First real race!

Last weekend my friends and I completed the first annual HCMC Run - the first timed race I ever signed up for.  Some of my friends are really into running and did the 10km race, but the rest of us registered for the 5km.  I decided at the last minute to sign up for the race despite my lack of training, so I woke up extra-early before the race to register before 5:00am.  The race was supposed to begin around 6:00am, but it got pushed back a bit.  While everyone was lined up ready to go, they put on some music to get everyone pumped up.  The whole atmosphere was really fun and exciting!

The race was a 5km loop around "The Crescent" area near where I live.  The start/finish line was near the mall, and this area was packed with people!  The 10km race was partially over the very steep Phu My bridge.  I'm glad that the 5km terrain was relatively flat!  Thankfully since we started fairly early, it wasn't as sweltering as the Terry Fox Run was a few weeks before.  It was still pretty hot and sunny though.

Somehow I managed to finish in the top half of all the 5km runners, and in the top 1/3 of female runners, with my time of 37:58, which is not very fast by normal running standards!  I did take a bunch of walking breaks, so if I ever enter another race again hopefully I'll be motivated enough to train for it and run the entire thing.  It was a fun experience overall!

5km runners - we did it!

Christmas season in Saigon

Christmas is just around the corner!  Despite the fact that it is over 30 degrees every day with no snow in sight, the city is feeling Christmas-y.  Downtown there are beautiful Christmas displays at department stores, lights on the palm trees in our apartment complex, and festive events going on around town.

Some friends and I attended a performance of "The Nutracker" at the opera house.  It was just like being back at home, except all the performers were Asian, haha!  I really like going to the Saigon Opera House - it's cool being there, you feel instantly sophisticated!

 Last weekend John and I went out for a nice dinner with friends, and then attended a Christmas concert put on by the city's international choir.  Two teachers from school were performing.  It was held at a convent, and it was packed.  We were at the back with a bunch of happy nuns!

At school we've also been decorating.  In our classroom we put up paper chains, snowflakes, a wreath made of recycled items, and Christmas tree art.  Next week is the last week before Christmas holiday so we'll also be watching some Christmas movies and having a small party.

At our apartment I decorated our fake plant with Christmas ornaments and lights.  We have also put out our Christmas cards (thank you!) and John's "Decembear."

Even being half a world away from home, we still get to experience the excitement of Christmas.  Less than 2 weeks away now!!!!!!!!!!!!!  :)

T. Fox lives on!

Today I attended the 17th annual International Terry Fox Run in HCMC, along with over 15,000 people (the biggest attendance the city has had)!  Apparently this is the third biggest Terry Fox Run outside of Canada, pretty cool.

The weather was very sunny, and let me tell you it was HOT.  It was a great event as always though.  It's amazing to see people in Vietnam supporting Terry's cause.

Christmas in November?

November 20th is Teacher's Day in Vietnam, and every year it's like Christmas for teachers!  I love the generosity of the families here.  They definitely take Teacher's Day seriously and the kids always seem so proud to give us gifts.  Sometimes they're so excited they will blurt out what the gift is before I even unwrap it... "Happy Teacher's Day - it's chocolate!" hahaha...

This year we had a ceremony for teachers in the theatre and we all received a booklet of letters from our students.  It was really nice!  My desk was covered in gifts.  It's nice to be appreciated here.

I made a list of what I received, along with a bunch of cards...
- ceramic coffee tumbler
- bracelet with my name on it
- body set with gel, deodorant, cleanser, shampoo
- 3 boxes of chocolates
- 1 dark chocolate bar
- key chain
- 2 scarves
- decorate Vietnamese lacquer souvenirs:  2 vases, wall hanging, plate, and art piece with stand
- Face Shop set of 3 cleansing foams
- "Oriental Essence" aromatherapy shower gel
- 1 necklace
- Body Shop "Chocomania" soap and gel
- 2 boxes of Vietnamese coffee
- 3 shirts
- 1 Nine West purse
- $25 gift certificate for Tokyo Deli
- 1 box of butter cookies
- 1 tray of dessert squares
- 2 cupcakes
- flowers

"Angela Lisa" - me as the Mona Lisa?

Card from a student I taught last year - very cute!

So nice!  I'm going to miss Teacher's Day whenever we leave Vietnam.

