Sunday, February 21, 2010

Vietnam & Cambodia







For Chinese New Year, we went to Vietnam and Cambodia with our good friends Missy, Luke, Lucy, and Allie Stevens.

I started writing this blog while sitting in the hotel room in Saigon while Alex was under the weather.

Day 1 - Flight to Saigon

We flew from Pudong to Guangzhou and switched planes to fly to Saigon. We arrived into Saigon late. Here, we had to get our local visa. We had done the online registration so we thought that would help the process, but we still had to wait in a long, disorganized line when we got here. It took us about an hour and a half to get our visas and then we were able to leave.

We went to look for our transport to the hotel. When we walked out of the airport, it was just after midnight. It was Tet - Vietnamese Lunar New Year’s Eve. Fireworks were going off. Our driver had just arrived. We boarded a bus and drove into the city to get to the Sheraton.

We saw the largest amount of people on motorbikes that we’ve ever seen before. It reminded me of when I was in Shanghai in the 90’s and all the bicycles on the road. Makes me wonder if we’ll be living here in 10 years. So many people were on the street celebrating the new year. We passed the Notre Dame Cathedral. I’d like to go in and see it but not sure if I’ll get the chance. We drove down a street all lit up with lights and millions of people walking around.

We arrived to the hotel after a harrowing drive dodging motorbikes and pedestrians. One thing that sticks out in my head was watching families of four on a motorbike, usually two of the kids were sleeping. We got checked into the hotel and got to sleep pretty quickly because we knew we’d have a big day ahead.

Day 2

We woke up in the morning to the sound of drums of the Lion and Dragon dance. It was officially Tet. Elizabeth and I got up and went down to breakfast. While we were down there, we saw the Lions dancing and listened to the drum music. We met up with Luke, Missy, Lucy, and Allie. The girls went and watched some acrobats.

After breakfast, we walked around the area outside of our hotel. We walked to Nguyen Hue Blvd. This was turned into a pedestrian walk lined with amazing flowers. Again, so many people dressed in their best and taking lots of pictures. The weather was pretty hot already for the morning, the sun beating down.

I called Kirk and it turned out that Alex wasn’t feeling good and got sick during breakfast. He thought he was okay, so I walked back to the hotel to pick them up while the Steven’s took Elizabeth and found inexpensive manicures. I arrived back and Alex was laying down. He said he felt okay to get up and go, so Kirk, Alex, and I walked back to the flower street to find the others. Along the way, Alex didn’t look so good, so he and I went back to the hotel.

Once Kirk got back, we decided that Alex would need to stay in the hotel for the rest of the day, so we split up. Elizabeth and I joined the Steven’s for lunch and a tour of the city while Alex and Kirk rested.

We started out having lunch at the Lemongrass CafĂ©. There weren’t many restaurants open since it was Tet. We started with some shrimp chips and then ordered spring rolls as an appetizer. We ended up eating a mango beef salad, chicken in curry sauce, chicken pho while the kids had calamari, fried rice and rice vermicelli. Elizabeth didn’t eat much. Food was good but we had to run to catch our tour.

Missy arranged the tour through the hotel. We boarded a bus with 4 other families and started our city tour. Our first stop was to the Spring Flower Festival in Tao Dan Park. There were vendors here and many different kind of flowers, specifically a lot of orchids. We spent about 30 minutes going through this park, it was hot!

Our next stop was to a Taoist Temple. This temple was over 400 years old. It was very smoky from all of the incense burning. People were here worshiping their ancestors. We walked around a bit and bought the girls some incense to light. After this, we walked across the street to the next part of our tour.

Now we got on rick shaws to drive around the China town area. The rick shaws were bicycles with a seat up front for one person. Elizabeth sat on my lap. I took some video of this. It was a bit of a long ride in the hot blazing sun, but was really neat to be on the street with all the scooters. Didn’t see many cars, but the ones we saw were mostly Toyotas and VW’s .

After the rick shaw ride, we got back on the bus and stopped at a shopping area. Here they had overprices local artwork. Pretty much a rip off. $45 for a plastic coaster set. Good thing we are experienced Asia travelers who have some idea what things are worth. Then we went on to the next Temple. This was a Buddhist temple. Again, many people here praying as it was Tet and that is one of their traditions…to go say prayer at Temple. We had to remove our shoes and everything was quiet. This temple had monks and nuns praying here.

