Impressive Vietnam - Day Trip

Venue: Islands round Mekong River and Saigon

Date: 17 Aug evening to 19 Aug 2009

 

After our beautiful days in Mui Ne, we headed back to Saigon, by bus. This time, no more Germans. Saigon probably isn’t all that attractive for tourists, hm, not for us for sure!

 

It was fairly easy for us to find our way to the travel-agencies’-street in Saigon, we nearly walked there every day! To find food, to check flights, to check daily trips. So we booked our trip to Cu Chi for 18 Aug. So everything was settled and we had our dinner in one of the “Tai Pai Dong” - it wasn’t very Vietnamese I suppose. The local beer was nice and cheap. Spring rolls were not bad. Well, don’t forget we’re always food-craving… so Po and Yan in the end got us some mid-night snacks. (Oh yeah, Vietnamese are really good at playing featherballs! Many guys play!)

 

Anyway… here comes the best part. We arrived at the travel agency at 8.35am on 18 Aug for the daily trip to Cu Chi, just as Po told us to… surprise, the bus was already off! The bus to Cu Chi left at 8.15am, Po got the time wrong!!! Yan and I wanted to kill her literally, I thought we would have to spend a boring day in Saigon… however, the bus to Mekong River was still there so immediately we paid extra money and joined this other day tour to Meking River! What a twist of fate. So… boys and girls, never say never :)

 

First time ever to join a local tour. There was a Belgian couple sat in front of us, and we kept saying “ik ben mooi” which means “I am beautiful” in Dutch (our Belgian friend, Kristof, taught us. OK, we made him teaching us). Well, either they didn’t understand or they simply chose to ignore us. I guess the French newspaper the guy was reading explained it all.

 

Right in front of the Mekong River. Do you know that it’s the 7th longest river in Asia? Neither did I. The figure doesn’t mean anything to me, however long this river is has nothing to do with me, I wasn’t going to travel all along it… The yellow colour of the river made me wonder how Yellow River (Huang He) was like. Oh wait. I was at Yellow River once, when I was in Zhengzhou! Oh well. I wasn’t thinking then :p

 

This is a map of the boat trip. We haven’t been to all islands, we’ve only been to 5 of them.

 

:D Did you see that he was staring at me? Does it make you wonder how that hammock didn’t fell? Obvious it was one of the questions that I asked myself quite frequently when I was in Vietnam. We probably couldn’t make any use of the hammocks here in Hong Kong.

 

My beautiful friends and I were finally on a speedmotor boat. :) Very nice picture :D

Wah. Can anyone explain to me why a cargo ship like this couldn’t sink?

Another poster picture? If only the colours were more vivid…

As you can probably imagine from the picture on the left that the Vietnamese probably are leading a not-so-easy life. The view was rather nice though.

I never say we aren’t silly! We were really lively as you can see :) I think we were very cute :D

While our tour guide (who was really nice, he taught us so many Vietnamese and was always very funny!) was telling us the process in making the famous rice paper (middle picture), we went off to take pictures of the marvelous VIETNAMESE BANANAS! Did they impress you like they impressed me?

 

Then we had lunch… before we had lunch, we took a couple of pictures and one of them was really really funny… being so generous, I’m really willing to share with you, in hope of brightening up your day. So here it is:

Hahahaha, I looked so stupid! And a very convincing Vietnamese too (not that they looked stupid, but with my hat and my skin colour and everything else you see fit!)!

 

Yan and I got our Vietnamese hats there (very cheap!), Po got her red Vietnamese cap at the pier and we befriended an Italian model, Angela.

 

We were on the boat again to another island and our hats proved to be really useful… look at pregnant Po :) We were exploring the beautiful jungle, it felt like sailing through Amazon (not that I know how that would feel like, but that was how I imagined it to be).

 

It was cloudy that day, lucky it didn’t rain though :)

On this other island, we drank some genuine (!!!) honey tea. There was a guy took the hive out, we had to show our bravery of course :D We also rode the cart with the horse (isn’t she pretty with a big flower on her head?) pulling. The picture on the right… shows you Yan, her “horse like teeth” and the cute horse!

