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I woke up at 3 in the morning because I started to work on Dad’s Christmas present, and even though I ended up doing it wrong it was good practice. Troy got us take-out crepes and we got in a car with our guide, Luu. I never really had a good vibe about Luu, but Aba and Troy like him. Asher and I fell asleep right away, but we stopped for a satisfying lunch of chicken, rice, and sour soup which I enjoyed. On the way to the next village, we saw many curiosities such as fish on a motorcycle! They were beautiful fish!
We got to the village and, sadly, saw that there were elephants in front of our hotel. I always hate seeing this because people treat the elephants horridly.
We walked around the town and in the market I noticed cages of fuzzy yellow baby ducklings!
I saw more gasping, flopping fish and a single puppy in a cage. Aba said he was for meat. We did homework at the hotel and met a beautiful Siamese cat with vivid blue eyes! She was very sweet, and Aba said that she looked like his cat, Henry. We also met two dogs, but they were pets, not food. There was also a large cage with three ducks in it. We ate dinner and I spent the remainder of the night working on Aba’s Christmas/Hanukkah/Birthday present! We left early the next morning but not before seeing the dogs’ puppies! We also checked in the ducks and noticed that there were only two ducks… and two pythons… and one of the pythons had a large bulge in its stomach.
Thankfully, I slept a lot less on the drive and drove to a brick factory. We were able to see the machine that shapes the bricks and cuts them from long tubes of clay into fragments, and we saw workers stacking the bricks and putting them out to dry. Then, we saw how they fire the bricks using fire on all sides rather than a kiln, which was all very educational. We drove a short distance to see someone mining rocks and roughly shaping them by breaking them for foundations, and Aba even helped! This was actually really cool because of the process: drilling into the rocks and then breaking the stone in that hole. This cuts it in half!
After another drive, we hiked up a large rock called Elephant Rock, name so because it looks like an elephant’s back. It had amazing views!
The next place we went to was very insightful. It was an old church that had been bombed during the war and much of it was in ruins. However, the church was also uplifting because people had started to rebuild it. After the church, we drove to a place with two waterfalls. We walked around for a while and found one, but we couldn’t find the other. The waterfall we found was beautiful!
Asher and I slept until we got to our hotel. We went in and they gave us our rooms, and then we walked straight back out! The beds were unmade, there were clothes and socks on the floor as well as shoes, and there were two cans of Saigon Beer on the bed table! They hadn’t cleaned our rooms! Aba was therefore convinced that the hotel was unclean and made Luu drive us to another hotel. This hotel was clean, but then Aba discovered that instead of photocopying passports like most hotels, the hotel wanted to keep it. Aba adamantly refused to relinquish our passports and got in an argument with Luu. He was frustrated with us because he said that there have never been any accidents or anything involving passports and we were just making life difficult. Also, “this wasn’t his fault”. Luu was so uncooperative that we decided that we would drive back to the previous town and fly to Hanoi. As soon as we said that, Luu miraculously decided that, though it was a hindrance, he would drive to get a photocopy from somewhere else. We ended up staying at that hotel and that night we ate a dinner of sticky rice stuffed with chicken! Yum!
The next day we drove to a war memorial for unnamed soldiers in the war. Then, we drove to a drum factory. We saw how tree trunks are hollowed out to make drum barrels and how planks are lashed together to make drum barrels. We also saw the hides stretched onto the barrels and we even got to see someone painting a drum! However, I was kind of sad because there was an enormous hollowed out tree trunk about the size of a car. It must’ve been about one thousand years old and they had cut it down to make a drum and that saddened me.
On the way, Asher and I fell asleep because I had stayed up late working on Christmas presents and Asher was catching up on homework. We stopped to but some sugar cane which was cool because we just chewed on it to get the juice out. On the way to a tea farm (which Asher and I ended up sleeping through), we saw a very colorful funeral procession driving through the streets on the way to a cemetery, which was a very cultural experience. We did homework until dinner, at which time we learned a lot. There was a very loud tourist at the hotel restaurant and we heard that he “only smokes while he drinks”, and luckily for us he was drinking. Also, “English people have alcohol in their blood”, all of his friends “died on these horrible roads”, and he prefers “shy country girls to modern ones”. Following that statement, he persuaded a Vietnamese girl to join him at the table with his friends. We all lit the first Hanukkah candle (Happy Hanukkah!) and I worked on Aba’s present until we wet to sleep.
We woke up in the morning and tried to go to a coffee factory, but they weren’t open for visitors. We then went to a Catholic orphanage not visited by many people because it is on the outskirts of the town. When we arrived, we were greeted by a mob of little children wearing red uniforms. They were a bit shy, but they would smile and wave and then dart away. There was one little boy in particular with a contagious smile that would laugh loudly with a glint in his eye. We taught him how to high-five. We toured the complex; bedrooms, school, dining hall, chapel, pigsty, etc; and saw a couple of older girls who I guess were about eight or nine years old. The matron told us they were thirteen.
However, everyone was smiling and at the end of the tour the little children we hugging me and wouldn’t let go of my hands! We took a group picture with some of them and one girl tried to drag me away with her to eat brunch.
We had to leave after that, and although my writing might not show it, this place profoundly affected me. I don’t know how or why, but those children touched my heart.
The rest of the day was dedicated to homework and making presents, and after dinner, we lit Hanukkah candles and watched a movie about the Vietnam American War. At dinner, Troy was horrified to see Luu touch all of our food with his hands after smoking and I was appalled, a little repulsed, to see him first devour a chicken FOOT and then the entire HEAD, eyes and all. When he took it out of his mouth, all that remained was the beak. The next day we woke up and drove to the tall communal house that we saw the day before. This time, we saw a couple of novice Buddhist monks on vacation and they took pictures with us! There was one monk who was always smiling (even though he got all serious when we took his picture) and held a brown fan, and, though I had previously suspected it, Aba and Troy confirmed that he was gay.
The communal house was very tall and made of dried grass, which I thought was very cool. We passed by a graveyard which we at first thought was a village! Every grave had is own pagoda or hut model on top of it! We kept driving until Luu let us out and showed us a family of wood carvers.
We watched them work, to the soundtrack of a barking territorial dog, and then went next door to see a man testing the quality of liquid rubber. Troy explained the process to us, so you’ll have to ask him about it, but he basically took a sample of rubber, evaporated the water, and compared the weight with the weight he took before the water was evaporated. We drove to a rubber forest where trees were being tapped and I got to touch some of the rubber sap. This was really weird because it actually felt like rubber, but it was just sap, straight from the tree! It didn’t seem natural!
The next stop was a rickety old bridge nicknamed the “San Francisco Bridge” (or as Luu says, the “San Fransico Bridge”). This bridge was the most unstable and dangerous looking with the most rotted boards and holes in the planks that I had ever seen, but we crossed the bridge. On our way back, we felt the bridge shaking. Some adorable little boys were tipping the bridge over! We hurried to the other side and passed the laughing boys. Troy looked petrified!
