she very very tiger!
I went from the worst week of my travels straight to the best week!
I'm in Nha Trang now, this is day 6 here.
I had a terrible time getting all the way down here... I was all alone the whole time- no travelers in sight... which is a lot less exciting than it sounds. In reality its very wearying and lonely. I saw violence-- chairs being thrown in rage through glass display cases on the street I was walking on. I saw death-- all bloody and strewn out across the road.. it took me a long time to be able to lower my hand from my mouth. And I was seriously harassed by my bus driver and more or less stalked for 2 days.
It was awful awful awful.
But now I'm living with Nhiem and David and a pet monkey named Stupid and 2 baby puppies-- Lo and Pha. And Anthony is here! I didn't know this until after he arrived but he wasn't planning on coming down this way at all. His visa for Vietnam runs out the 21st of May so he was going to go straight over to Cambodia but came all the way down here to make sure I was okay.. which was very kind indeed! And now we can go together to Cambodia- I will be very grateful for the company! Tomorrow evening we take a night train to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and then straight on across the border to Phnom Penh. And then through Cambodia (hopefully along the Mekong River!) and then over to Bangkok where Anthony flies away to Seoul and I go to a Thai Massage course and meet up with Brian and then I fly back to Hanoi and then spend my last couple of weeks travelling the north of Vietnam and then to Hanoi once more and home to America. It will go by very quickly to be sure.
I'm so so happy living with Nhiem and David! They adopted me and rescued me from my hotel when I told them about my bus driver showing up there again. So I have been living in a real house and I haven't been allowed to pay for a single thing, which is far too generous of them.
And its been more than great to catch up with Anthony... we've been going off on Nha Trang adventures and just laughing so much. Its fun to have someone to giggle with! Yesterday we had such a fun day doing a Nha Trang island boat tour. For $7 we were picked up and taken to the docks, fed an enormous lunch, got to go snorkeling with all the gear included, live entertainment-- the Nha Trang boyband (they were great!!) ... forced into doing karaoke (hahahahahah... they love it here... I was made to go up and sing "Hotel California"... Mr. Funky Monkey said- "I need Miss America to come up and sing this with me!") aaaand what else... saw a few islands, floating bar, endless fresh fruit... a trip to an aquarium with an enormous and enormously tacky plastic prawn and shark and an animal for every year of the chinese zodiak... including a bonus Mickey Mouse. Oh and we almost got left there, hahah! We went to go see the big prawn and I guess the boat started to leave and someone remembered we were missing and made them wait. It WAS an interesting aquarium, but I'm very glad not to have been stuck there forever!
anyway-- a perfect day out! and I only got a LITTLE bit seasick during lunch. I'm very proud of myself for feeling decidedly less miserable than usual on a boat.
And then last night we were having a wander around town and walked up to the beach and saw that the whole beachfront street was blocked off to traffic. We walked up to see what was going on and ended up in a crowd of tens of thousand of Vietnamese people celebrating Buddha's birthday. Vesak Day it was called. It was fantastic!! They had those Chinese dancing dragons-- what are they called? I've ALWAYS wanted to see those!! It was great!! And lots of other performances... tiny children singing songs and drumming and lots of interesting cultural performances. The Happy Birthday bicycle man was not special to Hoi An apparently because they have them here as well... one of them came right up behind us during the festival wailing out "Happy Birthday"... it was rather annoying. But then Anthony said- "well really its very appropriate isn't it? Since its the Buddha's Birthday!!" so we bought some popcorn and celebrated for Buddha. We were the center of attention again, being at a local celebration, especially Anthony since he's so tall and very very blue-eyed.
Then we went out to eat and ended up at this very local, very CRAZY restaurant with all kinds of wild things on the menu... swimming bladder soup, weasle, mackrel head hotpot, pork tails.... oh so many more things. The menu was more than 20 pages long and every option was very tempting, hahah. I went for frog (which wasn't bad, I have to admit!) and Anthony tried to order weasle but they were fresh out so he went for a lotus salad... in honor of Buddha, and then just picked out a mystery hotpot. It ended up being mushy fish stew with endless rice noodles... it could have fed 5 people. We left a whole table full of food when we finally decided we couldn't possibly stuff ourselves any more.
Quite the day! Today is "very very sun" so its sorching hot and I'm covered in mosquito bites and I have an aching ear from being absolutely pounded by the ocean the other day. I KNOW I still have sand inside my ear and salt water... I don't like it! And I was attacked by a pet kitten while I was eating lunch and I had a little bit of blood on my hand but Anthony poured his beer on it so hopefully I will be rabies-free.
Today all I want to do is watch a movie and pack for Cambodia and stay out of the sun.
