lee about the times we've shared both abroad and in Korea. Lee and I both would write a post about different parts of our trips. I thought that we could use the blog for two reasons: as a record of our memories and as a way for both our families to get a bit more insight into the other's personality. I hope that we will be able to post on the blog continuously throughout the remainder of our time here in Korea. Lee and I had a paper, rock, scissors match to see who would have to write first and...I lost, so I'm writing first. :/ Here goes..I hope you all enjoy!
WELCOME TO VIETNAM
After a short 5 hour flight, we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. What were the first things we noticed? Besides the heat and 100% humidity, one of the first things we noticed was the huge disproportionate ratio between men and women. In the airport and out in the town, there was a noticeable lack of number of young women around. Everywhere you looked, there seemed to be nothing but men. Another was the sheer number of motorbikes on the road and the lack of proper timed crosswalks. Buildings in Vietnam were also very unique. All of the buildings that we kept seeing were very narrow and very few seemed to have more than 5 floors. Despite the fact that the buildings were quite narrow, we were both really impressed with the way the Vietnamese maximized space.
We were able to find our hotel pretty painlessly. After we settled in to the hotel, we decided that we'd have a bit of a wander around the city. Our hotel was in an area that was central to a few site-seeing stops including the famous binh than market, a couple of art museums, a large Catholic church (Vietnam has one of the largest Catholic populations in the world), and a few communist memorials. We decided that we'd take the short walk to the Binh than market first. I swear that short walk felt like one of the longest walks in my life. Travelling in Vietnam or rather walking around in Vietnam especially Ho chi minh city can sometimes feel like a fight to survive. There are so many motorbikes and very few cars. The problem is that people park their motorbikes on walking paths (so you're forced to walk on the street), and there are no lights at all at any crosswalks. So the rule here is walk fast...very fast when you see a gap and don't stop moving or you WILL get hit by a bike.
Here's a clip we recorded of just what it felt like to walk around in Ho Chi Minh:
We bravely managed to get to Ben thanh market where we had an interesting chance to experience arm-tugging and haggling to its extreme. The market also had an area where they served food. I think most people would have been a bit shocked to eat inside the food area, but I thought it was amazing. Lee and I picked a random corner shop, grabbed stools and ordered rice paper summer rolls like pros. The food was amazing and we loved every minute of soaking up Vietnam.
Ben Thanh Market
After the market, we played a bit more human frogger to get to the art museum a few streets over. It's always interesting to see the different types of art that are displayed in different countries. In Korea, we've seen a ridiculous amount of Celadon pottery in various museums (as a result Lee will now instantaneously walk out of a room if it contains even one pot). In China, we saw stack upon stack of water-color paintings. Lacquered wood paintings seemed to be the Celadon pot and water-colored paintings of Vietnam. There were many different scenes that had been painted onto wood, but the most common seemed to be of workers in rice fields or fishermen. The first floor of the museum held various paintings of faces that didn't really appeal to Lee or me mainly because of the fact that each face looked as if it had come straight out of a horror film.
We were a bit scared to walk around at night with all the motorbikes so we went back to our hotel. Since the hotel offered amazing deals in their spa, we decided to get a Vietnamese massage. We enjoyed a nice 2 hour foot and body massage, manicure and pedicure (which Lee loved by the way although he'll deny it to this day ;) ), and fruit plate for roughly $25. I think that is to date the cheapest that we have ever paid to be pampered.
The next day we took a bus to Mui Ne. We spent about 5 hours traveling to our Resort. I'm so glad I looked out the window around the 5 hour mark to see the sign for our resort. If I hadn't, we would have missed our stop and who knows where we might have ended up. It seems that in Vietnam, the bus doesn't really stop at designated stops or at any particular stop. Instead you're supposed to stand up and flag down the driver when you want to get off.
Our room was beautiful and had a small terrace with chairs and a view of both a garden and the beach. We were a bit worried about the weather forecast, but the weather was lovely all the same. We definitely took advantage of the pool quite a bit.
Here are a few pictures of the resort, our room and the surrounding beach area:
The view from our room
Our favorite reading spots
The Amaryllis resort was quite isolated so we ate most of our meals either at the main resort restaurant or at the beach bar.
Summer Rolls
The weather took a bit of a turn for the worst during the first couple of days we were at the resort. The rain came down quite heavily, and the wind blew strongly as well. It reminded me of hurricane weather back home. It was interesting to see how the resort workers dealt with the weather. Every time it started to rain they pulled down these thin bamboo blinds that were supposed to block out the rain in the open hallways. They worked surprisingly well. We spent a couple of hours in their cafe reading with the doors open enjoying the cool breeze without getting wet. The other times when it rained heavily, we stayed in the room watching episodes of the dog whisperer.