We drove to lunch where I tried Bok choy sauteed and steamed in broth and garlic. It was AMAZING. I even ate my whole meal with chopsticks! However, the chicken was as hard as a rock so none of us ate it. We drove to the hotel and did homework, ate dinner, watched an episode from a Netflix TV show about Vietnam, lit Hanukkah candles, worked on presents, and finally went to sleep. We got in the car the next morning and drove nonstop on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. One interesting area of conversation was when Asher and I tried to convince Troy to say “The white whale wailed where he wanted in the water in Wales” because he has a peculiar quirk of saying ‘hw’ instead of ‘wh’ when saying ‘wh’ words. We drove nonstop, or that was the plan, for the car broke down in the middle of a town. We stayed at Luu’s uncle’s house for a couple of hours and met a little cute rat that lived there! When I had to go to the bathroom, I saw a sight I thought I had left behind in Nepal: squat toilets. I worked on homework and made presents until we finally got on the road again. Luu had had to order parts from another town and fix the car. It was dark by the time we got to Hamburger Hill, so we ate dinner. I ran to the hotel room in order to call my French teacher, Martha, when I realized that Asher had the key. I ran back and got to my room again when I realized that for some reason, Troy had taken my computer! He ended up coming so I didn’t have to get it, but phew! After my lesson, Asher had a Spanish lesson and I made presents, then we all lit Hanukkah candles and fell asleep. The next morning’s drive was uneventful until we stopped to eat a lunch of rice and vegetables. Our entire time in Vietnam we haven’t seen beggars, but this town was full of them! However, there were only very old women and young children. We arrived at the hotel and, while we waited for Aba to check us in, a boy roughly my age on a bike started talking to us and smiling. As we turned to leave for our rooms, I noticed he wore hearing aids. We did homework and I worked on presents again and talked to Savta until dinner. On our way, we saw a sweet little orange kitten. It wasn’t next to any other cat and it was minuscule and tiny. I petted it for a while, but I was sad to leave it. It purred and brushed against me, and I think it was lonely.
While we ate, we saw the owner of the restaurant cuddling a large dog wearing a bright red collar. She made Troy smile. We also saw the chefs watching a cooking show… I don’t think they learned very much…
On our way back, we saw people lighting fires from boxes and texts; newspapers and books etc. Luu said it was for good luck.
We watched another episode about Vietnam on Netflix and learned about Hamburger Hill, where we were at the time. Many American soldiers died for a position with no strategic value. In fact, its value was so little that they abandoned the hill soon after capturing it. After lighting Hanukkah candles, I worked on presents until we went to sleep. We got in the car the next morning and drove for a while until we got to the next village. In the car, I weaved a little but then mostly slept. When we arrived, we went to the ticket center in order to go into some caves. It was very expensive and the caves were about to close, so we decided to put it off until the next day. I worked on presents until dinner, but by the time we left, it had started pouring rain. We ate at the first modern-looking restaurant we had seen for a while and ate food other than rice and vegetables. Asher even had a hamburger! There were a few beautiful dogs around the restaurant, but there was a particularly beautiful chocolate brown one next to our table. After lighting Hanukkah candles and watching another episode about Vietnam, we decided to watch Netflix’s new Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. It was so bad that we didn’t even finish it. It was horrible! I don’t recommend it. I worked until we went to sleep. Yesterday morning, we woke up early and I checked my email. My dad, Greg, had finally sent me the link to his new company! He founded a t-shirt company called Untitled EMPIRE and designed the art himself! I’m even wearing a shirt of his as I type (Every Drop of Us, if anyone cares to know)! Check out his awesome website, he’s spent a really long time working on this, and the designs really are amazing (I know he’s my dad so you may think I’m biased, but I’m actually very hard to impress). Anyway, we woke up and drove to Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường Cave). I’ve been to several underground caves in the United States and New Zealand, but the stalagmites and stalactites in this one were enormous! Gigantic labyrinths of connected pillars of calcium littered the floor, sometimes embedded in the ground through time. Asher seemed amazed, he is always fascinated by natural structures like this. I, too, thought the cave was wonderful, and we were all left with much to think about as we walked in a slight drizzle back to the car.
As we had been walking to the cave we had to climb a steep uphill path. There was an old woman, perhaps seventy years old, laboring up the path, and Asher just skipped on by her. She laughed out loud! Well, we got to the car and Luu drove us to the next cave of the day: Dark Cave (Hang Toi). We watched a video about the caves and cracked up at the dramatic music playing in the background. We put on our swimsuits and ziplined across the longest zip line in Vietnam, though I don’t think it was actually that long. However, I got stuck in the middle. I was the second person to go, and I was frustrated because the last time I got stuck on a zip line was in Thailand and Asher and I got stuck TOGETHER in the middle. I had to put my hands on the cable and pull myself to the end. After Asher, Troy, and Aba made it across, we talked to a man from New Zealand, and by the time everyone else from the group ziplined I was feeling better about myself. FOUR other people had gotten stuck, too (granted, none of them were as far out as I had been)! By this time, it was raining heavily, and we all ducked into the cold water separating us from the cave and swam to it. The rocks on the cave floor were sharp, but as we passed the formations we saw many spiders and bats. Finally, we arrived at our destination: the mud baths. There was a natural deposit of mineral mud in the water and everyone was just squelching around in it and rubbing it on themselves. It was a whole lot of fun and we even got to talking with some of the millennials! I was also happy to play tic-tac-toe on Troy’s stomach! We went back to the small lagoon and slid down a literal mudslide. It was a lot of fun, but it hurt! My upper thighs burned from the friction! I could see all the girls in bikinis rubbing their upper thighs, too, and we all laughed. After swimming in the lagoon, we kayaked to an area with activities. There were two water ziplines, meaning that you jump from the zip line into the water, and an obstacle course bridge. After completing these activities, we drove back to the hotel and took freezing showers. We ate lunch and watched another Vietnam episode on Netflix, then worked on presents. For dessert at dinner, we ordered a banana with ice cream and mousse, we got this:
After dinner, we returned to the hotel to light Hanukkah candles. Yesterday was the seventh day of Hanukkah, which is also Aba’s Hebrew birthday, so after lighting candles, Troy, Asher, and I gave him a small birthday card we had made him.
We watched an episode of Weeds and then blogged and went to sleep. Sorry these posts are so long!
24-4-11-11-22 24-4-13-21-15-15-4-24!
Ella
HHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII you all! I am back today with another blog post for you about our time away from the city and our drive to a remote hotel somewhere next to a river. We started off our day by waking up at 7:00 in the morning and getting ready to move out of what was probably the best hotel we’ve stayed in Vietnam. It was pretty sad because I knew that this was probably the last good hotel we would be staying at this whole Vietnam trip and it was a pain to move all the luggage downstairs. After that though, we moved into a car that had our very own personal driver! We decided that the buses were way too dirty and unsanitary so we got our own car with our own guide and then we took off to our next place. The scenery was very cool as we drove around and we even found a place to have lunch along the way! The woman there was very nice and it wasn’t a tourist trap, so we got the real Vietnam experience. After that, we drove for more hours until reaching our apartment next to a lake. There was a very sad moment though when a herd of elephants was just standing around and looking very depressed. Their tusks were cut off and they were in chains waiting for a person to ride on them. People should not support this business and think about the elephants themselves, not your experience. Anyways, we toured the city after that and we saw a bunch of stuff there including markets and shops. They were cool, but then we went back to the hotel and then we did homework for the rest of the day and had dinner late at night. Today was interesting and I felt really bad for the elephants. #ELEPHANTLIVESMATTERTOO
HHHHHHHHHHEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO everybody! I am back with another blog post for you today about another day of us touring in cars around Vietnam. Today was a lot more exciting than the other days because of a drama that happened, so stay tuned for that! Anyways, here is my blog post and I hope you enjoy it! Our day started off the same way it always has with us waking up early, packing up, and then driving to our next location. It’s a fine plan, but it gets annoying after a while. So once we were in the car, we made a few stops before going to our destination. We went to this very cool brick factory first and we saw how all of these bricks were made. It was cool to see how the bricks were manufactured and they were surprisingly light, which was very odd. We continued forward on our trip and then we came across a really big hill which we wanted to climb, so we started to climb it despite me wearing sandals. It was very painful to climb up all that way up with SANDALS because my other shoes got very dirty yesterday. It was very rocky also, so that was an extra challenge but we made it up there and then we went back down and drove off. We then reached a station where we saw a dude breaking rocks. It was cool and Aba even broke one! We drove nonstop after that until reaching the Eden hotel, where we were supposed to sleep tonight. It was very dirty and our rooms weren’t even made up, so we just went forward and that was the end of that. We reached another hotel that was fancy and wanted our passports, so there was this whole drama with the driver and the hotel, but it was resolved fast and we got to stay there with only photocopies of our passports. We had dinner a while later and then we went to sleep happy that that whole thing was over.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLOOOOOOOO everybody! I am back today with another awesome blog post for you about our really long drive to our next location on this very long trip around Vietnam. After the usual routine of waking up and getting ready to leave, we got into the car and drove away from that really complex hotel that wanted our passports. Today though, we had a seven-hour long drive, so it was a very long day of driving mostly, but stuff did happen in between this whole drive. First, we stopped at a war memorial for the soldiers of Vietnam, particularly those who fought in the Vietnam war. It was very sad to see all the soldiers and civilians that tragically died in the war and after that heart-touching experience, we drove for a few more hours before stopping for lunch. Lunch was really good but after that, I fell asleep. Yeah, sorry for the letdown, but I was very tired from yesterday and feel asleep for the rest of the way before reaching our next hotel, where we would be staying two days! The hotel itself was very nice, but our rooms where 98% white; They had no color at all. We did homework for a few more hours and then we had dinner at the hotel where I had spaghetti and meat sauce and after that delightful meal, we went to sleep on a full stomach and it was a very fine day, even though I slept through most of it.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOO everyone! I am back today with another awesome blog post for you today about another day of Vietnam exploring. Today though, we did not drive, but explored the different parts of the city we were in. It was very fun actually and we got to see new stuff as well as meeting new people. Anyway, let me tell you about today, so please enjoy! First, after the usual routine of getting prepared, we drove for a little bit to an orphanage with very young kids in it! They were actually very happy to see us and they looked so excited to see new people. The orphanage itself was very interesting because we really saw how poor these people were compared to the US and other countries. It made me sad on the inside I wished that I could help all the kids there. We did leave a donation there though, so that made me happy. We even took a group photo with all the kids and it was very fun! After that, we drove around the city some more and we saw more places and experienced new stuff. After all that though, we just went back to the apartment and did homework the rest of the day. It was boring too be honest and a few hours later we had chicken for dinner and we watched a documentary about the Vietnam war, which was very interesting because it talked about the origins of the war and what was going on at the time. Anyway, that is my blog for today and I hope you enjoy life!
