Vietnam (22nd July-28th July 2010)

It's summer time!!! After two months of working, it's time to take a break. Last year, we went to Bali to snorkel, this year, Nha Trang, Vietnam for diving! That's so cool :D This Vietnam Trip post will be separated into a few categories. In this, it would be the general culture, people and places to go and also what to expect if you are planning a trip to Vietnam in the near future.

Vietnam is a nice place. With summer in mid-year, you can expect a lot of sun and rain at times. Ho Chi Minh City is generally pretty sunny and people are fairly nice to you. When you go to Vietnam, except hotel/hostels fare, please bring more Vietnam Dongs. Boyfriend and I brought 600k of Vietnam Dong there and it was not enough. So, more Vietnamese Dong please.

Second, prepare your umbrella, wear light, and cooling clothing and also wear FLIP-FLOPS! So I arrived in Vietnam with long leggings and covered shoes. When we were walking around the town, it was still ok with the breeze although the sun is so scorching hot. Near evening, it rained!!! And with covered shoes, the water seeps into the shoes and if you are wearing socks, that makes it even worse. Yeap, Boyfriend got his socks wet :D

Be prepared to eat meat, seafood and plenty, plenty of veges. Meat (Beef, Chicken, Pork, fox, crocodile, seafood, you name it they have it) is quite essential for the Vietnamese. They like to prepare their dishes with fish oil so there will be a distinctive smell. Some people would not like the smell and the taste, but for me, a small amount is still acceptable. Besides that, before every main dish, you'll be served a big plate of vegetables, and they are pretty raw. I like vegetables but towards the end of the trip I am starting to avoid all the veges that I can. :S

Fruit juices and Fruit shakes are commonly found in Vietnam. Find for stalls with Sinh To and you can get fresh fruit juices. I particularly like the fruit shakes. I had it on my first day and mind you it is not artificially flavored or colored. I got it for around 10k VND and I just couldn't stop asking for more.

Baguette for meals is very common in Ho Chi Minh-ers. Baguette with assorted meats, some vegetables, mayonnaise and a few drops of soy sauce. The soy sauce is worth mentioning as it is different from the soy sauce we normally use. It does not give the salty taste but only the fragrant. Together with the meat, it gives taste to the baguette. I had it for one of my dinner to safe money and it is really very filling. Cost around 10kVND.

Walk around, unless you are willing to pay for a motorbike rental or bicycle. However, the traffic congestion here is so busy that walking is actually advised for bike-noobs like me. Do not attempt to drive on if you feel uncomfortable as you might get into an accident just like me and spoil all the fun. Traffic here is quite shocking  especially if you are from places with very organized traffic, like Singapore. Zebra-crossing can be dangerous and green blinking man does not mean it is safe to take your own sweet time to cross the road. Do not rush across the road either. Just walk as per normal while keeping alert and the motorists will just avoid you with their state-of-the-art driving skills.

Travel from town to town with buses or trains as there is only limited things to do in one town. As in Ho Chi Minh City, you can only go to that few places like the Opera House, Ben Thanh Market, War Memorial Museum, Notre-Dame Cathedral. After that, would be the Cao Dai Temple and Cu-Chi Tunnel about 3 hours away from district 1. So, find out from local tour agent where you can go from HCMC so that you wouldn't feel bored.

Be prepare to get cheated if you can't speak Vietnamese or do not have a Vietnamese-speaking companion. Boyfriend and I did not realize that until the last 2 days of our trip. We went for Cu-chi Tunnel trip and the entrance fee was 20k for Vietnamese and 80k for non-Vietnamese. The pricing was stated on the ticketing counter but it was all in Vietnamese. When we asked what were we paying for, the ticket seller wouldn't want to tell us. She even gave us the cant-you-just-pay face and stuck the tickets into our hands. Next day for breakfast, we ordered their oh-so-famous coffee. From the pricing billboard, it was written 8k VND for coffee with milk (iced or hot). But, when the lady served us she charged us for 20k. Even when we kept pointing at the pricing list, she gave all sort of excuses to insist that it is priced at 10k per glass. It does not feel good to be cheated especially when we are travelling on a budget. But well, I guess this is what you will get when you are travelling in a foreign country. So be mentally prepared to pay extra compare to the locals.

Sign languages is a must here. People don't speak good English and so sometimes it was quite hard to tell them what you want. Luckily food menu are all with English translation. But other than that, you would need to point or show or maybe even draw in order to get your message across to them.

Vietnam is a nice place. The pace of living is so slow that you have so much time for yourself, friends and family. But be prepared to wake up as early as 6am as the sun would have brighten the sky and turn in as early as 10pm to bed. This is how people live in Vietnam and I was so happily blending into their lives. But before I knew it, I am already back here in front of my computer to be prepared for the hectic life ahead. However if given a chance, I wouldn't want to go back to Ho Chi Minh City again. One time experience is just good enough.

