Advertisement
Published: June 21st 2006
Edit Blog Post
Saturday 17th June Paul - Me again, Laura's asleep so she's not writing todays either. If you want some Laura action then leave a comment at the end of the blog entitled "Let Laura write something Paul you git!"
I forget what we did this morning but I remember staying up late and watching the football as usual. The Ozzies didn't want a cultural experience today so we went... to the water park! Can't beat a day spent splashing around the park especially at those prices. In the races down the slides I managed to finish second to Pete, HOWEVER a recent drugs test has since reversed those results!
In the evening we haggled a Cambodian guidebook down to dirt cheap (seriously it's probably more expensive to buy dirt in England than it was to buy this Guidebook) and then Laura and I went looking at getting to the Mekong Delta. We want to get a boat across to Cambodia as sounds much more interesting than getting on another bloody bus. So I guess we will tour the Mekong Delta for a few days which I'm looking forward to as I wanted to do that from
the start.
Watched the World Cup games in a bar capped off by the cracking USA - Italy game. Good because:
a) Italy didn't win
b) USA didn't win
c) England and Crouch weren't involved
Sunday 18th June Paul - Had a nice lazy day today as we were burnt out from all that cultural marlarky! I promise we are doing something good tomorrow! And Laura is apparently going to rise from her grave and write an entry!!!! Don't faint yet blog fans, I will be back soon.
Headed over to the post office and posted our clothes home to my mum. She can have a world of fun ironing them. I know you love ironing really mum. On the way back to our hotel we stopped off at Ben Thanh market as seen in the picture. Being the always beautiful Princess that she is, Laura was concerned that there were a few sweat marks on some of her tops thus ruining her "look". So can you guess what fun I had as we went round the market looking for tops!?!? It's comparable to being asked to wash the car by my Dad.
And then having to wash not just the Ford Focus but the bloody van as well. Speaking of which, Dad if you're reading, has Michael washed the cars recently? He needs to learn the value of a good work ethic.
After some expert barganing on my part we got two tops for about $7. Not too bad. The woman tried to charge us double but I went round the corner and asked someone else the price and she quoted me much less. Suffice to say, our lady was not best pleased with her.
Strolled back through the hectic traffic of Ho Chi Minh City to our hotel. It seems to be some sort of organised chaos at every single junction on the roads. All helped by the fact that everyone not only owns a motorbike but drives it with such reckless abandon.
Had showers and went out for tea in a Veggie restaurant because it was incredibly cheap. Laura had a gorgeous pasta dish that I wish I'd had. We then organised some free accomodation for tomorrow night! How you ask? Well we are going to teach some Vietnamese children English for 2 hours. We're both really
excited about it and I'm hoping I can teach them some cracking haggling skills as theirs really needs some improving:
"You wanna buy a cheap watch? VERY CHEAP CHEAP!"
Monday 19th June Laura - Went to sort our visas today at the Cambodian consulate. This was surprisingly hassle free and we got them back within a few hours. The consulate building was pretty plush, swimming pool, basketball court and all. I wonder if that's an accurate taster for Cambodia as a whole....
After handing over our passports we headed to the War Remnants Museum (or 'Chinese and American war crimes museum' as it used to be called before they decided to win over American tourists). It had loads of tanks and guns outside and a plane and helicopter, which is fine if you like that sort of thing... The museum itself was mainly made up of photographs which documented the war. It was pretty grim really - photos of torture, war wounds, dead bodies etc. It was very depressing. It's strange to think that there was a photographer standing there watching on and taking photos while all those horrible things happened. Most of the
photographers died during the war, and there were obituaries next to their photos. There were also some disfigured embryos in bell jars, which turned the stomach really. In another part of the museum there were replicas of the cells and cages that Vietnemese PoWs were kept in. They were really depressing and quite eery because they had waxwork models of prisoners inside of them.
Everyone in the museum was very quiet and I think a few people were quite disturbed by what they saw. Paul managed to break the solemn silence though by dropping his water bottle on the floor. Twice.
After the museum we decided to go from one prison of terrrible conditions to another - i.e. the local zoo. It wasn't as bad as the zoo we went to in Guilin, in that the animals had more than 5m squared to move around in and looked like they may have been fed sometime this month. There was an array of animals cooped up - most impressive were the lions, tigers, elephants, (very hungry) hippos, and giraffes. There were a lot of crocodiles too and rather amusingly you could literally put your hand through the bars and
touch them if you really wanted to.
We had a stroll around and decided to go back to the tiger enclosure for feeding time. I was expecting to see the zoo keepers throwing in huge slabs of raw meat for them to devour. Well we walked over to the cage and I saw a cute fluffy thing bouncing around happily in the tiger's cage. I was like, "Oh look Paul, a bunny has somehow manage to get into the cage". Then it dawned on me. "Is that a sick joke?! They're not feeding it bunnies are they?!". Apparently yes. And they are also the meal of the day for the lions, leopards, and boa constrictors. I didn't stick around to watch them eat.
After 'lunch' we picked up our visas and caught a bus back to the hotel. We had quick showers then met up with Lauren and Pete to get our taxi to the English school. When we got there we were seperated into different classes. I got the class of seven year olds and was told to sit behind the teachers desk. The children stood up and chanted " good eve-en-in-guh teacher". Then they stared at
me and waited expectantly. After the greetings were over I worked through their reading books with pairs of children. After a while the teacher pulled out a song book and asked me to sing to the class. Well I know I am a champion karaoke singer but come on, I'm not a performing seal! Besides it's not quite the same without my singing partner... Nevermind, I took a deep breath and gave a heartfelt rendition of "One little, two little, three little sneakers..." and the kids seemed to like it. But 'sneakers'?! If we going to teach them English let's do it right. Tomorrow I'm going to go in there singing "One little, two little, three little TRAINERS" and make sure they learn it good and proper.
We had snacks and changed classes. This time I was with an older group but I had a brilliant seat because I could see through the glass wall into the classroom where Paul was singing and dancing to "If you're happy and you know it" with a bunch of 4 year olds. I think he really enjoyed it. But then he is at their level, maturity wise, so that's no surprise really!
Maybe tomorrow he'll teach them the art of the Tantrum, bottom lip and all!
When the classes were over we got taken to what we were assured was 'the best noodle house in Vietnam' by the school owner (Mr Lee) and one of the teachers. It was delicious, and Mr Lee kindly paid. Tomorrow night the teacher wants us to go to her Mum's house so she can cook us 'real' Vietnemese food while we teach her English! It was really good fun so we're looking forward to tomorrow night. Paul didn't even seem to mind that he'd missed the first football game of the evening!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.327s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 20; qc: 89; dbt: 0.1528s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Big sister
non-member comment
Still missing you x
I'm glad that Laura finally came on line to write, having hauled herself out of bed (anyone would think you had 9 months off) because this was the picture of my beautiful sister being painted from the past few blogs: a sweaty and idle girl who haggles the price of sanitary towels. Not so great! I love love love the photo of Peter and Paul, not sat on the wall, but singing and dancing! Paul's moves are reminiscent of nights out at Ocean. I like how Peter is taking his cue from Paul. Why do you keep on visiting really depressing zoos? Are you doing a research project into finding the saddest tiger on earth? Mind you, never mind the tigers, what about the poor bunnies?! A request too: please can you put some photos of friends up on the blog; you keep on mentioning Lauren, 'the ozzies' etc but it would be lovely to see these people you are spending your time with. All looks fantastic though - the photo of the hats in the market is fantastic.