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOO everyone! I am back today with another awesome blog post for you today about another day of Vietnam exploring. Today though, we did not drive, but explored the different parts of the city we were in. It was very fun actually and we got to see new stuff as well as meeting new people. Anyway, let me tell you about today, so please enjoy! First, after the usual routine of getting prepared, we drove for a little bit to an orphanage with very young kids in it! They were actually very happy to see us and they looked so excited to see new people. The orphanage itself was very interesting because we really saw how poor these people were compared to the US and other countries. It made me sad on the inside I wished that I could help all the kids there. We did leave a donation there though, so that made me happy. We even took a group photo with all the kids and it was very fun! After that, we drove around the city some more and we saw more places and experienced new stuff. After all that though, we just went back to the apartment and did homework the rest of the day. It was boring too be honest and a few hours later we had chicken for dinner and we watched a documentary about the Vietnam war, which was very interesting because it talked about the origins of the war and what was going on at the time. Anyway, that is my blog for today and I hope you enjoy life!
HHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII everybody waiting for my blog patiently on the other side of your screen! I am back today with another blog post for you about another day of driving around Vietnam and seeing new things. First, we got our daily routine that honestly got boring and we left for our next location so we would have a place to sleep that night. The ride itself was pretty cool and relaxing and then we stopped at a community hut we saw yesterday with kids playing soccer around it. This time though, it was sunny out and we saw a bunch of monks and nuns in training hanging out there. We even took photos with them and it was a very cool experience of hanging out with monks and nuns for the second time. After that, we drove a while more and then we stopped at a really cool looking cemetery where the graves looked like houses! It was very cool to see all the creativity that was put into it and then we stopped at a woodcarving station where we saw a bunch of cool wood sculptures being made. After that we drove into the woods where we saw the rubber trees and how rubber was produced. It smelled bad, but it was very interesting and after that cool stuff we went to a bridge called the “San Francisco Bridge”(Not the Golden Gate Bridge or anything like that unfortunately), which was one of those hanging bridges that break very easily. It was fun to cross it actually and there was a group of children that was shaking the bridge and discouraged Troy. After that awesome experience, we went to lunch and we had what we called “mummified chicken” because it was so hard you couldn’t even chew it! It didn’t taste good either and we left immediately because it was so bad. Also, there was a soap opera on TV and Ella and I were cracking up because it was so overly-dramatic and cliche. After the horrible mummified chicken, we drove to our hotel for the night and even though we finished our homework there in the time, the WiFi was so bad that we couldn’t do anything else really. A few hours later, I had Calamari and rice for dinner and we watched another part of the Vietnam War documentary. It was very interesting and we went to sleep that night good and grateful that we had finished today’s work.
HHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOO everybody on the other side of this screen today! I am back today with another blog post for you about another day traveling the vast expanses of Vietnam and all that it has to offer. Anyway, we started to drive after the usual old routine of getting dressed and stuff and our trip was to take 5 or 7 hours to drive to our next stop. We drove for a while and we saw a lot of animals on the streets doing their own thing most of the time, which I thought was strange. A lot of animals for some reason walk on the streets of Vietnam like they’re waiting to get run over, which is very strange to me since there are so many cars on the road. Anyway, we also saw a lot of cool scenery along the way including a beautiful green forest with lots of plant life all around us. I just love the scenery here in Vietnam and I hope we get to see more of it sometime soon. After that though, the weirdest thing happened. We were innocently driving fine and all is well, until the front engine of the car starts acting weird and our car came to a dead halt next to what was conveniently the driver’s uncle’s house, which was very weird and as previously said convenient. It just came out of nowhere and we had to stay at the uncle’s house for like 4 hours while we waited for the car to be fixed. Eventually, it was and then we got on the road again just in time to get to the new hotel. It was fine, to be honest and after a refreshing dinner, I finished up my homework and went to bed happy.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOO everybody on the other side of this screen that is awaiting my post! I am back today with another super awesome blog post for you about more driving around the country of Vietnam. Anyway, we visited a very famous place in the Vietnam war and we saw lots of other stuff today as well, so let’s get into this blog! We started to drive about an hour after we got up and dressed and our short day of driving began. First, we stopped at a place that was famous in the Vietnam war for the deaths of countless soldiers called “Hamburger Hill”. Basically, this ruthless US general led a heavily armored squad to attack a Vietnamese army on top of the hill and chunks of human were flying around everywhere because of all the bombs and stuff. It was weird to see after all that, but the scenery was very nice and after that experience we had lunch at a place somewhere. After lunch, a bunch of beggars immediately surrounded us begging for money and I felt very sad for them because they clearly had nothing. After that, we made a quick drive out of there and then we arrived at a hotel called the “Green Hotel”, which was unsurprisingly green. After we got there, we did homework for most of the day and then had Spinach and steamed rice for dinner, which wasn’t all that good but was a good meal for the day. Except, on the way back to the hotel we saw this great pizza place which we did not see before and it drove me mad that we missed out to eat there. We also watched another part of the Vietnam documentary, which is always interesting and then we soundly went to sleep.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOO everybody! How are you doing today because I am back today with another super duper awesome blog post for you about a very exciting day of touring caverns, swinging from ropes, hypothermia hazards, and many more obnoxious stuff as today’s trip will be one of the first touring and exploring days we have had on our abroad trips in a while. So first of all, remember how on my last blog post we were supposed to go cave wandering and we couldn’t? Well, today we did and it was what we did all day long. So first, we got into our car and drove for what felt like 20 minutes and reached our first cave called Paradise Cave. The place looked like a cave that my family and I used to travel to all the time in Texas called Inner Space Caverns. It was a very awesome cavern because it had amazing formations that could resemble over a thousand things and the atmosphere was like my kind of place: Wide, but filled with echoes and solitude. This is not meant in a bad way because I actually like this atmosphere. It’s peaceful to me. So anyway, we got to the site and then we started to hike all the way up to the actual cave and once we were there. We immediately toured the cave and we were the first ones there, so it was great! All the structures there were so great and once we finished, I was sad to leave because the place looked so cool and a group of tourists swarmed the place, ruining the atmosphere. Anyway, we drove for a little while to the last cave called the Dark Cave. This place was the biggest part of our day though, starting with us changing into our bathing suits because we were going to get wet. After that, we embarked to a zip-line, which we would use to get to an area that would be closer to the cave. It looked terrifying, but it was actually fine and the best part was that 5 people, including Ella, got stuck on the way!!!! It was so hilarious and they had to pull the wires to get back!! Afterward, we swam 20 meters in 16-degree water and it was freezing at first, but I got used to it fast. We then swam through mud and got covered in it to the point where everyone went nuts and had mud fights! It was very fun and after all that commotion, we exited the cave and did a lot of fun activities including zip lining and jumping into the water and a survive obstacle ring! It was all extremely fun except that I got rope burn on my hand and armpit… ouch. After that, we had lunch and we had a free rest of the day along with another episode of the documentary. It was a very fun day and certainly a climactic moment in our Vietnam experience.
