I'm sorry that I haven't been able to upload pics. I just spent the last hour trying to make it work... the computers here are not the best and the internet is incredibly slow! Since I'm 'stealing' internet time at the Faculty of Medicine's Physician's room I have to be quick... Since the first week, things here have improved significantly! Since then, I've really gotten to know the surgeons and the students in my department and they now are more than happy to include me in the OR and on ward rounds. Actually, I'm spending most of my time in the [View Full Entry]

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Not having any expectations for this trip was probably a good thing! My Rwandan life so far has been full of surprises and challenges and it's only been a week. On Monday, June 5th, myself and another med student from NOSM named Julie left from Toronto to head over to Rwanda to complete a 4 week medical placement with the International Federation of Medical Students. I was to be placed in surgery, while Julie was going to be spending her time in internal medicine. On our way to Rwanda, we had a 14 hour stop over in Amsterdam which was incredible. [View Full Entry]

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Leaving PP, I jumped on a bus to Kampot - a small town supposedly only 3 hrs away. Six hours of bumping along unpaved roads in a public bus that surprisingly made it in one piece and I finally arrived. I had stopped in Kampot because I was eager to go hiking in Bokor National Park. Unfortunately, when I arrived, I was told that the Bokor mountain was closed to tourists and everyone else because some foreign investor had somehow bought the mountain (!??!) and was building a 400 room hotel and a casino. UGH. I wasn't happy about that. Instead, [View Full Entry]

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Well Phnom Penh has defied all negative stereotypes. Coming to this city, I was actually worried that it would be awful since different travelers had told us really negative things about PP and Cambodia in general. After three days in the city, I haven't found any of the negative rumours to be true and would've loved to stay longer! We arrived to PP in the night after our long, long boat ride. We crashed at whatever hotel they brought us to so I really didn't know where I was until the next morning. Our first day in PP we did what [View Full Entry]

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After a whirlwind couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City, I was ready to chill out on our supposedly very relaxing three day boat trip along the Mekong Delta. Sightseeing by boat is a very different experience compared to staring out of the window of a bus. Although it was a slow way to travel, I really enjoyed it and was able to see how ppl lived along the Mekong and experience their way of life. The first two days of our trip invovled travelling in a small boat, first along the Saigon river, out to the Mekong, then around [View Full Entry]

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The past five days in this chaotic city has been stimulus overload! Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC or Saigon) is Vietnam's largest city and by large I mean INSANELY large! There are so many ppl and so many motorbikes, it's enough to make your head spin. Eghad! Tory & I arrived here from Mui Ne and checked into a super nice hotel ($16/night! eep! that's the most we've ever paid for a room) w/ air-con, tv, and a fridge. We're living the life! It's a good thing that we had air-con though b/c the city is SO hot, made hotter by [View Full Entry]

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It's true - you can smell Mui Ne before you can see it! Mui Ne is a small fishing town where fish sauce is mass produced then shipped to Thailand before it can be exported abroad under the pretense that it was actually manufactured in Thailand, not Vietnam (apparently Vietnam doesn't have high enough hygienic standards to be granted exporting licenses). Food for thought when making Pad Thai back home...! Despite the very strong fish smell, Mui Ne is LOVELY. Unfortunately, unlike Nha Trang which made sure that hotels and resorts weren't built beach-side so that public could still have access [View Full Entry]

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I was really looking forward to getting to Dalat. Located in the Central Highlands, the climate is cool and not humid. Finally, I could sit still and NOT sweat like crazy. Our bus from Nha Trang was an uneventful 7 hour trip. The bus was comfortable, but in Vietnam, tourist bus companies are given money if they make stops at certain restaurants or tourist shops - so we stopped quite a bit making our journey a lot longer. As I had anticipated, Dalat was nice a cool. Finally I could breathe! I was picturing a small, quaint town but Dalat is [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Hoi An after dinner landed us in the beach city of Nha Trang just as the sun was rising. As we pulled into Nha Trang, we drove along the long, 6km stretch of white sand beach. Already, the Vietnamese were up and at 'em - hundreds of ppl, young and old were out an about doing various activities. Soccer, badminton, tennis, running, aerobic-type exercises! All before 6am! Talk about early risers. By the time we had found a cheap hotel to throw our bags down at and walked to the beach, the locals were already walking, barefoot and dripping (they [View Full Entry]

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Ok - so I KNEW that Hoi An is THE place to make clothes and I KNEW that I would probably have something made, but I never thought that I would get THIS out of control! hahah So Hoi An is this cute little fishing town and a world heritage site to boot. Innocent enough you'd think - can't get into too much trouble here! Ah, but oh no! Hoi An is also the home of over one hundred tailor shops and shoe shops that can break the bank of even the stingiest backpacker like me! We arrived the evening of [View Full Entry]

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