 

I personally think that was a very cruel act… I hope, my dearest readers, that none of you are working in SPCA… if you do… please note that it wasn’t our fault!

 

Those are bricks! I wonder why are they using bricks like this!

 

We also enjoyed some very exotic Vietnamese fruit and music :) There were some singers singing in Vietnamese, we couldn’t understand a word. They were probably singing love or war songs. The Belgian couple gave us information on the famous and traditional water puppets show! We also forgot about it!

 

Brave Yan, screaming Po and wanting-to-escape Joey! I still remember the terrible texture on the snake’s skin! Ugh! Horrifying!

 

We went to another island again after the snake-episode… The tour guide asked Yan and I to do Titanic, haha, we did, but the picture taken by him wasn’t as good as I’d want!

 

The coconuts island. They make fresh coconut candies :D

 

All were very tired by the end of the day… It was a very nice (and cheap) day trip to be honest :) I liked it :D

 

On the bus back to Saigon. The traffic was soooooo unbelievable! Impressive!

 

We bought our tickets to the water puppets show right after we got off the bus. Before going to the show, we still wanted to get our friends some souvenirs but we couldn’t find any! It was so crazy! All those shops were closed and the markets too! Well, at least we had a lot of fun asking people for directions and got super cheap coconuts again!

 

This is the water puppets show. If you ever go to Vietnam, you should watch one of these. It’s one-kind-one! Hahaha, means it’s one of the kind :) I was just showing off my Singlish :p

 

Venue: Vietnam International Airport

Time: 4:09 am in the morning on 19 Aug 2009

Can you believe how many people were there already at 4am in the morning? Vietnamese, you are all very diligent!

 

Believe it or not, this was how I looked like, a walking-dead-Vietnamese-looking Joey Leung :) The officer at the Custom kept talking to me in Vietnamese… I could barely open my eyes but still I managed to utter “I don’t understand”, haha.

 

Anyway, this is the end of our Vietnam trip. We did have great fun. It was the last trip we went on together before Po left to Germany. Bye bye Vietnam, we will be back, someday.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Mekong River,Featherball,Water Puppets,Horse,day trip,airport,traffic,motor bikes,islands,snake,Vietnam,hive,rice paper,hammocks

Impressive Vietnam - Mui Ne (end)

Venue: Mui Ne

Date: 17 August 2009

 

We were off to the road again after a short break, we didn’t have much time.  One point worth noting though… the coconuts were sooooo super cheap in Vietnam!

 

Arrived the next destination within 5 minutes, the red canyon was just around the corner… and it was such a disappointment.  At least I was expecting something much more marvelous than that…  Death to the touristic posters.

 

We did our best to capture the grandeur of the place!   Those beautiful legs belonged to Yan :)

 

It was nothing much to see, we were surrounded by the red soil.  In Hong Kong you can’t see such red soil, we have many mountains and different kinds of rocks, never this.  The sun was killing us but… we decided to take more pictures.

 

This picture would be great if you could see the whole of my head… but well, I developed this picture in 2R size so as to fit my wallet :)  Friendship is a beautiful thing.  Some say you can’t see sadness in pictures, I guess it’s one negative way to see things.  I say if you had really great eyes, you capture the most beautiful (and natural) moments thus you’ve given the most powerful power to freeze the moments.

 

Waiting impatiently for the shot.  Gee, my Vietnamese colleague said we were really lucky to have the sun with us during our stay.  The weather was capricious in August in Vietnam and would normally accompany by packs of rain, however, it was all sunny for us!  The sweat and sand, oh, what a perfect combination…

 

OK, the timer’s blinking, forget about the sun, the sweat and sands on your body, just remember to smile!

 

Alrighty then!  It’s my favourite spot during our trip, the little fishing village, which wasn’t far from the red canyon!  When we were approaching, a sick smell filled our nostrils.  It was the mixed smell of the sea and dead fishes.  Awful to be honest.  The village was very colourful and I’ve got many postcards like pictures!