Hey, guys! We woke up early in the morning and packed our stuff, then said goodbye to our Air B&B apartment and boarded a sleeper bus. I had not been on a sleeper bus before and had only ever heard of the Knight Bus from Harry Potter, so the tightly cramped rows of three bunk beds per row, all squeezed into the size of a regular bus, were slightly unexpected. However, the five-hour ride was exactly like a ride in the Knight Bus; constricted and uncomfortable. This said, I was actually reading for the majority of the drive and was able to block the traumatic experience from my memory! I’m just kidding. Anyway, once we arrived at our hotel, we had to move to another hotel because there had been a mixup between the hotels, and then we explored the town and worked on homework. After a slightly-less-cold-than-lukewarm shower, we watched two episodes of the TV show Weeds and went to sleep. Aba and Troy let me and Asher sleep in the next morning, so they only woke us up at 12 pm. There was a complication with our rooms so we had to move rooms again, and we did some homework and walked around the town again. I didn’t mention this before, but a typhoon just passed and the weather is still a bit funky. The waves were crashing and they got very tall, and we were really able to see the amount of litter and trash and unbelievable amounts of junk and styrofoam that was rising and falling with the waves. Though it had drizzled the day before and the sky was grey it didn’t rain, but as we were heading back to the hotel, it suddenly started pouring! It didn’t drizzle or anything! One second it was dry and the next second we were soaked!! Anyway, we did some more homework, and when it cleared up we ate at a restaurant for lunch. Aba told us that the reason we even came to this town was that the area has sand-dune-sledding, but, sadly, we weren’t able to do that because of the weather. We were planning on swimming in the hotel pool, but we did more homework instead and took showers. We watched a stupidly hilarious movie called “Couples Retreat”, blogged, packed, and went to sleep. We woke up early expecting to board another sleeper bus for five hours, but instead, we drove to the next village in a normal bus. I read a lot and ate some Oreos, and there was a baby in the row in front of us that was making cute baby noises! When we arrived at Da Lat, we checked into a really cool hotel called the Duparc hotel. It is very old and has never been refurbished, so the building has a nice haunted house-y feel to it. The bellhops even wear old-looking uniforms! Also, the elevator is amazing because you can see how it works when you walk down the stairs. After we unpacked, we went to a place called the Hằng Nga Guesthouse (or the “Crazy House”. It is a hotel, but tourists come more often because of its funky architecture. It was very cool and kind of reminded me of Meow Wolf in Santa Fe.
We ate lunch and then went to the market. There, we saw many types of fruits and a lot of other things. Even though we didn’t go in, Aba pointed out the section where cats and dogs in cages are sold. Just then, a dog howled. We also saw fresh fish and I noticed that some of the fish were still alive and flopping around to try and find water, which I thought was cruel and unnecessary.
The next morning we woke up early for breakfast and then drove to a waterfall with our guide, Luu. It was very wet but also fun, and we even got to climb behind the waterfall!
We then went to a place where weasel coffee is made. Coffee beans are grown and fed to weasels, who poop them out, then the beans are dried and made into coffee. We got to see the weasels, and I noticed several with symptoms of zoochosis.
We tried some of the coffee, but I was saddened by the way it was made, thought the taste actually wasn’t bad. Next, we drove to a rickety-looking roller coaster that was actually so fun that Asher and I went on it twice! We shared a car, and it was probably the highlight of my day. I love you, Asher!
After the roller coaster, we drove to a phenomenal monastery where we met a very talkative and sweet monk. He gave us six free books and introduced us to a puppy! He had been left in the parking lot and the monks had been taking care of him ever since! Another monk even gave me a CREME PUFF to feed him!
We went back to Da Lat and ate lunch. We did homework at the hotel until dinner, when we went out, and then came back and did homework and blogged until we went to sleep. The next morning our bus was late, but nevertheless, we commenced on our next five-hour drive. When we arrived at our seaside hotel in the beach town we decided to swim in the hotel pool before starting homework, but we ended up lounging by the pool instead. We did homework until dinner, with a small lunch break in between, and ate at a restaurant. We had unknowingly decided to eat at a hookah bar, but the food was very good. The host and owner of the establishment was Russian, and after living 15 years in Germany with his Vietnamese wife she had decided to move to Vietnam. He had a very thick accent that was so out of place when I first heard it that I had to stop myself from laughing! In addition, it looked like he had just rolled out of bed: pajama bottoms and a baggy t-shirt combined with a messy grey man bun. He took us to his wine cellar and showed us some dried meat, and after eating we left. Asher had a Spanish lesson at 9-o’clock and we slept after it was over. I woke up earlier than Asher to get a head start on homework, and when he woke up he joined me. We have this truly evil assignment assigned to us by our online school that is very long and tedious and hardly any time to finish it! Anyway, at a more reasonable hour, we went to eat crepes at a restaurant nearby and then resumed homework… while eating a mango. We went out again for a delicious lunch at a very nice Mediterranean restaurant and then ate dinner. Before we went to sleep, I started working on Dad’s Christmas present! 1-26-23 4 9-21-4-14 26-1-12-6-2-3-13-6 18-4-26-5-24 18-1-26-24 4 9-1-22 18-3-19-6-13 7-4-13-6!
Ella
YOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYO everyone! I am back today with another awesome blog post for you today about our first day traveling Vietnam outside of Saigon. As you might have remembered from my last post, yesterday was my final day in Saigon, Vietnam, and now we are going to be exploring more of Vietnam the backpacker way! Which, might be good, hopefully? Right? Anyways, so that was what we talked about yesterday, so let’s start talking about today and its fascinating experience! First, we woke up at 6:00 am, which is always a bad thing in my book. It’s just so early in the morning and I wake up so tired and grumpy. Anyways, we packed up the remainder of our things and then we left the apartment that was actually quite nice to stay in, to be honest. I just don’t know what was going to happen to us and what room we might stay in next. Also, I like having my own room and I really don’t want to share again. So anyway, we took a cab to the bus station and once we approached the bus, it was completely mind-boggling. The seats were stacked on top of each other and the seats where reclinable!! Literally, you could just lie back on them like the business class on airplanes!!!!! I have a feeling the rest of my family didn’t like it, but I thought it was pretty cool. We then drove 5 hours to the next place we were going to stay at, but I slept most of the way because I didn’t get much sleep the other night. When we arrived, it was drizzling so we got into our new rooms and they were actually very comfortable so we stayed in them and had lunch about an hour later. The food was fine, but they were playing CHRISTMAS songs in the background, in November!! It also drizzled very hard when we were done eating so we had to run back to our rooms in order to gain shelter as quickly as possible. The, we just stayed in our rooms and had a good time until the end of the day. It was very interesting and I hope we see those buses again soon.
YOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYO! Hello everyone! I am back with another blog post written for you today about my second day of traveling Vietnam outside of Saigon and our fun day exploring the small area we were in. Really, today was probably our shortest day in all of Vietnam not just because we slept in, but also because today was really uninteresting for the most part. We only did a few limited things today and was also one of the reasons I hate climate change. So here is my current blog post about a very unexciting but relieving day. So anyways, unlike yesterday, today we woke up at sweet 11:00 am!!! Yes, a day that I finally got to sleep in!!! So anyway, we got to sleep in and we woke up in a really happy mood today because we didn’t have to wake up at 6 like usual. Afterward, we got dressed and explored the area briefly. We mostly passed by old shops and a ton of restaurants that were only selling fish. We also stopped at a place where we saw the ocean filled with trash and it was really disgusting. Really, people please stop littering the ocean. It’s disgusting and it’s very bad for the environment. Anyways, we walked around a little bit after that and the most unexpected thing happened. We were just walking in the road and out of nowhere, it started to pour!!! Out of nowhere, a gigantic wave of water fell from the sky and got us wet all over the place!! Really, it was so unexpected that it took us off guard and we had to go inside. We stayed in for a while and then went to lunch a little while after that. It was really good actually and then we went back home and stayed there for the rest of the day. We just did homework, watched a movie, and then went to bed satisfied. Today wasn’t like usual, but it was my kind of day as in just sitting down and relaxing.
YOYOYOYOYOYO everyone on the other side of the screen! I am back today with another blog post for you today about my third day traveling Vietnam abroad! Anyways, unlike yesterday, this time we went to another place early in the morning while yesterday we just stayed and had a rest day. So anyway, here is my blog post for you today and I hope you enjoy it! So we started off our day by waking up at 5:30 am… which was a delightful experience for all of us. I do not like waking up early and this was no exception to that rule. It’s just so early and I am so tired and dreary. Anyway, we got packed up, brushed our teeth, and waited for the bus to come like the first day of our Vietnam abroad travels. We waited for about 30 minutes and then the bus arrived. The bus was just a regular old bus and not the cool one we saw a few days ago, so I was pretty disappointed. Anyways, we got on it and drove for 5 straight hours to our next location. We reached our hotel and actually it was one of those classy hotels with the bellhops and the old-fashioned elevators! It was really cool and after unpacking all of our stuff, we toured the city a little bit and we found what was called the “Crazy House”, which was a really big house that was twisted into weird shapes and had weird colors. It was very cool and every room was different and there was not a single straight wall in the whole house. After that, we saw some other markets and when we got home, we took showers, got dressed, and went out to dinner. The dinner place was very cool looking but it was eerie because when we got there, we were the only people there. It was honestly creepy. Anyway, we finished our dinner and 3 more tables were taken up when we left! We went back to the hotel, brushed our teeth, and went to bed. Today was a very interesting day and thank you for reading this.
YOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYO! Hello everyone, I am back today with another awesome blog post for you about my fourth day of traveling Vietnam abroad. Today was actually a very touristy compared to all the other days, so I hope that you enjoy this today. Anyways, after getting dressed and stuff, we went to a very cool waterfall where we toured and did a very fun walk on it. It was very slippery, but it was ultimately worth it when we went BEHIND the waterfall and saw just how cool it was on the inside!!! We got sprayed though, so that wasn’t very fun and we got our hands dirty from climbing on dirty rocks and mud. It was very cool to see all of our surroundings and afterward, we went to a coffee-making station where we tried coffee! I didn’t like it, it was way too bitter for me and the coffee was made from weasel dung… yech. After that, we drove for a little while and we reached a mini roller coaster station!!! I rode with Ella many times because it was so fun and the course itself was set in the wilderness, so it was very cool. We had lunch afterward and after homework, we had an amazing dinner at a really fancy restaurant. Today was awesome and I really want to do that roller coaster again!
HELLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOO everyone! I am back today with another very cool and interesting blog post for you today about another very long bus ride and our first time in a metropolitan city since Cape Town, South Africa! Yes, yesterday was very exciting for me, so let me tell you about it! So anyway, we woke up at 5:30 am again for like the third time, I don’t know I lose track of these things. Afterward, we were in a serious rush to pack up our remaining stuff and then we went downstairs and waited for our bus. It came later and then we got on it and drove off from a pretty decent hotel. It was very cool actually and I loved the classic vibe that it gave us. We drove for 2 hours before stopping at a rest station for 30 minutes and we saw a lot of fish in a pond next to it. There were also a bunch of fake flowers hanging from the roof of the place, so yeah they kind of ruined the effect. We had a small snack break there and when we were getting on our bus, the weirdest thing happened. We were just boarding when the driver of the bus said that everyone needed to go to a bus right next to us and there was this HUGE transition of people! It was crazy, but we eventually got it sorted out and then we drove a few more hours to our next hotel and it was actually like something you might see in a big city! We got there and after resting for a few hours and doing homework, we went to eat dinner at a French place where the owner showed us his wine collection. The place was nice, but I’ve seen better. Anyways, that was my awesome day here in Vietnam! Bye, everyone!
HHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII everyone on the other side of whatever tablet you are reading this off of, I am back today with another very awesome blog post for you today about a relatively fresh day here in Vietnam. It was mostly staying indoors, but a bunch of stuff happened even if some parts of today were bad. So, here is my blog post today and I hope that you enjoy it! We woke up today at the same time as all the other days and after getting dressed and doing the usual brushing teeth and waking up, we went to have crepes for breakfast! They are this very delicious french treat that Ella and I both love very much and we haven’t eaten it in a while. It was very good and it was very refreshing for a long morning. Once we got back to the hotel, we did a lot of homework for the rest of the day, which really sucks because they sprung this big assignment on us at the last minute and it’s killing our freetime. I do not like how the system works because we had no preparation for it and it came out of nowhere. Anyways, we had lunch later at a mediterranean restaurant and the food there was very good. A few hours later, we had dinner and the food there tasted very good. We went to sleep after, so all the homework today basically killed the touring that we were supposed to do. It’s not fair; I will start a revolution!
At the crazy house!
A creepy serving station within the crazy house(It’s actually a resort; we could’ve stayed there!)
Flower sculptures near the hotel!
The awesome roller coaster!
At the monastery.
YYYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Hi everyone and I am back with another blog post for you today about my very first day in Vietnam! I finished the last post with a sad feeling that I was no longer going to be staying in Thailand, but that is ok because I am pretty sure Vietnam will be an experience, even if it is a bad one(which I highly doubt). So anyway, last time we flew all the way to Vietnam and Meril got held back because her visa wasn’t good! We eventually solved this problem and after a day at the airport, we got to our new, cozy(ish) apartment and had dinner there. We went to sleep and started our first official day the next day. We woke up at 7:00 this morning and then we got dressed and brushed our teeth. We then embarked on our long day journey and went to a nice bakery where we had a nice chocolate muffin and for some strange reason, Ella had a pizza… but it was a fun meal and the place was absolutely astounding to be in. After the delightful meal, we walked in the extraordinarily humid humidity even though the sun was ok. I was boiling from the inside out and I felt like a shriveled raisin before finding and buying water bottles that I drank from. The rest of the day was touring all the nice little shops and we even went to a hotel called the Rex hotel for a small bit where Aba had seen an old film back in the ‘90’s! We also went to the market where we saw very cool artifacts and the war museum which contained stuff from the Vietnam War. It was very sad to see and all the pictures there that showed the victims were terrified. I felt very bad for them and I sincerely hope that this never happens again. After that, we arrived at our apartment and after a refreshing dinner, we went to bed.
YOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOOYOYOOY! How is everyone doing today as I am back today with another super duper cool blog post for you today about my second day here in Vietnam! Anyways, today was mainly touring the streets of Vietnam and seeing how everything worked out, so enjoy! Anyways, today started off the same way as yesterday by me waking up and brushing my teeth peacefully in no rush. After all of that stuff, we began our very long day of peacefully touring by going to the same bakery as last time. I had a gigantic baguette and the same chocolate muffin and they tasted incredibly well together. I really like that bakery, I think we might be going there a lot more on this trip. Anyways, we started to tour the different places that were surrounding where we were and we eventually after a long time of walking and looking at stuff in the blazing humidity reached a nice mall where we had lunch. I had a mushroom pizza and it actually tasted very good to me and everyone actually agreed that I had the best meal of them all! We also checked out a few stores where everything was seriously overpriced and we eventually left the mall to go to the Rex hotel, where we had a rest break last time. While we were there, we discussed much stuff like news and family and we had a few snacks there as well. We actually had a water puppet show scheduled at the hotel that we went to shortly after! Basically, water puppet shows are a tradition in Vietnamese culture and although some parts of it were good, to me it wasn’t that good. It just didn’t appear to me as well as I thought it would and I wasn’t sure what the whole thing was about. Anyways, today’s very long walking-and-touring experience was very cool and was one of my most exciting and fun days to count here in Vietnam.
HHHHHHEEEELLLLOOOOOO everyone on the other side of the screen of recreation(SOR)! I am back today with another super duper exciting blog post of coolness about days 3 and 4 of Vietnam and much more stuff. Please enjoy this blog and a happy Thanksgiving to you all! So anyway, we all woke up at the delightful time of 6:30 am and we, of course, were in a rush to get touring and stuff. Day 3 was basically touring Chinatown and day 4 was going on a tour to a nearby islandy place very close by. They were both fun, so on day 3 we got dressed, brushed teeth, and then had breakfast at a NEW cafe that wasn’t the nice another one. The food there was not good and as a result, I was starving the whole time despite everyone getting a really small tasteless meal. I prefer the other place better even though it is farther as it was nice there and I literally said in my last post that we were going to go there more often(If we don’t I’d be considered a liar and that shouldn’t happen). So then, we got a cab and drove a small distance to the town’s Chinatown, which is a small market which is supposed to be China-themed. A lot of touristy places have them, but this one wasn’t what I was expecting. In fact, this was the exact opposite of what I had in mind. It was literally just another everyday market but crowded with junk and 99% of the people were locals. I’m not saying this is bad, but the smell and crowdedness of the place killed me. I am pretty sure I have agoraphobia, which is the phobia of crowded spaces and a nod to social embarrassment. Also of crowds and big empty spaces, which is sad considering the trip we are currently on. We left the market afterward and then we traveled other blocks for the rest of the day. We even went to see a new movie called Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald that was actually pretty good in my opinion. It was fun actually and we had a very nice dinner where we saw a lot of tourists walking around and socializing. The next day started off the same way, but instead of going to a bakery, we drove an hour and a half to the docks, where we then took a relaxing boat ride to a small settlement a bit far from the city. We saw many people harvesting coconuts and we had a nice lunch that consisted of different fruits and other vegetarian stuff. It wasn’t the best, to be honest, but variety is the spice of life. After that, we took an awesome canoe ride down the delta that the place was located in and we then took another boat back to the city, where we rested and did homework. These two days were a very interesting cultural learning experience and taught me a lot about Vietnam.
YOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYO! I am back today with another awesome blog post about our fifth day here in Vietnam and the last day with our friend Meril, who is leaving tomorrow morning. It will be sad to see her leave us after the awesome journey we have had with her since Cambodia, but life will go on and I’m glad that we had this nice experience with her. Anyways, today after waking up and doing the usual routine, we went to yet ANOTHER bakery that was TONS better than the last one, although it wasn’t as good as the original in my opinion. Everything was too fancy for me and I had a chocolate muffin there that was pretty average and dull compared to the other one I had in the first place twice. After that, we started to tour the rest of the city and we went to a few interesting sites, including the mall for a short while, another really great tourist attraction whose name I forgot, but we had a really fun time, and a really cool looking building that looked like the Avengers’ tower(Called the Bitexco Financial Tower)! We toured a really cool street with loads of awesome stores and although the day was very hot, it was totally worth it to go into all the shops and seeing the cool stuff that they were selling there. There were lots of heavy accessories and even unique sets of silverware and thread. After touring for so long in the hot sun, we finally finished that part of our day and went to the Bitexco Financial Tower because we thought that it looked cool and was a very big tourist attraction. The place was very well kept with clean floors and nice people, and even though I didn’t find any spare Ultrons lying around, there were binoculars located in some places and we could use them to see the whole city! It was very cool and it was a lot more awesome than I thought it would be. Next, we went to the mall but before that, it was starting to get late and we had a nice lunch at a closer mall with excellent food. Then, after a few hours of walking, we stopped for dinner and then went to the original mall that we were going to buy tickets for the upcoming movie Wreck-It-Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet. It looks fine, but I think the first was will be better than this one because the first one rocked. After that, we gratefully returned to our apartment after a long day of walking and went to bed.
HHHHHIIIIIII everyone out there that is probably far away from Vietnam right now. That’s right you all, I am back today with another blog post for you today about another day(Day 6 to be exact) in Vietnam touring and stuff, but this time without our friend Meril who left this morning. I’ll get into that in a little, but right now it’s important to tell you all that today wasn’t as action-filled as all the other days were. We did some limited trips mostly because we saw all the tourist attractions and I feel like tomorrow will be the same way. This was just to let you all know that. Anyway, we started off our day by waking up at 7:30 to say goodbye to Meril, who was leaving very soon. It was really sad to see her go because she was with us on our wonderful trip since Cambodia, and she has been a really great addition to our crew as we have explored places from the world’s largest temples to coconut-harvesting islands. We will all miss you while you’re in New York relaxing as we are constantly moving Meril!!! So yeah, she left and a little while afterward, Ella, Troy, and I went to my favorite bakery here in Vietnam(Finally!!!)! I had my delicious chocolate muffin as usual and then we went back to the apartment to do our long, boring homework. Really, 90% of today was doing homework and a few hours after that, we went to a restaurant for lunch where I had a steak for one of the first times on this whole year-trip! It tasted fine, but it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had. After our nice lunch, we went back to our apartment and did homework for a little while before having dinner at home and then going to bed. Today was short, but it didn’t mean that today was awful. It was actually pretty cool(minus the homework part)! Tomorrow will be our last full day here in Saigon, so wish us luck!
Hi everyone out there! I am back with another blog post for you today on how we have finished our final day here in Saigon. After this, we will still be exploring Vietnam all the way up to Hanoi, but this is the conclusion of our time here in Saigon and I hope you enjoy this blog post, although it was as eventful as yesterday. So, enough talking and let’s start talking! About today, not about what we were just talking about, but let’s get on with this blog on how today went for me and all the points that happened. So today, waking up was just like yesterday and after eating and doing the usual boring stuff, we went off to the bakery as we did yesterday and ordered that amazing chocolate muffin, for probably the last time :(. Afterward, exactly like yesterday, we went back to the apartment after that and we spent the majority of our day there doing our homework as we are still in school. Yup, just plain old boring homework, although a few hours after that we went to the Rex hotel to meet a very old friend who we met 4 years ago in Australia. His name is Sean and he is the head of a company; we met him while we were at the hotel right before New Years in Australia and we interacted and had a fun time. So we met him here again and we talked a lot about random stuff and how we were doing. It was fun, but afterword we drove to the mall where the nefarious Black Friday was in action!!! It was a war zone there and there were massive lines of people that we couldn’t get past! Although it was tricky, we managed to get past them and watched Wreck-It-Ralph 2! It was actually pretty good and although the first one was better this one was very creative and funny. After that, we went to sleep and celebrated our very good time in Saigon.