Wedding in the countryside

Last weekend a bunch of teachers and I went to the province of Vinh Long (3 hours away by bus) for the wedding of a co-worker, Lan.  When we arrived we immediately were served dinner outdoors under a covered tent.  The road was quickly flooding from the tides of the Mekong, so we had to get to the tent area by walking on wooden planks!  We did not see the actual ceremony, but we arrived just in time for the party.

Food was mainly seafood and random Vietnamese dishes such as sausage stuffed in chicken, hot pot, etc.  At Vietnamese weddings, it is customary for the guests to go up and sing songs to the bride and groom.  Some teachers sang songs and the whole place was filled with dancing people and the craziness that comes with drinking.  When Vietnamese people drink beer, instead of saying "cheers" they count to 3... "mot, hai, ba... yo!" and drink.  We stayed at the party for several hours and then boarded the bus back to Saigon.  It was a jam packed day, as we also had parent-teacher inteviews that Saturday morning before boarding the bus.

I have been to 3 Vietnamese weddings now (during my first year - my co-teacher Hong's, Julia/Andy's Vietnamese wedding, and now Lan's).  Each wedding has been so different.  All enjoyable, but this one was definitely the wildest I think!  It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I decided to take the long trip there to attend.

Weather update!

Update:  In my last post, Vietnam was about to be hit by typhoon Haiyan.  The typhoon avoided HCMC and we didn't get any rain at all since it hit the northern part of the country.  Unfortunately, some people did die in Vietnam, but there were not as many deaths as in the Philippines.  It's scary to see the photos of the damage there.

Thankfully, the rainy season here appears to be coming to an end.  I'm just about done with carrying umbrellas and ponchos everywhere since it can downpour when you least expect it!  As you can see from the weather chart below, after Christmas it rarely rains for months.

Here are a few photos that I got from the web... scenes of Saigon during heavy rainfall!

Stormy days in Saigon

Last Wednesday we were hearing about a big storm about to hit Saigon.  All the schools in the city ended up closing early, to our surprise.  We got dismissed about 45 minutes early because the storm was expected to hit around 3 to 4 pm.  Everyone happily went home, but nothing happened until the middle of the night.  I woke up to the sound of hard rain, for hours.  In the morning, I was expecting some school closures because I knew for sure that roads would be flooded.  Our school is located in an area surrounded by small river ways which partially flood the surrounding roads occasionally due to tides.  Knowing it would be a wet day, we put on our rain ponchos and drove to school.  The main boulevard that everyone drives down was flooded in some parts.  We saw many motorbikes stalled on the side of the road from all the water.  When we reached the gate that led to the subdivision our school is in, the principal was standing there telling everyone to go to the second gate further down the road because it was more dry.  It was pretty flooded, and we were lucky that the bike made it to the end of the road to school.  I wish I could have taken a pic of the road!  Buses were late, but most kids in the junior grades showed up at school.  It honestly felt like a "snow day" in Canada!

Now, typhoon Haiyan is expected to hit Vietnam.  This is a super typhoon that did a lot of damage in the Philippines this weekend.  Luckily, it is not hitting Saigon, but we will likely get some rain due to how huge it is.  I'm just about done with rainy season here... I will gladly welcome months of stifling heat from the endless sun!

HCMC is in the south part of Vietnam, thankfully!

Namaste, Nepal! - Part 3: Kathmandu Reunion

After saying goodbye to our group in Pokhara, John and I boarded another 25 minute Yeti Airlines flight back to Kathmandu, where we met up with our friends Alex, Will, and Angela who had just returned from a safari in Chitwan National Park.

We had a sunny day in Kathmandu ahead of us.  Our first stop was Swayambunath (the Monkey Temple), where we climbed a seemingly endless flight of stairs to the top of a large hill.  Swayambunath was like a mini-Boudhanath Stupa, but with way bigger crowds and lots of monkeys jumping around, stealing garbage out of trash cans.  There was an awesome view of Kathmandu from the top of the hill.

View of Kathmandu

Crowded Swayambunath

Prayer wheels

After the Monkey Temple, we wandered the streets of Thamel some more and had lunch at a cool restaurant called OR2K where we amused ourselves playing "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" on John's phone.  John and I ventured out to Kathmandu Durbar Square but didn't want to pay the entrance fee, so we just walked around without going into any of the buildings.

