Floating hotel, lizards galore, and 17hrs on a bus

 

Bright and early in the morning (5:30am start) and time for a trip to see the floating markets. Loved this trip because it didn't feel too touristy. Here is a lovely picture of me eating a tiny Vietnamese banana which I bought from a 7yr old boy who was in a rowing boat long side our tourist boat. He totally charmed me with his 'ooopoppp opan gangnam style' singing and dancing.

The markets were beautiful and so lively and colourful. Each boat only sells one thing and they advertise their produce by hanging it off a big pole attached to the front of their boat. There is a lot of talk and haggling going on (I presume) but also lots of oldies fast asleep in their hammocks too.

 

We pulled in to get some petrol for the boat and as Laura and I were sat at the back near the petrol pump thing we got the most attention from the boat/garage boys. They couldn't speak any English of course but happily handed us over a beer each and waved us off cheerfully. The people really are so friendly here - //I just wish I could get the hang of the language... The pronouciation is IMPOSSIBLE - I hae been trying for weeksto perfect how to say 'sin chao' (hello), 'sin louee' (sorry) and 'cam onn' (thank you) but if you get the accent even a tiny bit off they really don't have a clue what you are saying.. So trying anything more complicated is pretty out of the question right now.

 

Had a very giggley girlie evening laughing our heads off in the bar of our floating hotel. A lizard fell on Julianne and she screamed and threw it on Laura... We also thoroughly enjoyed the menu... Micellanneous broth and 'see poo pizza' yumm...

 

 

The next day before we started our marathon 17hr bus journey up to Dalat we visited a minority community village in the Mekong.

We only walked around for an hour but it was wonderful. A real insight into another way to live. All the houses were on stilts,and under most of them was a well worn old loom (for making fabric). Such a difference to the houses on the river and the thin jumbled bookcase-like houses of Siagon.

 

 

 

 

I always feel a bit uncomfortable when we go to these places and just walk around taking photos of peoples homes and looking at the people a bit like zoo animals so I always try and buy something from someone even if it's only tiny - it makes me feel a little less guilty but I do still feel like we are being very nosey...

At this village I bought a sort of coconut rice macaroon cooked by this lady in this hot pots - it was delishous and she seemed really touched that I liked it so much too.

 

I also had a lovely wordless exchange with an old lady how was eyeing us very suspiciously as we walked past her house. I saw she was wearing trousers always identical to mine - dark blue with white polka dots. I called out to her and pointed to my trousers and smiled and she realised what I was saying and absolutely fell about laughing. It was such a lovely lovely moment,she even started calling out to her neighbours who came out their homes to see what all the fuss was about. It really made my day.

 

Back on the bus and the next brief stop was this beautiful cliff side temple where we could actually see the Cambodian boarder.

 

 

And then on through the night to Dalat.....

 

 

See you later Siagon

 

Going to miss this beautiful city and the little community we had going on in our house. Even on our last day we went to a roof top swimming pool and had tea and biscuits with Candy and some good heart to hearts with the boys.

 

 

 

Headed to the Mekong, but being touristy again feels weird... I think I find being a tourist a bit contrived - which is ridiculous because obviously I am a tourist, but I did come here to live and teach even if it has fallen through.. We are talking about the possibility of heading straight to the orphanage after Dalat and then 2 of the girls are thinking about going back to Siagon and trying to get jobs. It's a bit frightening thinking the group might separate so soon but I have to try and stick with my instincts which is to see how I find the orphanage work and to make a decision based on that...

 

Today we went to a coconut sweet making house, a honey farm, a fruit café where they sny some traditional music (and 'if your happy and you know it clap your hands') and took 3 different little boats around the islands - described by our tour guide as ''same same but different''. 

Picturesque place but the plans for the next few weeks are distracting.

 

Escaped monkeys, Potatoes and Jingle Bells

The last few days have been totally action packed, and as usual totally unpredicatable and unexpected..

We have survived our first major scare, and also our first karaoke night..!

I’m going to have to break this down into chunks because there is so much to say – I could write pages about each experience but I’ll try and keep it brief. I’ve timed writing this pretty well though as it’s 10:55am and the girls are all still fast sleep so I have the full use of the rather dodgy broadband J

Siagon Zoo:

This was nicer than I thought it was going to be actually, and only cost about 4p to get in. I was expecting concrete pits but most the animals seemed to be in pretty good enclosures. Though not always as enclosed as you would expect!...