Saw this in a shop. You had 1 job and FAILED people!!!
Wonders of the Fruit Market.
Canoe trip! Aw yeah!!!
Inside a Vietnamese bunker that was used during the Vietnam war. It was a very interesting hiding and infiltrating device.
(Beneath Fake grass!)
Wouldn’t step on that if I were you…
(Bitexco Financial Tower)VS
(Avengers Tower) You see it, don’t you?
Pennywise the Dancing Clown was stalking me right next to the mall and I caught him redhanded.
May I present to you the Durian, also referred to as the spikiest and stinkiest fruit on Earth!
The first thing we noticed when we got to Ho Chi Minh City were the masses of motorcycles on the streets. I have seen plenty of motorcycles in places such as India, but never before in such numbers. The bikes reminded me of large, metal ants, but with almost no coordination because there are hardly any traffic lights. We got to our new apartment and became excited to see it. We were looking forward to a nice place of our own, but when we entered our building we were not prepared. Now, if we weren’t hyped about this apartment it wouldn’t have seemed so bad, but as it were, the ground floor’s small living area shared with a tiny kitchen seemed petit and cramped, and the steep stairway going up seemed never-ending. The first floor had two planes bedrooms, and so did the second, but the third floor was hot and humid and strung with laundry. Also, the laundry machine had clothes in it. When we got settled we realized how weak the wifi was, and when we closer examined the kitchen we had to kiss goodbye to the cake we had been planning to bake the next day. There was no oven. After doing homework, we ate a meal of pasta with tomato sauce and realized that there were no knives. For the rest of the day we heard a baby crying, a rooster crowing, and people screaming. When we awoke the next day, we realized that the apartment truly wasn’t so bad, it just took some getting used to. However, there were only two tables. The first one was in the kitchen and it only sat two people, and the second was on the roof, which only seated one. Therefore, after sweating to death trying to sit on the roof, I sat on the stairs and used a glass railing as my table. We decided to walk around the town, and we went to multiple markets and I noticed that the Vietnamese Teacher’s Day was coming up! I looked for string in the markets but didn’t find anything good. Then, we booked tickets for a show and went to the War Remnants Museum. This museum was very powerful because of its stories and photographs. Many people died the following second or within the following days, unless of course, they were already dead. Life-changing deformations were the result of Agent Orange, a chemical used by Americans, and descendants of those affected still have deformities today. Something that I saw and hadn’t ever thought about was that American soldiers, too, were affected by Agent Orange. I looked at a picture of a beautiful little girl in a white dress, but when the crowd parted I was able to see that she had no arm. Her father had been affected by Agent Orange during the war. There was this room in the museum where kids with deformities had drawn pictures of other kids with deformities, and there were three deformed people making beaded key chains, so I bought one and Aba bought seven simpler ones for our house. We ate lunch at a restaurant, then went home and did homework. We all took showers inside the bathroom with a drain and got the toilet sopping wet, and my favorite part of the evening was when Merrill saw a cockroach and shrieked! “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Hehehehehehe… That made my day. When I did some more research on the war in order to do this blog, I saw this article; “From 8 PM to 9 PM February 25th, 1969, a group of Seal rangers (one of the most selective rangers of U.S Army) led by Lieutenant Bob Kerrey reached for Hamlet 5, Thanh Phong Village, Thanh Phu District, Ben Tre Province. They cut 66-year-old Bui Van Vat and 62-year-old Luu Thi Canh’s necks and pulled their three grandchildren out from their hiding place in a drain and killed two, disemboweled one. Then, these rangers moved to dug-outs of other families, shot dead 15 civilians (including three pregnant women), disemboweled a girl. The only survivor was a 12-year-old girl named Bui Thi Luom who suffered a foot injury”. The Lieutenant, Bob Kerrey, was, up until 2001 when he confessed his sins to the public, a U.S Senator. The next day, we woke up early and got into a van with our guide. We drove to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which are tunnels that communist soldiers dug during the Vietnam War, and found out that they were very extensive and were under the entire country. I went inside many tunnels, but Aba, Troy, and Asher only went in one because they got scared by two fruit bats!
We saw different types of flip traps as well as different types of guns and bombs, but one technique that I found very interesting was that when Vietnamese left underground rooms they extinguished the lights. Therefore, if American soldiers found their way into the tunnels they would stay next to the wall and fell into pits filled with spikes! I thought that this was very clever. We drove to see a reenactment of village life, but then went back to our apartment after drinking some sugarcane juice. We took showers and then met our friend Hui at a restaurant. We met Hui in the Annapurna!!!!! We had a very nice dinner with him and then went home and dinner. I woke up early the next morning in order to study French and we went to a French bakery to eat breakfast. We walked around the city and saw a memorial to Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk who burned himself alive in order to bring awareness to the policies of the Diệm government.
Then we toured the Independence Palace, a very cool government building that is mid-century-modern blended with Asian design. We went to a water puppet show at the Rex Hotel which was pretty cool, but the first half of the show didn’t have any puppets which I thought was kind of like a scam, but the show itself was nice to see. A funny thing that happened is that the first group of dancers wore elaborate costumes but wore sneakers! The next day we toured Chinatown, which was interesting though uneventful. That night we saw the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Crimes of Grindelwald, which I didn’t hate. However, before we got to the movie theatre, Troy decided that we should use the elevator instead of the escalators and when he forgot to get out at our floor we were trapped. With our luck, we had to stop at every floor going down for roughly six floors and the same thing happened going back up. Troy!
In the morning, we woke up early and got into the van with our guide and drove to the Mekong Delta, a maze of lush rivers abundant with vegetation and floating villages, or boathouses. We ate breakfast at a scenic area (I ate an ice cream sandwich and bread, don’t judge me), and arrived shortly after. We wandered around a market and in the meat section I saw severed chicken heads, feet, and organs, pig noses and ears and hearts and skins, and many other types of animal flesh. I saw some new fruits which were very interesting, but on the way out of the market, we saw a tiny cage packed to the brim with puppies.
The guide told us they were meant as pets, but I’m not so sure… We drove to an area filled with fishing villages and rented our own boat to sail down the river.
We got off and walked on a cement sidewalk in the middle of the jungle, past some houses, and through a lot of greenery. Then, we returned on the boat and got on a small baby blue truck that drove us to a restaurant. The restaurant wasn’t very good, but all I’ll say about it is that the food was endless and they kept piling it up on our plates. Also, they brought out an entire fish with eyes and bones and teeth and they didn’t understand our request for no pork. When we left the restaurant, we got into rowboats and paddled down a narrow stream, which was very cool.
We then drove to a coconut-candy-manufacturing factory and saw how coconut candy is made! This might’ve been my favorite part of the whole day because when they poured the cooling liquid-coconut it was still warm and the workers let me eat some! It was like taffy, which I’ve never had warm, but I think that it’s a lot better warm and liquidy. I even went back for more! We drove home to do some homework and then went out to dinner. The next morning I was awakened at 5:30 am by a very, very, very very very LOUD band playing on our street. They had all kinds of instruments; drums and trumpets and BAGPIPES and who knows what else. And it was 5:30 am. AND I had gone to sleep at midnight the night before because of an emergency with my friends! Anyway, I did some homework because I couldn’t fall back asleep, and Aba, Asher, Merrill, Troy, and I walked around the city all day again. I even bought 15 different spools of bracelet string of 14 different colors! We also went to a tall building that Asher though looks like the Avenger Tower (actually the Bitexco tower) to see the view.
vs
That evening, we went to an acrobatic show called AO which I found wonderful. However, there were some very loud tourists in the row across the aisle from me who were talking loudly and incessantly for the entire duration. I had to work hard not to slap them, they were so annoying and disrespectful!
