Dai Nam Park is situated about 40km away from Ho Chi Minh City. Opened in September 2008 it aims to be the leading tourist attraction by 2010. An optimistic dream, but even now even when it is still not quite complete you can see the potential. It is a huge complex with a hotel, shopping mall, open zoo, theme park, beach area and temple. Some say it looks cheap, but I found it to be a beautiful retreat and a good way to spend a day. My journey began, as so many do these days, in Ho Chi Minh City near [View Full Entry]

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Well, as usual, I've waited much too long to update the ol' blog. But moving along, last month I took a weekend trip to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam with new-ish good friend, Malcolm. Malcolm is here from England teaching English with his girlfriend, Louise, who happened to be off on a girls' trip to Hong Kong, so Mal and I planned a boys weekend. It also happened to be Mal's birthday, an extra cause for celebration. I was fortunate to have Mal with me, since he and Lu have been traveling the world together for a couple of years now so [View Full Entry]

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WE'RE FINALLY HERE!! i've taken over typing from dad, because he takes too long. first full day in Vietnam, no hiccups and everything went smoothly-except my backpack got jammed in the carosel at Saigon Airport-causing huge alarms for staff. not embarresing much!didnt even pick my bag up the first time, we let it go around so nobody knew it was mine. dad warned me what it might be like when we arrived but nothing could prepare me for what i was to encounter. into a car that wasnt a taxi- after a while of haggling with a man who claimed to [View Full Entry]

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Disaster! Tupur and family are scheduled to reach by 11 ish, so we had thought that we would grab some breakfast at our favourite ABC Bakery (trying to keep the costs down - its so easy to blow away 150 dongs in that place!) and then get the train tickets and the Mekong tour in place before they arrive. I had spoken to our landlady that we need 2 rooms for the night of the 30th. When we come down and just thinking that its a good idea to just check it up, we find that no, they dont seem to [View Full Entry]

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What a full day. What a day of myriad impressions. We woke up late, and by the time we got going it was already 11. Off to breakfast at the same bakery, and we hogged great sandwiches and Sanaa lopped up a Tiramisu. A good way to start the day. Free wifi at the coffee shop, and though we ended up spending quite a bit more than what we intended - a good beginning to the day all round. So we decided to walk down to the war museum. Vietnamese streets are full of two wheelers and tha traffic has its [View Full Entry]

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So it's been about a month or so since my last post. Lots of new things to talk about. Guess I'll start with the school... I have a full complement of classes now. I teach Tues/Thurs from 5:40 till 9:40, and on the weekends I have a marathon of classes: 4 classes on Saturday and Sunday, a total of 16 hours teaching every weekend and roughly 24 hours in the school. Different levels each present their own challenges. With the younger kids you have to keep them on task and have them practice the language points ad nausea (sp?). Classroom management [View Full Entry]

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Day 0 Chennai Airport Okay, quite crazy. Several international flights leaving at the same time, and only one screening machine in place. Chaos and confusion and tempers running high. And piling crowds everywhere. Long long queues. It helps to travel with a kid - we get preference queue positions, shortcuts to counters, special lines meant for only families with young children. Who says travelling with kids is difficult. The mistake we made is not doing the web check-in. So we actually dont get seats together on either flight. Lesson to oneself. My apprehensions about the visa approval form which looks like [View Full Entry]

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I have been to a few bars in Ho Chi Minh City during my visits. Usually I end up in the tourist bars simply because I need the air con and simplicity of ordering beer. I did have two very different experiences recently though. For the first, I had been invited to a fashion show. A friend of a friend was the designer, so we got complimentary tickets. I arrived straight from work with my large laptop bag, and immediately stood out. Everybody else was dressed to impress in the latest designer clothes, I just had my normal work shirt and [View Full Entry]

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We had a nice 5 hour bus ride to Mui Ne ($6 USD) and hit the beach straight away, walking a long way to the end and back - not the whole stretch, it is an 18km long beach! Then we swam in the sea as the sun set. We took a motorbike 40km away to the white and red sand dunes (120,000 dong) and it was fantastic. I'd never been anywhere like it - so much sand! And being able to climb up fairly high on them was cool too. If I looked in the right direction, all I could [View Full Entry]

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Am happy as larry to be away from Thailand and back in Nam.. We had to get up at 4am to get a minibus to the airport .. we kinda chilled out after checking the bags and then when we tried to make our way through customs I realised wed left it pretty short... The que was huge... and Bangkok airport is massive.. after getting through we had to run through the airport to get to our gate haha, was funny.. we literally just made our plane.. We had a few issues come up in Bangkok and we talked alot about [View Full Entry]

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