Moving on swiftly we tried some of the fresh beer that they do here. Basically they make a batch everyday and it usually sells out by night. Not because it's amazingly nice, because it's not it's just average. But because it costs about 30p a glass. If it doesn't run out they add bubbles to it to make it a fizzy lager type beer. If they didn't do this it would go off.
Hmmm so a Saigon Kiss, what's that? I here you say. Well its a lovely burn one gets when they get off a motorbike the wrong side and melt their skin on the exhaust pipe. For all those who don't want to see look away now!
BAD BAD TIMES. This was 5 days ago. It did get a little worse but now it's all drying out. Luckily me and Matt were going to the clinic the next day anyway to get the HEP B and Rabies jabs so a lovely nurse looked after it for me :) I may have a scar to remind me of this foolishness for the rest of my life! Ah that's life!
On a random note I woke up the other morning to find a gecko in our sink. I was a little unsure as to what to do. Usually with spiders and things I just wash them down the plug hole but gecko's are actually cute. I tried to get him out but he leaped about a foot and now resides under our sofa.
Whilst I'm writing this Lola is here cleaning cleaning cleaning! I don't think I'll be able to return to England until a maid is a definite feature in every house. (And the prices are changed to about 3 times cheaper). But seriously I don't clean anything it's awful!!! I'm going to become a lazy lazy girl.
Right so actual pictures! I'm only putting a few good ones on here but the whole set for these two weeks will be on Facebook.
Yesterday we visited the Cao Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels and it was awesome! It felt so good to get out of the city and see what I consider to be the real Vietnam. We met Kelly at 8am to wait for the trip we'd paid for. This trip cost under £5 for the whole day! I love this place! So this mini bus pulls up and a Vietnamese man jumps out and calls us onto the bus. There were other tourists already on the bus so we met some new people which was good!
First stop was the Cao Dai Temple. It took around 3 hours to get to the temple but it didn't feel like it. The tour guider's name was Son. He was a funny man. With his jam jar glasses and tongue in cheek comments, Son made the trip very worth while. One thing he said about the Temple. "We leave at 12.20 p m. If you not at the bus, first of all, we respect your choice for religion and second of all, we go." Basically just get back on time.Caodaism is a religion combines elements from many of the world's main religions, including Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, as well as Geniism, an indigenous religion of Vietnam. Cao means "high" and dai means "palace". The temple was full of colour and patterns! It was also just before mass so all the monks (not sure whether they are called monks?) were congregating. We also watched part of the ceremony but had to leave about ten minutes in otherwise Son would think we'd surrendered our souls to Caodaism!
After visiting the
Temple we made our way to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were absolutely awesome! We were shown where everything basically went down. The Vietnamese were so sneaky. They basically lived underground and the Americans lived pretty much on top of them and never knew they were there. That's how so many of them died. The Viet soldiers would sniper the Americans and disappear without a trace. After a while the Americans started to realise that maybe the Viets were underground and not in fact invisible. They covered their tracks so well though, rubbing the Americans scent on everything so dogs couldn't track them. They even had this crazy smoke dispatching mechanism for cooking underground. Bamboo pipes led the smoke far away from where they were cooking. It was clever! The tunnels were crazy tiny! And they had been made bigger for us westerners as well. But of course before crawling around this underground labyrinth we got to play with guns!
Oh yes! Matt and I fired an AK47 and an M60 (machine gun). Worth every penny! I don't understand how all soldiers weren't deaf though. The shots were SO loud!
What a fab day we had.
So now I'm finally coming to the end of this blog post (it's taken me 2 days to write) a lot more random stuff has happened. We all went out together for some drinks etc and Matt and I decided we wanted to go home around midnight. As we walk down our alleyway we can see in the distance the funeral party that has been there for a few days. Apparently its a normal thing, they set up a wake and party the days and nights away WITH the coffin. Now this is the part I was slightly worried about. A coffin...sitting in 35 degree heat...in an alleyway...an alleyway that in fact has a market every morning...with food. But it's all cool apparently.
So anyway back to the story, we were walking through the party and we get beckoned back by everyone. "Hey hey hey come!". So we thought WHAT THE HELL. I'm glad I did because it was the best party I've been to so far in Vietnam yet! We sand Vietnamese songs - very badly. We sang English songs to the people - very badly. Songs that made the final act were "Hit me baby one more time", "Wonderwall", "Wannabe" and "Barbie Girl". Yes I said Barbie Girl. Imagine me, Matt, a plastic box drum. It was bliss. We did the "Come on Barbie" bit and EVERYTHING! They loved it! I think. Also they took to imitating my laugh which I did not find funny at all and Matt thought was hilarious. We also drank beer from a communal cup and were given lots of food. It was so cool! They were the nicest people ever and it didn't matter that we couldn't understand a f*cking word each other were saying.
So now farewell, it's to the grindstone for us as we actually start teaching Saturday! Be back soon! xx
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