After eating dinner at a former Opium-making factory, we visited a bar that Aba had been to when he visited Vietnam as a backpacker, called the Apocalypse Now. On the way home, we bought some gherkins!! The next morning was a little sad because Merrill boarded a plane to New York for her 21-hour flight. We mostly worked on homework after she left, and that night I started working on Christmas/Hanukah/Aba’s Birthday presents. Today we ate breakfast at a bakery called Tous Les Jours where we had already eaten a couple of times and then did homework. I wrote a creative story on the dog meat industry in Vietnam, so here is the link if you want to read it (be warned, it is gruesome and will make you sad). We had drinks with a friend of ours at the Rex hotel that we had met in Sydney, Australia called Sean, and Asher fell asleep on the table. Then, we headed toward the mall in order to see to see Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet. I actually liked the movie except for *spoiler alert* everything concerning the giant Ralph, it was too cheesy and sentimental. However, it was Black Friday and there were literally thousands of people squeezed into the hall! We ate dinner at a Korean meat restaurant, did homework and blogged, and went to sleep.
11-6-3-11-14-6 4-17-6 9-3-10-23, 7-21-26 11-6-3-11-14-6 6-4-26 9-3-10-23, 23-3 4-17-6 18-6 5-4-13-13-1-7-4-14-23?
Ella
#Vegan
HIIIIIIIII!!!! I’m back and happy to report that I am starting my day in a nice hotel and not in a guesthouse. I just can’t describe how happy I am right now although it might sound weird. I mean, you know it was fun to actually get the backpacking experience, but I tragically like nice resorts more and having a break after all of the hard work we did was rewarding beyond comprehension. This week has been divided by our time in Pokhara and our time in Kathmandu, which were both fun but significantly different. Our two days in Pokhara always started off with waking up on a nice, sunny morning in no rush and absolute peace and quiet, unlike the hard days on the trek where we had to wake up on a hard floor and get dressed and stuff in a hard and extraordinarily hard manner. We got dressed in peace and after brushing our teeth in a cool manner, we had a delightful breakfast which changed over the days and embarked on our awesome journey for the day. Our days consisted of us just touring Pokhara in peace and we actually saw a lot of cool stuff and people. Two of the three times we had dinner there, we ate at the Roadhouse Restaurant, which I mentioned in my last post(the first time was the first night in Pokhara). The food there always tasted very good and I would eat it again at any time. Pokhara itself was teaming of people, most of which were people we saw way back up on the Annapurna including an American who said hi to us multiple times and the loud band of hikers I mentioned in one of my earlier posts(we didn’t see Leia or her dad because they were on another excursion). The locals there were also very friendly and we went to multiple shops and cafes that were very full of life and interesting products. Everything we did was fun and I’m personally more into touring and exploring rather than backpacking and hiking up on high mountains with many casualties. It is who I am >:| Anyways, Pokhara was a nice break from all the crazy stuff we as a family did and it was a fun break. In Kathmandu, we also had a fun time touring and we stayed at two different locations. We stayed at our own location from before the trek and then at another location for the rest of our stay, where we watched movies! We even visited the town square and did fun stuff! It is seriously really fun here and I am having the best time!
YYYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Hi everyone and I am back with another blog post for you today about my very first day in Vietnam! I finished the last post with a sad feeling that I was no longer going to be staying in Thailand, but that is ok because I am pretty sure Vietnam will be an experience, even if it is a bad one(which I highly doubt). So anyway, last time we flew all the way to Vietnam and Meril got held back because her visa wasn’t good! We eventually solved this problem and after a day at the airport, we got to our new, cozy(ish) apartment and had dinner there. We went to sleep and started our first official day the next day. We woke up at 7:00 this morning and then we got dressed and brushed our teeth. We then embarked on our long day journey and went to a nice bakery where we had a nice chocolate muffin and for some strange reason, Ella had a pizza… but it was a fun meal and the place was absolutely astounding to be in. After the delightful meal, we walked in the extraordinarily humid humidity even though the sun was ok. I was boiling from the inside out and I felt like a shriveled raisin before finding and buying water bottles that I drank from. The rest of the day was touring all the nice little shops and we even went to a hotel called the Rex hotel for a small bit where Aba had seen an old film back in the ‘90’s! We also went to the market where we saw very cool artifacts and the war museum which contained stuff from the Vietnam War. It was very sad to see and all the pictures there that showed the victims were terrified. I felt very bad for them and I sincerely hope that this never happens again. After that, we arrived at our apartment and after a refreshing dinner, we went to bed.
Hi! Sorry, again, for taking so long to write, but I was enjoying my time in Thailand very much so I didn’t blog. When we landed at the airport we waited for our hotel’s cab, but neither Merrill’s and mine nor Aba, Troy’s, and Asher’s came so we hired a taxi instead. We drove to the hotels, we decided to stay at two separate hotels, and were calmed by the humidity of the tropical climate. However, when we got out of the car I had to stop myself from laughing because my hotel was large and luxurious and its next-door neighbor, Aba’s hotel, was this tiny little pink dwarf of a building. The boys ended up changing hotels, but for the time being, I found this very funny. There was a slight problem when Merrill checked us into our hotel because we’d accidentally booked their sister hotel, the Muang Samui Villas, instead of the Muang Samui Spa Resort, but because it’s the off-season now, we got a room anyway. We ate lunch and did homework, then went to dinner and slept after meeting some sweet orange and white kittens who were living by the hotel pool! The next morning we did homework and went to the beach and pool, and that night we went to the movie theatre and saw a new movie called Bohemian Rhapsody about the lead singer of the band Queen, Freddie Mercury. I actually enjoyed the movie, but I know it is missing a lot of information and isn’t very detailed or explanatory. As usual, before movies in Thailand, we had to watch a short video about the current king of Thailand, Maha Vajiralongkorn’s, life. The next day, as we were doing homework, Asher and I made a terrible discovery. Tragically, and at least to me unexpectedly, Marvel’s creator, Stan Lee, had died the night before. Not all of you will know about Stan Lee and I won’t write about him here, but I just want to give a little shout out to him. Thank you, Stan. You have lived and been loved a lot and by many people during your 95 years of life, and you have given joy to many people as well. My brother, Asher, loves Marvel comics and movies and they are something that he talks about incessantly. Your cameos are some of my favorite parts in Marvel movies. Thank you, Stan. RIP.
After I finished my homework and swam, I began to make a memorial for Stan Lee in the sand but I had to stop because of rain. I had covered up my memorial so it was undamaged, and I planned to finish it the next day, but it looked like somebody had stepped on it repeatedly the next morning.
Aba, Troy, Asher and I swam out to a small shell-covered island early the next morning while the water was still, and we spent the rest of the day relaxing and doing homework. As I sat in the water, I happened to pick up the most beautiful shell that I have ever seen. It was minuscule, perhaps half a centimeter tall and wide, and it was orange. There were natural red zigzag designs on it and black and brown squiggles. There was only one problem, there was a small snail inside of it. With a heavy heart and an insistent Aba, I didn’t even get to take a picture of the small treasure before I hurled it back into the ocean. We went out for dinner and I bought a glass crab for my glass animal collection because I saw a crab in the wild for the first time! The next morning I woke up early and got dressed, but the water was very welcoming so I stepped into the ocean with my pants rolled up and walked around. For the first time on the trip, I saw a crab swimming as well as small fish that blended in with the sand… I also tried to look for the shell… It was wonderful and calm and peaceful, but the taxi arrived and though I was sad, I had to leave. We flew to Bangkok and then to Ho Chi Minh City, our destination. We stepped into Vietnam, but the rest of this story is for another post.
1-8 4-7-4 24-4-9-13-26 7-6-6-13 26-24-6-17-6, 1 26-24-1-13-15 1 18-3-21-14-9-19-6 26-4-15-6-13 26-24-6 23-24-6-14-14… 1-23 26-24-4-26 18-17-3-13-10?
Ella