Our final stop was the highlight of the tour. We stopped at a local Vietnamese family’s house to see how they celebrate Tet. We weren’t sure what to expect. We walked into the house of many people and our tour guide explained that our host was Mr Mung. He was dressed in traditional Vietnamese clothes and hat. We sat down at round tables and were served tea by his two nieces.

Missy and I observed that these girls who looked to be the age of about 8 of 9 had breasts. We wondered if it was traditional to stuff your bra that early. Turns out these girls were small people and were 32 and 22. Later, Luke told us that their cousin said they were small people due to Agent Orange. Not sure if this is true or not. It turned out that they were fabulous singers and they sang a couple traditional songs for us accompanied by another relative who played the moon guitar. After they sang, two other singers got up and also sang.

Some observations about the house. Tile floor. Many antique objects (vases, furniture, grandfather clock, temple). Large flat screen TV with a Wii! So different, so alike.

Our tour guide told us we’d get back to the hotel by 6pm. At 6pm, the host told us that he would be serving us dinner. We moved to the temple as they lit incense to worship and then we went outside to the courtyard to have dinner. We did not expect this.

We were served traditional Vietnamese dishes and some were from an area in the middle of the country called Hua. We had steamed sticky rice, other different glutonous rice dishes, some pork and chicken, some steamed conch which was an expensive delicacy as well as some preserved vegetables (cabbage). During dinner, they brought out this large jug of wine. We were all to drink out of it as a way to bond. It didn’t taste very good! Mr Mung told us if we got drunk on that wine, we would be sick for three days.

Finally, Mr Mung and his family gave us hongbaos with two $2 bills in them. Our tour guide later told us that he had no idea that they would be so hospitable and that Mr Mung did over and above what the tour company compensated him for. We asked why he would do that. The tour guide said that Mr Mung was a weathly owner of a publishing company. His house was worth $5 million US. He wanted to share this tradition with others and felt that since he was wealthy, he wanted to do this in goodwill to give back to others.

We took pictures and said Chuc Man Nam Moi which is “Happy New Year” in Vietnamese (thanks to Thuy Marchal for giving me some quick SMS lessons!) and then got back on the bus to return to the hotel. Again, so many people out on the street. We had to exit the bus and walk about 5 min back to the hotel because the bus couldn’t get through. Great day.

Day 3
Alex is still a little under the weather so Kirk and Elizabeth are touring today. They are going to the tunnels. I’ll let Kirk talk about that.

Day 4
We loaded up in a van a drove about 3 hours to a beach in Phan Thiet. We stayed at the L'Anmian Resort. The resort itself was pretty new so the property was beautiful but the service only so/so. For the next two days we pretty much hung out at the beach and the pools. We had a pool at our villas so it was nice to come back in the afternoon and just hang out there. At night, we ate at open air restaurants and had some decent seafood. Missy and I discovered Vietnamese Coffee. This is really strong coffee with sweetened condensed milk. Sometimes we even added some Baileys. Okay, all the time we added Baileys. Really good stuff. We had excellent spring rolls pretty much everyday and loved most of the food, including the Pho.

Day something. I've now lost track. I guess fully relaxed by now. We have loaded back up into a van and drove back to Saigon to catch our flight to Siem Reap. We plan to try to see as many temples as the kids will stand.

We end up meeting up with Scott and Anne Richardson and their daughters Juliet and Lillie. Lillie is in Alex's class and she keeps him in line. She is a very adorable, smart, sweet girl who has been incredibly blessed by God. Everyone is happy to have more playmates.

The first day in Siem Reap, we to the Tuk Tuks to a few different temples. Can't remember the names now, only Angkor Wat. But the coolest one was the one with trees Ta Prohm. Alex wasn't a big fan at first but then he kind of got into the climbing. He really liked the Tuk Tuks.

Siem Reap has a lot of poverty. We took a boat tour out to a water village. Here was saw a lot of poverty and that was hard to take. However, sometimes I think if that's all they know, maybe it's not that bad for them.

The restaurants in Siem Riep were all really good and the tuk tuk took us everywhere. There is a night market that is nice. Missy, Ann and I went and had our feet eaten by fish. Not cool, didn't care for that at all.

Le Meridien was really nice hotel to stay at. Would definitely do this trip again.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Concordia Dragon Dance



Video from the Chinese New Year Celebration at the kids school.