 

The sieves… well, it should be called a fishing basket, were really really huge.  The 3 of us could sit in there without feeling crowded.  They bring the basket to their boat after they catch fishes, they then put them in those baskets.  So huge!

 

 

OK, my very own postcards :)  You should have seen the happy faces on the villagers faces.  I wonder if they could smell the dreadful smell like we did.

 

Beautiful place, isn’t it?

 

The business must be thriving there…  look at the seashells.  May be it was our looks, or may be it was our behaviour that attracted some young villagers there.  They were yelling and whistling, asking for pictures.  We said no :p

 

Finally we saw the ‘work force’ working under the straw shed.  The terrible smell was stronger the closer I got.  Hm, they were getting the meat from the shells… the whole thing was very… unhygienic.  They didn’t pay much attention to me, an intruder, and were totally occupied by the work in front of them.  May be it really is better not knowing how the food is prepared.

 

Here is a picture of a better look at the ‘food processing’.

 

Strange enough, when I was standing there and looking over at the little dead fishes pool, they just didn’t smell anymore.  It was a sight.  I wondered where did they export the products, of course the question left unanswered.

 

Obviously my right hand and my left had different colours, so I changed my seat and sunbathed my left hand :)

 

On our way to Fairy Spring, we saw those very beautifully dressed Vietnamese students!  I want one of those!

 

Coming up next is… the Fairy Spring!  It’s got a really beautiful name and everything justifies it.

 

First, the very energetic Po and Yan!  Did you see the grass growing by the sides?  My colleague told me that they only grow by the clean waters!  Haha despite the colour of the stream, I guess it really is clean.  There was seaweed on the ‘streambed’ and it was really shallow.  Extraordinary!

 

Did you see the little guy on the left?  He was our little guide.  Right after we stepped into the stream, he came up and offered to walk with us.  By then we understood it was his chance to earn some extra money and we were quite generous about it.  A minute later, however, there were some other little guys came and offered the same service!  At first we thought they were the same gang but well, those latecomers, they started to blackmouth at us after we refused their company.  After we refused “their service (by merely walking with us)”, they asked us to pay them to go away.  That was insane.  We ignored them totally.  You just have to be tough when something unreasonable like that happens.  Anyways, it was all sand in the picture!

 

 

In the end we paid him, how much I forgot already… but he asked us to pay him a bit more because there was a boss there and he would ask our guide to pay him (protection fee????) so we did.  There was no need to make this kid’s life uneasy.  He plucked 3 “4 leaves grass” and wished us luck.  Upon saying goodbye he told us that there was a WATERFALL about 1km away.  We, dying to explore everything, went there.

 

The little guide took a picture of us in front of the 3-coloured sand hill.  He insisted.

 

There was much to see in this Fairy Spring.  It was a shame that we know nothing about geography…

 

Even though the sun were roasting our bare skin, the stream was soothing, it helped in some way.  This picture is one of my favourite, haha, Yan was ready to use her sunbrella and I was posing in the far end :)  Po was an asshole to focus on Yan!!!  (but great picture nevertheless)

 

My comment is that… the kid had no idea what a WATERFALL is.  The “waterfall” in Hong Kong Park is bigger than this sh!thole “waterfall”!  But well, we were there and… whatever!

 

Oh no, we didn’t go down to the stream from this way ;)  It’s just a nice picture to share.

 

We later on came back to the hotel, had some food at the restaurant where we ate in our first evening.  Wah, it was so delicious! Hahaha!  Special thanks to Nam who helped us get our food in 5 minutes…

 

He was a really nice guy :)  Nam, we will come back one day!  Wait for us!

 

I had really fond memories in Mui Ne… this is the last picture to share for the day.  The sun, the beach, the boat and a friendly Vietnamese.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Red Canyon,Fairy Spring,fishing village,sieve,Vietnamese,dead fish,shed,luck,waterfall,Mui Ne