These monkeys freely escaped their cage to steal leaves from the nearby trees before squeezing back in again.

 

Sadly the elephants/tigers and lions were kept in far too small a pen. And the elephants had chains round their legs which was upsetting.

Food tour:

We were all in our PJs ready for bed when we had a knock on our door. Candy was inviting us out for icecream, so we thought well why not. Quickly pulled on our clothes again and headed downstairs where Candy then told us we were going by motorbike of course.

She also very unsubtlely paired the 4 of us girls up with Daniel, Tung and the two Vietnamese personal trainers who live here. Thoroughly enjoyed the company and the icecreams! We then assumed we would be going home but o no, we were now on some sort of late night food tour again…
 

We went to some totally different part of the city where we were presented with a hotpot (cook it yourself stove on the table) full of cockles, clams and crabs claws. It was delishous.

We also had chicken feet…

And snails…

The journey home was eventful but we all arrived in one piece and were very glad to have the boys to look out for us.

Shopping:

Went into district one with soph and julianne to do some shopping and get Candy a present to thank her for all her hospitality.  Ended up singing ‘happy birthday’ to try to convey I wanted flowers as a gift (I was worried I might be accidentally buying funeral flowers!).

Had a lovely lunch, we are getting to be more Vietnamese in our eating now – ordering 2/3 meals and then sharing them. Had an amazing chilli lemongrass fried chicken dish.

Still find this city so beautiful and exciting. Am  no way bored of it yet!

Also managed to book for the Mekong and Dalat which I’m excited about.

 Karaoke night:

Our first karaoke night… How to describe this one?! We were instructed by Tung that we couldn’t look like trampy backpackers.. He told us we would actually have to put on some makeup and dress up properly so we got dolled up  and had a few drinks here before getting a car taxi to the karaoke joint. This was not how I expected it to be – but nothing is! We were taken to a little room with our own machine and huge ‘Argos catalogue’ of terrible English songs to choose from. Tungs friend Sean joined us too, but singing to just 6 people was pretty intimate. And not helped by the fact the micro phone had some sort of weird echo distortion on it which meant we all sounded bloody awful..!

Had to have some cocktails to get in the mood. But we soon were LOVING it. George Micheal, the Spice girls, Pink, Red Hot Chillis, ABBA… the boys sang too – they were miles better than us sadly.

Then we went to a rooftop bar and met up with Daniel which meant I got to ride on the bike again. Karaoke and motoring biking round siagon, it really couldn’t have been more of a Vietnamese party night! Though I did burn my leg on the damn bike exhaust which hurts a lot still.

The we went on to a street bar again, where you sit pretty much in the middle of the road on tiny plastic chairs and everyone drinks beer. At this point someone suggested shots and the evening descended into far too much laughter and silliness till 7am J It was great though, we all had such a good night – even if we did pay for it the next day…

Bringing the Potato:

We had been telling Candy how much we already miss potatos and bless her she went out and bought 4! God knows where she found them! Anyway then the pressure was on as she wanted us to cook them… There being no oven we decided to go for mash. No milk here of course but there was something which looked like butter. Candy was really taken with the mash, she was amazed we had potatos instead of rice/nodles and wanted us to tell her the recipe <3 Eating potatoes with chopsticks is going down in my memory forever.

We also had the chance to make spring rolls and fry them ourselves which was great – I’m really missing cooking so I loved it. Unfortunately due to the hang over we did all keep having to take it in turns to run upstairs to our room… Poor laura was the worse off she had to give in after only one spring roll and retire permanently.  In the end there was nothing for it but to crack open another beer. Candy had been out and bought 20 beers especially for the occasion so it would have been rude not to…

 

The food was amazing. We all sat on the floor in true Vietnamese style and Candy kept piing our bowls high.

 

Then someone suggested karaoke and before we knew it we were singing Wham’s Last Christmas and Jingle Bells… Totally surreal, and absolutely wonderful.

 

On your bike

After my quiet little day yesterday the girls are I were invited out for dinner with Candy, her husband Arnt (?) and Tugn (the Danish-Vietnamese guy who lives upstairs). We had to go on the back of their bikes though....

Sophie opted for Tugn - least experienced but speaks English fluently.

Julianne opted for Candy - hoping a female driver might be kinder...
I opted for Arnt - who doesn't speak any English but would I guessed was the most experienced driver
(Laura stayed at home for a bit of r&r)

Needless to say we were all terrified!