On one of the days when the weather let up a bit, we decided to venture out to Mui Ne city. The taxi driver dropped us off at Mui Ne Market. The driver said he would wait for us (I guess he knew that we wouldn't be staying very long). We didn't want to take any pictures of the market mainly because it just felt wrong in a way to take pictures of people in poverty. There were many people selling bits and pieces of what they could, great slabs of raw meat and fish covered in flies, and others lounging against the walls. The smells also were a bit more than either of us could handle so we decided to head back. As we were driving back, we saw families living on the side of the road in very small, open sheet-metal boxes. It was hard for both of us to imagine life in a metal box with the rain and hot humid weather.
Overall though, the first half of our trip to Vietnam was relaxing and very nice. Lee's going to talk about the second half of the trip.
I know it doesn't really count, but this is the speed I got from my school :o It's also not relevant to this blog post...
Anyway, SPORTS DAY! :D
The day after the festival came Sports Day... And it was manic. I knew I was in for some trouble when I heard the blowing of horns and chanting as I wandered into school for the day at about 8:15am. In an almost tribal fashion each homeroom class had their own 'uniform' that the kids bought themselves, their own chants, warpaint, and rivals. Also, each class had their own section on the school playing ground to cheer on their team in, I presume to minimize fights.
I chose to stick with my co-teacher's homeroom class - class 1-8 - for the entirety of the chaotic Sports fest. Kitted out in pink t-shirts and animal-ear headbands, we looked pretty badass :P
For the record, I did not wear a pink t-shirt... although I was forced to wear a cat-eared headband for about 10 minutes by one of the more... assertive/scary students :P
This is 'one of the more assertive scary students' leading the tribe:
It's not really surprising that our team won the 'loudest class' award, is it? :o
After a few words from the Principal and the Korean national anthem, the games kicked off. First up!.... jump-rope.
Now, jump-rope is really popular amongst kids in Korea. When I ask questions in class like 'what are you good at?' they often come back with 'jump-rope'. And, yeah, they're pretty good at it.
The kids line up diagonally with two kids working the rope. Then, yeah, they jump over the rope... Tough stuff eh?
Next up was tug-of-war! Apparently, my co-teacher had a lot of confidence in our team. Remember the girl who forced me to wear the headband? Hye Lim her name is, and according to my co-teach she is 'strong' lol.. Needless to say, 1-8 won the tug-of-war, mainly thanks to Hye Lim I'd say. Good times :)
The next event was mental and would definitely be banned under 'health and safety' in the UK.
The game involves all the students in the class. Two students (it helps if they're tall) train another student (it helps if they're small) along an ever replenishing line of students' bent over using their backs as stepping stones for the small kid to run across... I'll just upload another video:
And then after this an even more mental game reared it's head! I'm not sure what it's called, but I'm gonna call it 'Charge at your friends and get rope burn game'...
One kid actually got rope burn and he wandered off crying while the chaos continued... :o Genuinely looked liked amazing fun though...
After this there was what I consider to be 'real' sports: relay race and... er thats it. So plenty of tug of war, rope based games then but a cheeky bit of shot put or high jump is out of the question :'( Ah well, it was better than any sports day I've ever had on all accounts.
School festival day was a couple of weeks back now - I've just been too busy to whack up a blog about it... Well, let's say a mixture of lazy and busy. Anyway, the school festival is when each homeroom class ('tutor group' in the UK) sort out a theme for their homeroom and kids can go in and out of each room and check out what they're friends are up to. It was really fun :) Unfortunately, I couldn't really wander the classrooms myself as I had to do my own theme game! I called it 'Lee's Treasure Hunt' but the Korean teachers changed it to 'MISSION' 'cause apparently the student know what this means - you have to say it in a Korean accent though otherwise they won't understand (roughly said like 'Mee-shun').
Basically, what the 'mission' involved was the students running around the school looking for clues and each clue would then lead them onto another clue. Each clue sheet had a letter written on it. Once they had collected all of the letters and worked out the anagram that the letters formed, then they had completed the mission! I thought only a handful of students would try it and then I could pack up early and wander around the school enjoying the festival with the kids... However, tons of students turned up and, to my surprise, actually worked out the clues quite quickly - a lot of the clues weren't easy, for example 'look underneath the staircase to the first floor' requires a bit of work for some of the less able kids. The prizes were pens that one of my co-teachers gave me to give away. I think one guy thought he was going to get candy or something really special because he was away for ages and when he finally came back with the answer and I gave him the pen as a reward he looked like a man who'd just been ripped off at the bookies :P Like he was gonna give me a 'piece of his mind'...