Brazil baby!

With the Worldcup on the road, I shall post something in accordance to this hot event. Not the whole thing, but one particular country, which is also the favourite of most people, Brazil.

During exam period last semester, while having breakfast and reading newspapers, boyfriend and I found this irresistable offer, 1-for-1 Brazillian Dinner buffet. Well, I myself have never tried this exotic country's food before and since boyfriend is a meat lover, we decided to try it. (Relaxation in the middle of stress period is very important). So we cut out the coupon and boyfriend called to book a seat for two. On the designated day, we trained all the way to Novena for Fiesta Brasilia. We reached there too early for dinner, so we just walked around the shopping mall (Got some chicken pie because we were both too hungry!)

Before we go into the food, let's talk about the ambience first. This Brazillian store, certainly knows how to keep everything authentically Brazillian. On the television, was the football. On the billboard, was a beautiful lady dressed up in sey Samba costume. On the menu, also some Samba-ing ladies. The napkins are green in color and even the chefs, I suspect, are Brazillian. This store is located in United Square Novena, on a waterfall deck. So great ambience, great scenery, away from all the hustles and bustles of shoppers and traffics.

Now it's time for the food. This store practices churrascaria, which means barbecued with charcoal for all their meats. Besides that, they have a salad bar for those people like me who are omnivores. After the salad, then out came a few tall chefs, or more accurately passadors, that serve us cut meat straight from the metal bar. Well, the picture below will tell you more.

From top to bottom: Chicken heart, beef steak, beef flank, pork rib, chicken wings, pork ham and pork sausages..to name a few dishes

They serve meats, ranging from chicken, beef, mutton, pork and fish. Well it's just 5 types of meats you think. But it's different parts of the poultry that you can eat from the normal meat to it's internal organs. For me, I dislike internal organs, so I skipped all those. But I enjoyed eating most of the meat except the fact that the beef are a little bit too raw for me. To me, the best servings were the garlic bread (Charcoal-baked), the bacon-chicken wrapped, and also this roasted pineapple.

Garlic Bread, Grilled fish, juicy pineapple and chicken-bacon wrapped

The pineapple was extremely juicy and sweet after being roasted. The heat, melted all the glucose (sugar) inside the pineapple, causing the juice heavenly sweetness. And as we know, with whatever roasted food, it smells so good.

Oh and did I said that they have ice-cream as well. Ermm....nothing special. Hahaha... but by the end of the day, boyfriend and I was so stuffed that we have trouble walking straight (but managed to keep posture somehow). After another short walk around United Square, we headed back to school to face the reality of studying.

It was too bad that we could not stay on longer for the passadors to perform for their guests. They will play Brazillian musics and well, interested people can dance along. I might even get to see the real Samba! But nonetheless, Brazillian food is delicious!

The friendly passador

Well, let's just wish good luck to Brazil for Worlcup 2010.

Mourn oh mourn for my iTouch

15th June 2010. My iTouch DIED. I can still remember vividly how everything happened. It was raining heavily that Tuesday morning. Yeap it was also the day that Orchard flooded. Well, was rushing to work in the rain that morning and didn't realised that my water bottle joined in the rain feast. By the time I realised it, half a bottle of water was gone! So quickly on the bus, took out all my belongings and after that I reached my iTouch, it was pitch black all over. Oh no! my heart broke into pieces. I feel so bad that I didn't realise my whole pants was drenched!

Boyfriend then took it to the office, in hope that when the water dried up, the iTouch will revive again. But after a whole day's work, iTouch still have no signs of improvement. So, we thought off buying drying agents and put it into a ziplock bag. I prayed, prayed so hard that it will regain it's life the next day. But, the iTouch was no where near to being alive. I was so devastated. I want it back. Days without it are no music and entertainment. *Sigh* Now I can just blame myself for my own carelessness.

iTouch, we still can't find a suitable "hospital" to admit you in. I know you are also suffering. I promise you'll be ok soon and you'll regain back your every ability to bring entertainment to me. I miss you iTouch!

Wonderful Wide World

Everyone after the closing ceremony

This post will be dedicated to the 8th ASEAN Cultural Youth Forum which was held in National University of Singapore, Singapore from 7th to 12th June 2010. So to start offmy experience, I did not quite volunteer myself to join this forum as I need to work. But after asking around, we still can't get anyone so I decided to leave my job (for one week) and sign up for this forum. My initial mindset was it'll just be another of your average camp. Everybody will be assigned into a group with all the cheers and stuff. But slowly I realised I was wrong.