But the roads were actually (relatively) quiet and our drivers were very careful.
After the first 10mins of clinging on for dear life and laughing like maniacs we really started to enjoy ourselves!

We drove for about 20mins to the first location where we had the BEST Pho Bo ever. I decided to count how many westerns we saw all evening as I had a feeling it wouldn't be very many... We saw none! Not even on the roads! Everywhere we went a little tittering crowd formed to watch us eat it was very funny.
Next we wizzed off to food location number 2 where Candy ordered us some sort of assortment of jellied squid things... the texture made them pretty hard to swallow.... Sophie was not a fan so I tried to eat her portion too... thank  god for the beer to wash it down!

We also had these leaf wrapped meat moose things... Called ' daarrrrhh'. I liked these a lot!

Then Candy took us to where her old primary school was because there is a tiny little café there which does really yummy fruit ice smoothie type things. There were so many different types of fresh fruit I had never tried before. I also tried my first jack fruit - this smells like horrible gone off cheese and drains but tastes really good if you can get beyond the smell!

We also had a really interesting conversation with Tugn. He told us he lived in Vietnam as a child but his family wasn't well off so he was sent to a Danish orphanage where his foster mum, a government official, thought 'he looked cute' and adopted him. he is now back in Vietnam after 25yrs away. he also told us we should try giving private tuition English lessons as it would be an easy way to teach and make some money which is with bearing in mind.Tugn also tried to teach us some Vietnamese but the accents are really hard to hear and if you get a word even a tiny tiny bit wrong the Vietnamese don't understand you at all. but once you get the hang of that the language is meant to be very easy - there is NO grammar! and NO tenses... Which is going to make teaching English hard...

keeping it real

Had my first real wobble today. Decided perhaps I needed some time to myself as in the last 2 weeks the longest I've spent lone is 15mins in the shower.
So I went for a walk round our new home out in district 8 which is about 15mins in a taxi from the tourist area.
As usual on my walk I was treated like a celebrity... almost everyone stops and stares, says hello and waves and anyone who I talked to (bakery staff, supermarket girl, policeman, coffee seller) told me I was beautiful.Going back to the UK is going to be a bit of an ego come down!
It made me feel better though to have so many friendly faces pleased to see me.

And I got to Skype Daddy and Mum AND Daddan <3 Which was a real treat.

Keeping it real, and remembering my strengths as well as my weaknesses.

Cross the river

Visited more markets in Phu Quoc.  And FINALLY bought a Vietnamese phone. Send me an email for the number :)
The heat is getting very intense now. As we were standing in the market sorting phones water was literally pouring down the backs of our  legs - later we all admitted to each other we did wonder whether we were all weeing ourselves..!
Lots of colours in the market, and the best pineapple I think I'll ever eat.

But also lots of poverty and health problems.

The girls and I have decided we want to do several voluntary projects. It just doesn't sit easy coming to this country with all our privileges, education and wealth to just photograph and return home...
Today we are back in the café all on our laptops researching away...

I sshalll have a fishy on a little dishy when the boat comes in

Writing this having my breakfast of banana pancake fritter and lemon juice. Sat with the gang all researching our next move...
The plan today is to internet search for voluntary projects, and then go into town to get a present for ms jenny (our hotel owner) who has said we can stay in her house in siagon when we head back next week for free!

Julianne, sophie, laura and I have decided we are going to go and do some volunteering... we are looking into orphanages and community projects at the moment in the central highlands area of Nam. And sophie and I are also thinking about visting the Friendship village where victims of Agent Orange (the acid attacks during the war) live - even 3rd generation their children are deformed... The West is so protected from all the reality of it.

 

On a more positive note: 

Went to a crazy fish night market last night. there were loads of these weird rainbow sea slug things and massive mutant prawn lobsters!

 

 

 

 

bought myself my first souvenirs - a shell inlaid wooden box, comb, and mirror for about £1. we also all got leather band round our wrists...now we look like proper grubbly little travellers.

 

Been hanging out on our beach a lot, just reading my kindle and chatting. I'm the only one not to have got sunburnt yet!....

 

The Vietnamese have sussed out we love their children so now everywhere we go they just give us their kids! Even in the travel agent yesterday a little boy was just handed over to us!

Back to researching now. Bye for now

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