Streets of Thamel, Kathmandu

Lunch at OR2K

Durbar Square

On the way back to our guesthouse, we found the famous hole in the wall lassi place that a colleague had told us about.  The place is located on the way to Durbar Square near Indra Chowk.  It was basically just a guy serving up lassi drinks from a counter, with people lined up on the side of the road.  The cool thing was that you received your drink in a real glass, drank it there, then handed it back when you were done.  Yummy and cheap!  Definitely worth my 50 cents.

Lassi guy!

In the evening, our group met up with one of Will's brother's friends who is a Kathmandu local.  We had some interesting conversations about Nepal and life over some momos, among other tasty dishes.  It was a relaxing way to end the trip.

Last dinner in Nepal

Potato and cheese stuffed momos!

The next day we would fly back to Kuala Lumpur, then eventually back to Ho Chi Minh City.  On the flight from Kathmandu to KL, John and I were able to move to window seats when we realized the row behind us was unoccupied... score!  We had beautiful views of the highest mountains in the world... so high that all the clouds were below their peaks.  We even got to see Mount Everest... amazing!!!

Mount Everest, the tallest peak in this photo!

Nepal was an intriguing country which I'd like to spend more time in.  One week was truly not enough time.  Even though we didn't get the weather we had hoped for the entire trip, we had some amazing experiences.  I left feeling that I would be back again... there was definitely something special about Nepal.

Namaste, Nepal! - Part 2: Trekking around Pokhara

Kathmandu to Pokhara

After our first day in Kathmandu, we said goodbye to Greg, who was meeting up with his brother who was also travelling in Nepal.  John and I then made our way to Pokhara by plane.  We could have taken a bus, which was much cheaper, but it would have taken nearly 8 hours and wasted a day of travel there, and a day back to Kathmandu at the end of the trip.  I'm very glad we spent the money to fly to Pokhara because it only took 25 minutes!  We flew there on a domestic airline called Yeti Airlines.  Yeti Airlines gave us better service for our 25 minute flight than Air Asia ever gives us ... we got free choice of seats (sit anywhere on boarding the plane), free coffee, free candy, and free checked baggage.

Pokhara is the second largest city in Nepal, but it had quite a small-town feel to it.  Unfortunately, we had cloudy/rainy weather there as soon as we arrived and were unable to see a clear view of the gigantic mountains surrounding the city.  I started to feel sick right after arriving in Pokhara, so our first day was spent relaxing.  John and I went to a lakeside restaurant where he ate fish and chips (right from the lake), and since my stomach hurt I just drank tea.  We walked by the lake for a while and had a nap.  By the evening, I was feeling better so we ate some wood oven pizza (legit) at a place called "The Godfather" ... yum!  Just in case my stomach would continue giving me problems, I visited a pharmacy and was prescribed a bunch of pills which amounted to $4... sweet!

The lake in Pokhara

Trekking Day 1:  Pokhara to Bhadaure

The next day in Pokhara we began our trek.  We signed up with the company Purna Yoga on recommendation of our friend who had a great experience with them.  Our trek was 4 days, and began with a yoga class and delicious breakfast in Pokhara at the company's studio by the lake.  John was hesitant about doing yoga but it was nothing crazy - mostly stretching, so we could manage even though we weren't yoga experts.  On our trek was a woman from Germany who was living in Nepal, and an American family who was living in Abu Dhabi.  We were accompanied by our guides Manohar and Uma, and porters (guys who carried our clothing bags and all the food and supplies the company needed for the trek).

The first day of our trek was quite rainy and cloudy.  I was very thankful that I brought my rain poncho from Vietnam with me.  It was disappointing not to see the amazing mountain views (hidden by clouds), but everyone tried to remain positive.  Manohar had such a great attitude and kept telling us that if we smiled at the mountains, they would smile back at us!

Trekking in the rain

We stayed in a "tea house" overnight in Bhadure.  A tea house is essentially a basic guesthouse in the mountains.  They served us some tasty food, including a yummy lemony tea, which was great because the air was a bit cool.  The company provided us with our own meditation blanket (made of yak wool!) which we could purchase after the trek.  Between the yak wool blanket, blanket at the guesthouse, and the sleeping bag I rented from the company, I had a pretty toasty sleep!



