Trip planning...

This upcoming weekend the school is paying for the staff to go to Hoi An, a nice little town on the coast of the South China Sea.  We're leaving after school on Friday and returning Monday (day off work)!  The flight is only 45 minutes or so, and we will be staying at a resort on the beach.  I'm excited about it!  Hoi An is a great place that John and I visited last year on our travels, and we're looking forward to going back there.  There are lots of cute restaurants and tons of tailors.  Should be fun!

In other news... October break trip is BOOKED!  And the destination is....

THAILAND (again)!!!

We just can't get enough of that place.  Four of us are flying into Bangkok, then hopefully making our way to Kanchanaburi and some random island (TBD) that will have cheap, delicious pad thai and gorgeous beaches, no doubt.

All this trip planning has gotten me thinking about other destinations I hope to travel to in the next 2 years... the Philippines, Borneo, Taiwan, more of southern China... there are so many possibilities!  Once you get the travel bug, you can't stop.  I definitely have it, and it's an addiction that is hard to break!!

Peace, people!

September 21 was the International Day of Peace.  To celebrate this occasion, the whole school gathered for a pretty cool photo op, holding our "pinwheels for peace."  Amazing!!!

Autumn Moon Festival

Last week was the Autumn Moon Festival, aka the Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam.  At school, we had some traditional "moon cakes" for snack.  Sound delicious, right?  Truth be told, they are pretty gross.  Moon cakes are basically the worst version of fruit cake that you will ever try.  They not only have fruit, but nuts, beans, meat, and often contain things like shark fin.  Mmmm... delicious!  I tried some at school but was not a fan.  Actually, most of the students did not want to eat them at all!  I couldn't really blame them.

For the Moon Festival, we also had a dragon dance in the school gym.  It was interesting to see, and the students really enjoyed it.


The "Four Lions" dance

The dragon dance

Wikipedia tells me that the Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival is called "Tết Trung Thu."  According to the website... the Vietnamese holiday recounts the legend of Cuội, whose wife accidentally urinated on a sacred banyan tree. Soon after desecrating the tree, she sat on one of the tree branches and the sacred tree began to grow and continued until it finally reached the moon, leaving Cuội's wife stranded there. Every year, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, children light lanterns and participate in a procession to show Cuội's wife the way back to Earth.  Strange, but cool!

Rainy season

Rainy season in Vietnam lasts from approximately May to September.  During this time, it can be beautiful and sunny and then downpour at any given moment.  The rain usually comes during the evening, and for a short period of time, however there have been times where we've been caught inside a restaurant for hours, waiting to see if the rain will let up! 
Even if you are equipped with a rain poncho or umbrella, you still have the possibility of getting ridiculously wet because when it downpours, there are some pretty huge puddles on the roads.  The drainage system isn't the greatest here, but I'm sure it is much worse in small cities.  I really hate the feeling of sloshing through a street in wet Birkenstocks, but sometimes it has to be done!  I can't carry rainboots with me 24/7...

Vietnam has lots of motorbikes (kind of an understatement), and when it starts to rain, many of the drivers pull to the side of the road and take out their rain ponchos to wear.  If there are 2 people on a motorbike, then the driver wears the poncho and drapes the back flap over the passenger behind him.  This looks pretty funny, but at least the passenger can stay somewhat dry even though they won't be able to see anything since they are riding under the driver's poncho.

Even though the rain may not be welcome all the time, sometimes it's nice to have things cool off a little bit.  It's over 30 C here every day... and walking around in HCMC on a sunny day can make you very sweaty!  Thank God for air conditioners!

Eating Out

I own a frying pan, 2 pots, and random kitchen utensils but have yet to really put them to use.  The extent of my cooking at home has been eating cereal and boiling water for tea.  While many people in Canada might think this is odd, it is definitely the norm among most expats in HCMC.

I eat breakfast at home, lunch at school (the cafeteria food is free!), and eat out for dinner... every day!  Restaurants here can be very cheap.  Sometimes you can get a full meal for $2-3!  The cheapest meals are usually at Vietnamese restaurants.  Sometimes we go to a "western" restaurant and splurge... spending $4-5!  Unlike the neighbourhood I lived in when I taught in Korea, this neighbourhood has much more variety in terms of restaurants.  Within walking distance, I can get to Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, and "American"-style restaurants.

The #1 cheap Vietnamese meal:  pho

The typical Vietnamese "cheap" option is a soup called "pho."  Pho is sold all over the place, and is usually $2-3.  It is basically a Vietnamese version of chicken noodle soup.  It has noodles, chicken, and broth served with a plate of fresh herbs, sprouts, and lime for you to flavour it with.  I usually can't eat the whole bowl, but it is very tasty and healthy.  There is a chain of popular pho restaurants in Vietnam called "Pho 24."  If you order pho at this place, it will be on your table within minutes... the service is very fast!