Well Tam Biet and I'll write again from Cambodia!
I'm in Nha Trang now, this is day 6 here.
I had a terrible time getting all the way down here... I was all alone the whole time- no travelers in sight... which is a lot less exciting than it sounds. In reality its very wearying and lonely. I saw violence-- chairs being thrown in rage through glass display cases on the street I was walking on. I saw death-- all bloody and strewn out across the road.. it took me a long time to be able to lower my hand from my mouth. And I was seriously harassed by my bus driver and more or less stalked for 2 days.
It was awful awful awful.
But now I'm living with Nhiem and David and a pet monkey named Stupid and 2 baby puppies-- Lo and Pha. And Anthony is here! I didn't know this until after he arrived but he wasn't planning on coming down this way at all. His visa for Vietnam runs out the 21st of May so he was going to go straight over to Cambodia but came all the way down here to make sure I was okay.. which was very kind indeed! And now we can go together to Cambodia- I will be very grateful for the company! Tomorrow evening we take a night train to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and then straight on across the border to Phnom Penh. And then through Cambodia (hopefully along the Mekong River!) and then over to Bangkok where Anthony flies away to Seoul and I go to a Thai Massage course and meet up with Brian and then I fly back to Hanoi and then spend my last couple of weeks travelling the north of Vietnam and then to Hanoi once more and home to America. It will go by very quickly to be sure.
I'm so so happy living with Nhiem and David! They adopted me and rescued me from my hotel when I told them about my bus driver showing up there again. So I have been living in a real house and I haven't been allowed to pay for a single thing, which is far too generous of them.
And its been more than great to catch up with Anthony... we've been going off on Nha Trang adventures and just laughing so much. Its fun to have someone to giggle with! Yesterday we had such a fun day doing a Nha Trang island boat tour. For $7 we were picked up and taken to the docks, fed an enormous lunch, got to go snorkeling with all the gear included, live entertainment-- the Nha Trang boyband (they were great!!) ... forced into doing karaoke (hahahahahah... they love it here... I was made to go up and sing "Hotel California"... Mr. Funky Monkey said- "I need Miss America to come up and sing this with me!") aaaand what else... saw a few islands, floating bar, endless fresh fruit... a trip to an aquarium with an enormous and enormously tacky plastic prawn and shark and an animal for every year of the chinese zodiak... including a bonus Mickey Mouse. Oh and we almost got left there, hahah! We went to go see the big prawn and I guess the boat started to leave and someone remembered we were missing and made them wait. It WAS an interesting aquarium, but I'm very glad not to have been stuck there forever!
anyway-- a perfect day out! and I only got a LITTLE bit seasick during lunch. I'm very proud of myself for feeling decidedly less miserable than usual on a boat.
And then last night we were having a wander around town and walked up to the beach and saw that the whole beachfront street was blocked off to traffic. We walked up to see what was going on and ended up in a crowd of tens of thousand of Vietnamese people celebrating Buddha's birthday. Vesak Day it was called. It was fantastic!! They had those Chinese dancing dragons-- what are they called? I've ALWAYS wanted to see those!! It was great!! And lots of other performances... tiny children singing songs and drumming and lots of interesting cultural performances. The Happy Birthday bicycle man was not special to Hoi An apparently because they have them here as well... one of them came right up behind us during the festival wailing out "Happy Birthday"... it was rather annoying. But then Anthony said- "well really its very appropriate isn't it? Since its the Buddha's Birthday!!" so we bought some popcorn and celebrated for Buddha. We were the center of attention again, being at a local celebration, especially Anthony since he's so tall and very very blue-eyed.
Then we went out to eat and ended up at this very local, very CRAZY restaurant with all kinds of wild things on the menu... swimming bladder soup, weasle, mackrel head hotpot, pork tails.... oh so many more things. The menu was more than 20 pages long and every option was very tempting, hahah. I went for frog (which wasn't bad, I have to admit!) and Anthony tried to order weasle but they were fresh out so he went for a lotus salad... in honor of Buddha, and then just picked out a mystery hotpot. It ended up being mushy fish stew with endless rice noodles... it could have fed 5 people. We left a whole table full of food when we finally decided we couldn't possibly stuff ourselves any more.
Quite the day! Today is "very very sun" so its sorching hot and I'm covered in mosquito bites and I have an aching ear from being absolutely pounded by the ocean the other day. I KNOW I still have sand inside my ear and salt water... I don't like it! And I was attacked by a pet kitten while I was eating lunch and I had a little bit of blood on my hand but Anthony poured his beer on it so hopefully I will be rabies-free.
Today all I want to do is watch a movie and pack for Cambodia and stay out of the sun.
Well Tam Biet and I'll write again from Cambodia!