Trekking Day 2:  Bhadaure to Bhanjyang

After waking up to the disappointment of more rainy weather, we did some stretching outdoors and had breakfast.

Our group!

Before moving on to our next destination, a small town called Bhanjyang, our guides Manohar and Uma gave us secret leech weapons - sticks with a small bag of tobacco (I think?) tied to the end of it.  If we saw a leech on our shoe, we could touch the stick to it and the leech would drop off.  Unfortunately, the sticks stopped working by the end of the trek and leeches got into people's shoes and socks.  One girl and I even had leeches get on our face somehow.  Luckily, I noticed the leech before it started sucking blood from my face, but the other girl had blood on her neck.  The thing with leeches is that you don't really feel them sucking your blood, but they are pretty gross and look like short worms.  Anyway, we jokingly named the second day of our trek "Bloody Tuesday"!

Our tea house in Bhanjyang was more like a little complex of mud houses.  A set of stairs led up to each one, and inside ours were two small wooden beds and a wooden chair, nothing else.  If you needed to use the bathroom, you had to use the outhouse which had a squatter toilet that you flushed using a bucket of water.  It was pretty rustic, but once again - the food was great!  The family who ran the tea house invited us all into the kitchen where we sat around the fire watching them make us homemade macaroni with yak cheese.  YUM!

At the end of every trekking day, Manohar would have us all relax by doing guided meditation with us.  We would all go under our blankets in a dark room and close our eyes, listening to what he was telling us to imagine.  Most people just fell asleep every time, but I thought it was actually relaxing!

That night I had difficulty sleeping because I was woken up by hard rain (it actually didn't stop raining for the entire first 2 days of our trek), ugh!


Trekking Day 3:  Bhanjyang - Panchassee - Bhanjyang

Luckily, on the third day we woke up to a bit of sun.  Feeling optimistic, we started our hike up to Panchassee mountain after breakfast.  The trek took around one hour, and it was all up stone stairs.  It was getting sunny, and we were sweaty by the time we reached the top.  We visited a small temple on the mountain where we each got a string of prayer flags, tied them all together, and then secured them to a tree.  In Nepal, prayer flags were everywhere.  They have 5 colours that represent 5 elements:  blue (sky), white (air), red (fire), green (water), yellow (earth).

Waking up to no rain, amazing!  Our mud hut was the one on the right.

With our prayer flags - Grey, Jennifer, Wilma, me, John, Mark, Uma

We were hoping for a spectacular mountain view at Panchassee Tower (elevation around 2560m), but were met with clouds once again and then it started raining!  We took cover and had some tea before going back to our tea house in Bhanjyang down the mountain.

After not thinking we'd see any mountains, things started to turn around in the evening when it finally stopped raining and we got to see a nice sunset.  That night, we had a paneer dinner by candlelight and were feeling good about the next day, because there was a chance of SUN!

Sunset!

Trekking Day 4:  Bhanjyang - Pokhara

In the morning, Manohar woke us up with the "singing bowl" like he did every day.  It's a lot more soothing to wake up to that than an annoying alarm clock!  After exiting the mud hut, we saw SUN!  Manohar gathered us on top of a nearby hill, where he had set up yoga mats for us, with a view of the Annapurna mountain range which was slowly revealing itself as the clouds passed.  It was so peaceful and beautiful there.  We got to see some of the highest mountains in the world.  This is what we had been waiting for on our whole trek.  Feeling positive, we had breakfast and began our trek down the mountain back towards Pokhara.

Mount Fishtail

Annapurna Range

  

With Manohar, our guide

Breakfast - green lentils, shaved coconut, pomegranate seeds, yak cheese... so good!

Day 4 was the best one yet.  Even though it was hard on the knees going downhill for so many hours (mostly down stone stairs), we got to pass through some cute villages surrounded by tiered rice fields.  It reminded us a bit of Sapa in Vietnam, and Bali... two of our favourite places!  Because it was sunny, the leeches were not out.  It was so nice to be able to walk without checking our shoes every couple minutes for leeches!