First of all, this forum was not like any other camp. Just judge by our accomodation and you'll know the difference. We, for one whole week, stayed in Prince George's Park Residence in NUS. This residence deemed to be the most high class on-campus accomodation of all and in deed it is. Our room is a single, en-suite room, with your own toilet, air-condition and only you. Next, it comes to food. Normal camp will have packed mixed rice, but ours is buffet spread after buffet spread with various ASEAN cuisine (we even have sausage mcmuffin for breakfast haha). Well definitely no cheers and the most interesting part is, we have a lot of free time! (well that's not the important part).

The theme this year is "City, Traditiona and Technology". For opening ceremony, we witness how different countries merged their traditional dance with modern musics, or how technology could be used to improve the aesthetic values of their different dances. For NTU, since the school chose our dance club, we performed Latin dance. No link to tradition. But if you think harder, you'll realise that Singapore is a cosmopolitan city, an international hub. And people around are getting more and more interested to social and ballroom dancing. So, we are potraying the modern side of Singapore(Crap!) Hahaha. Anyway, we have people from different universities of ASEAN countries. It was so interesting chatting with people from a different world and a different culture. If it's not for this forum, I wouldn't know that in Philippines, it is a norm to have a driver to drive you around. If it's not for this forum, I would't know that Thais are great dancers. If it's not for this forum, I wouldn't know how friendly people are (although for some nationalities, we have problem communicating in English). And I wouldn't have known the history of Singapore and I wouldn't have the chance to make so many new friends:D

For the closing ceremony, two universities will be paired up to come up with a performance. We need to incorporate all the things we learnt (the technology part) into our traditional performances. We were paired up with Vietnam National University, Hanoi. They were really sweet people. Friendly and helpful too. We end up doing the Vietnamese bamboo dance with five different types of songs (Chinese, English, Tamil, Malay, and Vietnamese). We even add in some acting. We thought our performance was quite playful and the feed back from organizers were good. They said our performance was very relax and refreshing. Hahaha...But the Vietnamese were so sweet. The girls even gave us their traditional hat as souvenirs. :D

The five days to me was too short. I hope the others could stay longer in Singapore. Now that I flashback, I hope I could still be in PGPR, with all of them. I wish we could still walk around together, chat with each other about our own country and culture. All of it was so fun. But it ended. I am back to reality and back to work(new internship!). I hope I could meet all of them again. I promised myself that I will go over to their countries to visit them when I have the ability. It's such and eye opening event and thank god for "forcing" me to sign up. If not, I'll missed all the fun:D

P/S: We even get to learn how to do Noh(Japanese traditional dance), Wayang Wong and Beijing Opera!

Long Weekend

Two Fridays ago, it was Vesak day. This means, HOLIDAYS! Yes and so happen it fell on a Friday so this means LONG HOLIDAYS!! So me decided to take a bus back home after work without realizing that it was a huge mistake. Ok! I nearly missed my bus home but thank god boyfriend and I reached exactly a few minutes before the bus left. But no dinner for both of us. Anyway after that, it was another 4 hours of travelling back to grandma's in Perak the next day. On Sunday, when we were supposed to take bus back to Singapore, boyfriend miscalculated his travel time and caused us to nearly miss our bus, again! But luckily, we spotted the bus and stop it right before it went to nowhere land. Phew... This long weekend was really exciting with loads of running, chasing and travelling. But my nightmare didn't end here, when we finally reached Singapore's Custom in Tuas (normally people especially buses don't use this lane because by entering, you'll need to pay), I thought we could reach school soon. But what appears in front of me was a long stretch of buses, and beside me on the car lane was EMPTY!

Empty car lane vs long stretch of buses in the bus lane

Apparently there were more buses during the long weekends. So wait, wait, waited for one hour before custom clearing :( By the time we took a cab back to our room (after 12 midnight, no more buses) it was almost 1.30 am and boyfriend and I had to have instant noodles for dinner (but it was delicious:D)

After that weekend, everything was good especially for boyfriend. He got a second scholarship from Capitaland which gives him more benefits in terms of money and future. So happy for him. So we went to New York New York for a small celebration. The food was good but I'm not sure if it was because it's been a long time since we had such good food or because we were hungry and happy. Haha but anyway, yeah their burger and was awesome. Especially the beef patty, it was 3/4 cook (I think) but it was so juicy and mind you, no blood smell. Here are some pictures of our food.

From left to right, up to down: Whole spring chicken, baked mussels, beef burger, chocolate smoothie (I can't really remember the exact name for the food)

This week, I'm not going to spend anyday in NTU. (Yes! No more shabby motel) Hahaha I am going to NUS for ASEAN Youth Forum. I am very excited because I get to perform in front of people from different country of ASEAN and also get to know more about their cultural and country. Most importantly, we'll be able to see how's their performing arts.