These are some students who took part in the mission:
They completed it pretty sharpish.
Class 1-7 had a cool game room going. Needless to say, this was my favourite room. I turned up and a couple of girls were dressed in cool costumes, there was music blaring, and it was packed full of kids getting keen about games like Jenga and Chess :) Great fun.
I played (and won) a game of Jenga versus this girl hehe >:P Owned her.
(Of course) There was a Starcraft tournament in the computer room. Again, packed full of kids. They were clicking the mouse faster than I could do with my elderly 23 year-old fingers...
A selection of creepy masks that the students made for the festival :)
This weekend just gone me, Sarah, Chris and Amy (two mates from England who came over for the race and a holiday) all went down to Mokpo to watch the F1. Took the KTX, which was hassle free, played Trivial Pursuit on the way down on Sarah's iPod touch and slept on the way back because it was gone midnight... We turned up at the race track after a great night at the hotel with the friendliest hotel manager in the world (he had a small Paris Baguette cake waiting for us when we turned up, gave us a lift to the shuttle bus AND when Sarah left her phone at the hotel he posted it to her a couple of days later... great bloke) at around 11am ready for the Hyundai series race an hour or so later.
This is when things started to go wrong.
It had rained quite hard the night before so it was all muddy. Very muddy. We had to buy cheap plastic ponchos because there was a constant light rain that wasn't going away. There was also a long, arduous walk around the track to do anything, i.e. get the tickets, get food/merchandise etc. But we couldn't get any food in the end because no one was selling any... thousands of people and not ONE food vendor. Apparently, a lot of people had got wind of this and brought their own food (either that or they thought that food would be too expensive and cleverly brought a lunch of their own). So we were starving. And wet.
The track was so sodden with water that the race was delayed by an hour to see if it would dry up. It never really but they started the race anyway, albeit behind the safety car for like 20-odd laps. As soon as the safety car buggered off though the race was awesome :)
Here are some pictures:
Yes, Dad and Ryan, we had a flag :) Were we on telly? I doubt it.. I never saw one TV camera the whole race...
Good close up picture of some of the racers that Sarah took. Alonso looks smug. It's like he already knows he'll win.
Nice picture of me and Sarah in our ponchos and F1 lanyards :)
F1 gets underway!! It was seriously so exciting. Saw a few cool overtaking maneuvers down the straight and saw a couple of crashes and this:
Uh oh... Vettel's out. His car was on fire and after he got out of his car he hopped on the back of a moped and zipped off lol.
This was the view for a long time :P As you can hear the cars are soooooo loud. They gave us ear plugs, which I didn't use because I'd feel lame if I put em in, but they were definitely needed. This video was taken when they were going 'slowly' behind the safety car too, so you can imagine the noise when they are going full throttle... and we were on the huge straight. Great experience it was.
Still, an awesome race weekend at Yeongam, Korea! Let's hope Korea gets it's act properly together for next year and spruce up the place a bit :P
Turned up to class today (class 2-5) to find no bugger there and a load of kids shouting at me to go outside and watch the football. This took a while for them to get across because I initially thought that they were winding me up and their English was shocking. I also thought I might've got prior warning that I got to watch football instead of trawl through the textbook with the kids, but this is Korea after all and I've gotten used to it :P
Here's a few pictures I shoddily took of the game:
The kids, and even one of my co-teachers who was sitting next to me, were well keen about the game. My co-teacher kept like slapping me on the back when things happened, cheering really loudly... It was the Final of the group to see who progresses into next weeks Sports Day. Serious stuff.
The game ended in a goalless draw with penalties to come and it was pretty tense, as you can see by all the nail biting going on in the picture above :P
This is our glorious playing field. Almost as dusty as my apartment :P
The game ended 5-4 on penalties with class 2-5 (the team I was cheering on) beating class 2-3.
If this was tense, imagine next weeks Sports Day...
4:27 AM
Lee
The dragon fruit was grown by the Vietnamese in a very interesting way; I mean, I'm not an expert on how it's grown, it could be grown like this all over the world for all I know. Anyway, they stick a pillar of concrete into the ground and the dragon fruit plant is forced to grow around it. I guess it makes it easier to harvest or maybe they do it so each plant doesn't have to compete for sunlight or ground space with it's neighbouring plant... Guesswork.