At the end of our trek, we reached a small village where we celebrated with ice cold pop, tasty soup, and a snack of chips.  A bus took us on a bumpy road back to Pokhara, where we had our "farewell dinner" at Purna Yoga.  Even though the first few days of the trek were not as we expected, it was sad to leave at the end.  Our group was great, and the guides were so friendly.  I'm glad we did the trek, as it definitely made our trip to Nepal quite memorable.

Namaste, Nepal! - Part 1: Arrival in Kathmandu

I've been meaning to write about our trip to Nepal for several weeks now, but school has kept me busy.  Now that report cards are finished, I can spend more time blogging.

After arriving in Kathmandu from Kuala Lumpur and passing through the long line for "visa on arrival" at immigration, we exited the airport and hopped in a taxi destined for Thamel, the backpacker district of Kathmandu.

Thamel is definitely a backpacker ghetto, with tons of souvenir shops, restaurants, and cheap guesthouses lining the dusty, crowded roads full of people, taxis, bicycles, motorbikes, and rickshaws.  Our friends Alex, Will, and Angela had gone straight from the airport to a safari in a national park in another part of the country, so John, Greg, and I wandered around Thamel seeking out cheap food.

Our first food experience in Kathmandu was eating one of Nepal's famous dishes - "momos" (dumplings) at a place called Yak Restaurant.  They really love their yaks in Nepal.  You can find yaks on the back of some of their money, buy products made of yak wool, eat yak cheese, etc!  John and Greg also tried Tibetan hot beer called "tongba" which was basically hot water poured over millet seeds.
 

Tongba - Tibetan hot beer

 After eating lunch, we took a cab to Boudhanath Stupa, one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Nepal, and the largest stupa in Asia.  We saw many Buddhists walking around the stupa clockwise, spinning the prayer wheels as they went.  Hanging out at the stupa was an awesome experience - seeing the beautiful colours, prayer flags flying in the wind, hearing the prayers and songs fill the air, watching the people go by.  We even went to a rooftop bar across from the stupa to sit back and enjoy the view as the sun went down.

After leaving the stupa, we made our way to Pashupatinath, the holiest place in Nepal.  Pashupatinath is also one of the most significant Hindu temples in the world.  When we arrived, it was evening and many locals were out at the temple celebrating a Nepalese festival.  After some confusion, we weren't sure that we would be able to see anything since there was a sign saying that only Hindus could enter the main temple area, so we wandered up the road and came across another part of the temple complex which was on the Bagmati River.  From there, we could see the festivities from afar at the main temple we were denied access to.  We also came across the ghats which lined the river.  At that time, several bodies were being cremated on funeral pyres.  Seeing the cremations at night on the river was a surreal experience.  A local told us we could take photos but I felt strange doing so.  In the end, I decided to take a few, but the true experience was not fully captured.  Being at the ghats was a memorable experience that I will remember for a long time.

Can't stop listening to this song!!!!!!

Ok, you may have heard this song before... maybe once, maybe 100 times.  If you haven't heard it before, you better click this video since this song is this year's new "Gangnam Style" for sure and you should be up on today's pop culture... : )

Many people I know hate this song, but I think it's hilarious and SO CATCHY.  It's so ridiculous that it's awesome.

So... what does the fox say?

Halloween in Ho Chi Minh City

This post is coming late, but another Halloween in HCMC has come and gone!  We had fun at school dressing up.  For the past 2 years I was a bee, but this year I decided to be a witch since it was pretty easy to throw together.  I had a black dress and Jess lent me her witch cape.  All I had to do was buy a hat for $4 which had the grey witch hair built in.  Perfect!  John was a baseball player.  From school he went straight to softball practice... I think he planned that.

At school Halloween was really fun for the students.  The grade 5 classes watched the movie "Casper" (a Halloween classic!), visited a "haunted house" put on by the grade 8s, and then we played a bunch of Halloween games in our classroom and passed out candy.  At the end of the day there was a Halloween dance for junior grades.  Everyone went to the theatre to party.  It was the best Halloween I've spent in Vietnam I think.

The weekend before Halloween I went to a house party and everyone was dressed up.  It was hilarious to see everyone's costumes!

L-R:  Lady Gaga, Witch, Katy Perry, Grandma, Wonder Woman, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Minnie Mouse