(no subject)
August 16, 2009
Everyday my dad calls and wakes us up to eat. We eat nonstop, it's kind of ridiculous and awesome. So we went to a place that I cannot recall for some reason haha. I guess I was too sleepy. But then for lunch we ate at some fancy Vietnamese restaurant with my dad's friends and our travel agent lady. Afterwards we went and got our hair washed and head massages. I decided that I do not like getting my hair washed by other people. I never...really liked it before but I wasn't so sure. Like I said with the facials, I can't sit still that long and I feel very uncomfortable...plus it hurts when people scratch my head :/ Anyhow, we went to this place called My-Anh and it was just a basic beauty salon. It's really strange though because the girls there are all dressed up with a lot of make up on and skank dresses and there were probably about...6 of them just sitting around doing nothing and one guy. They were pretty much hoes..for real. But two of them washed Amy and I's hair. They have lay down beds that are right next to the hair washing sink. They tried to talk to us in Vietnamese and uh...yeah not sure if that worked out too well haha. We are so bad, it's kind of embarrassing. They were basically trying to work it for a tip though, because the hair wash and blowdrying was terrible. They also kept trying to make us get a massage...
Anyway, after that we had to go pack up our hotel room in Saigon and head out to the airport. We were Da Nang bound. My grandparents live in Da Nang, and that is the city where my dad is from so we were headed out there for the next several days. The airport sucks as usual, we were almost late for our flight because my dad forgot he had scissors in his carryon and the security guard wouldn't let us into the terminal unless my dad sent the scissors in a check-in bag. So he had to run out to the ticketing counter and send the bag and then run all the way back and go through security again. We made it though, yay! It only takes 45 minutes to get from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang by plane, so the ride wasn't too terrible.
We checked into our hotel called the Furama Resort, Da Nang and it is danggg nice. It's liek the ones off those brochures for tropical islands. There is a huge lobby with many seating areas, and when we got there this lady told us to have a seat and wait while we were getting checked in. She brought us these dragonfruit drinks with mint, and they were in the dragonfruit shell, which then sat upon a small wooden chair. I had no idea how to drink it because it was me holding a chair with a fruit on it...and sipping out of a straw. It was adorable though.
When we arrived there were tons of people at this place because apparently a huge wedding was going on. We heard from some people there that the costs for the wedding was $300,000 (USD). That's ballin! I mean their reception area was the courtyard of the hotel, which faces the beach so it's pretty nice. The groom was a 31 year old man who owns the cable company in Vietnam (a cable company?). The bride was a 16 year old girl/woman. She was pretty though and did not look 16. She had the craziest dresses, with a ton of sequins and tulle. She also had about 6 bridesmaids wearing full wedding gowns, which I thought was weird. There were also performances! A huge stage was set up with lights and fog machines and everything. Apparently some of the singers were big names because people were jumping up on stage and taking pictures with this one guy who I had no idea who he was.
One of the performances was a thai dance with several girls, and after the dance we met up with a couple of them because my dad is a player and told them to come have drinks with him and his friend after they were done. After some of the girls saw Amy and I there, I think it weirded them out because they decided to go home. One of them stayed though and went to dinner with us. She is really nice, she's 27 and a dance teacher. She seems like a pretty genuine person! Her name is Khi (I don't think I spelt it right) and she basically showed us around DaNang and has been telling us the best places to go. We drove around near the riverside to see all the new bridges that were built within the last few years. It was magical because they hung lights all over the streets, and the bridges themselves were lit with color changing lights. One of the bridges was lit underneath where the support columns were. Another bridge was lit along the suspension lines, and the lights would change colors and go up and down the lines. It was very pretty! We drove past this mountain cafe place and the taxi driver told us it was a cool place to go for coffee, so we stopped by. The name of the place translated to english is "Rock Mountain". But basically it was this outdoor cafe that is carved into the side of this mountain/cliff and there are different levels that people can on to drink coffee. They have railings and steps that lead up to little huts with thatched roofing. It was very darling! They also had tons of tropical plants surrounding the whole place as well as christmas lights hanging from the trees. After coffee we were pretty exhausted, so we took Khi home and she showed us around her house, she's a very sweet lady! Then it was back to furama for bedtime!