In the above picture, you will see a glass in the upper right corner.  This is "tra da" which is iced tea (usually a jasmine or green tea, unsweetened).  Lots of restaurants will serve it to you for free, just like restaurants in Canada give you water for free.  It is tasty and refreshing!

Also in the picture is "cafe sua da," or Vietnamese iced coffee with milk.  I really like it!  It is very sweet because it is made with condensed milk.  Some people find it too sweet, so they ask for it without the milk.

Another good Vietnamese cheap option that I like is a dish with vermicelli noodles, vegetables, and spring rolls.  Yum!

Vermicelli noodles, vegetables, and spring rolls!

One thing that I have found is strange/good at restaurants in Vietnam is that tips are not required or expected.  Unlike back home, where everyone pretty much tips the server (and the servers expect to be tipped, even if the service is bad!), tipping is not the norm here.  We leave tips sometimes for really great service, but most of the time we just pay what we owe and leave.  This was a similar experience in Korea, where tipping was not required and was sometimes even considered insulting.  Nothing like a good, cheap meal to satisfy your hunger!

Beach getaway...

The long weekend in Mui Ne was great, and exactly what I needed after being tired out by the grade 1 class.  A group of teachers rented one of the school's buses for the weekend, which took us to Mui Ne.  Since it was a holiday weekend, there was a lot of traffic on the roads.  After 6 hours or so on the bus, we were dropped off at our hotel.  The hotel was located right on the beach, however there was not much of a sandy beach.  The tide was high and no one was out laying on the sand.  Luckily, the hotel had a nice pool located steps away from the beach.


The pool, where we spent a lot of our time!

Compared to Ho Chi Minh City, Mui Ne seemed so relaxed.  There was one main drag lined with palm trees where the hotels and restaurants were located.  There were still motorbikes (this is Vietnam!) but nothing compared to HCMC.  It was nice walking down the sidewalk and not worrying about motorbikes driving up behind me to park!

Besides lounging by the pool and taking a dip in the South China Sea, we visited Mui Ne's famous sand dunes.  The first dunes we drove to were called the "red dunes" because of the sand's reddish colour.  We were immediately harassed by kids trying to sell us pieces of plastic for us to sit on to slide down the dunes.  We took some pretty cool pics jumping off the dunes, but didn't stay at the red dunes for long.  We heard that the "white dunes" were further from town, and more impressive... but little did we know how amazing the white dunes would be!

The Red Dunes

 The white dunes were so vast and high.  I felt like I was in the middle of a desert!  We all kept asking ourselves "are we still in Vietnam?!?"  ... It honestly felt like we were in Egypt or some desert in the Middle East.  We rented ATVs at the white dunes so we could easily get up and down them.  When we were at the dunes, the sun was setting.  The whole experience was a bit surreal.  I definitely had a great time and would love to go back to Mui Ne again!

ATVs on the White Dunes

The White Dunes

7 days down, 173 to go!

The first 7 days of school are finished.  I've been a lot more exhausted than I thought I would be at this point.  Teaching full time is definitely a challenge.  Grade 1 is tough because all the kids are coming from kindergarten, where they apparently get 1 hour naps after lunch!  I've had a lot of kids tell me they feel tired and want to go home when the afternoon hits.  We're not in kindergarten anymore, kids!!!

This week was only 4 days, and last week was just 3 school days.  We have a long weekend now due to the Vietnamese National Day tomorrow, which means it's time to peace out of Saigon and head to the beaches of Mui Ne.  I love living in HCMC, but it is very chaotic and in-your-face.  There are motorbikes everywhere (including on the sidewalk!) but I've gotten used to it.  I'm looking forward to heading to a destination that is more "chill."

We ended up renting one of the school's buses for the weekend which will take a big group of teachers to Mui Ne (pronounced like "mwee nay"), a coastal town on the South China Sea, for 3 days.  Mui Ne was one place that John and I did not get to visit on our travels in Vietnam last year.  I regretted not going there, but now am thrilled that I have the chance to go!  There are massive sand dunes near the city similar to what you might find in a desert.  You can even do sand boarding down the dunes!  I'm excited to go here and explore a new destination.

Our school also has one week vacation in October, so more trip plans are in the works.  I'm hoping to score a cheap flight out of Ho Chi Minh City to anywhere!  I would love to visit Bali or Thailand again, or possibly try some place new.  What I love about living in Asia is that there are so many airlines and so many destinations just a short plane ride away.

For now, I'm off to Mui Ne tomorrow... stay tuned for the next post about my long weekend there!