Square.Circle.Lush

Square.....
23rd May. International Museum day. Free entry for all museums in Singapore including all of its galleries. So a few of us decided to launch our museum hopping activity. Hahaha..I can't even remember if I've ever been into the Malaysia's museum and now I'm so excited about visiting Singapore's Museum. Anyway we started off with lunch at City Hall and after that walk, walk and hop around (I mean walk around). So first stop, the Singapore's National Museum. Well you guys might think museum=nerd, but oh no. This Singapore Museum was opened during Queen Victoria's jubilee year and so once you enter the museum, you'll be standing right under a roof of 50 different coloured glass panes.

Ok so back to the nerd part. It's not nerdy at all. This museum is quite sophisticated. And you'll spend hours( we spent almost 4 hours inside) exploring galleries after galleries of different themes. There's the civilization one where the focus on how Singapore becomes it is today(cross cultured marriage, banned polygamies...). And then there's this food gallery which focus all the local food in Singapore with equipments. The best thing is you can smell spices and I mean real smell!

Ok There were a lot more interesting stuff but let's just stop here and please refer to my facebook for more photos :D Next on, we hop to the Singapore Arts Museum, where we witnessed a wedding ceremony (so sweet). As the names suggested, this museum showcases all art-related stuff like paintings, movies, sculpture and they even have a live band and also seats like the cinema seats. Awesome place with great ambiance.

After spending 5 hours walking around, everybody agreed that we need to recharge and refuel. So head to the nearest Coffee Bean. As Joyce suggested since we were immersed in rich culture environment today, we shall have tea like the English , tea+scones(ok none of us got tea and we prefer muffin) Anyway trying very hard to be a "tai-tai". Well recharge session wasn't exactly successful as all of us were busy chatting and laughing (literally non-stop).

Circle...
Since the opening of new MRT route in Singapore, the circle line, I've never had the chance to hop on it. So we headed to the nearest MRT station and experience the new train and station. Nothing different but worth the experience:D

Lush...
It's a radio station in Singapore where my dear friend Joyce works as a DJ. After dinner, we planned to just walk her to Orchard but we end up sitting in her recording studio and accompany her throughout the show. We chatted like nobody's business (well really nobody's business as there were nobody there except passer-by would look at us through the glass door) I guess that night, we are Joyce's special guests. So we had insightful talks from Mr. Tee on relationship and how to manage it. We laughed a lot(again) and shouted a lot too(too excited). Our plan to leave back home at 10 pm failed and end up boyfriend and I nearly missed the last train back to hostel:D

It was tiring but interesting and fun day. Awesome people do make awesome days.

Quote of the day : " A person who does not love you the way you wanted does not mean that that person does not love you with what he/she has."

Weekend Mania

Saturday:
Finally, my planned BBQ night has came. As usual, what I plan usually will not get much support from other people. This time round, there were only 4 of us. But as they say 4 is a good number. Indeed it was. In the end, everybody just spent 3 dollars for chicken, prawns, sausages, corns and "satays". Well not forgetting the balls and smores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%27more). Thanks to Ethan, Joanne and Duy, we had a wonderful night, creating our own BBQ style. Not sitting, not standing, not in a proper BBQ pit, but in a bicycle porch using aluminium tray (because it was almost raining). After BBQ, we were off to monopoly Deal and some good chatting with dearest Elaine :D The night ended 3 am.

The four of us :D

Our food before BBQ :D

Burning Marshmallow:D

BBQ at the Bicycle parkway

Smore!!!

Sunday a.k.a. Dating Day
As the day's name suggest, off to JB spending quality time with boyfriend. We had a movie marathon. Never in my life I've tried that. Well not in front of a big screen accompanied by good sound systems. IPRON MAN II!!! For both movies, I've never watched their part I, yet I joined in boyfriend's madness:D Anyway both the show were cool and awesome (ignoring the fact that I fell asleep in the cinema for half an hour for Iron Man 2). Looking forward to a 3 movie marathon next, but I guess boyfriend will faint :P

Movie Tickets stub (Ipron Man 2)

Guai Leng Gou

Vietnam Chicken Rice (Not so Vietnamese afterall)

Tasteless steamboat

On the side note:
Shifting from Hall 8 to Hall 4. Well, only one comment: needs time to get used to the change. What change? Just imagine you just shifted from a luxurious hotel to a shabby old motel :D

Another side note:
I've found myself an internship with a chemical company. Thanks to my uncle of course. I will and must work hard so as not to disappoint my uncle :D