Waiting for mom as she gets treatment.
Eating at Quy’s place (Lau)
I got to the 2 joined houses early in the morning and I slowly met the family one by one. Most of the people my age were at school or were busy at the time but I met them all over the course of the day. I’m writing this several days late so I’m a little foggy on the details of everyday so I’m just gonna put them all together. I stayed on the 3rd floor the right house and this was my room.
It was pretty comfortable besides the roaring sounds of heavy, heavy rain. I got used to staying there for about 4 days but it was kind of creepy sleeping by myself on the third floor. My first night was going out to and drinking some Vietnamese coffee with the relatives around my age.
This was the coffee place and there were a couple more people with us that I’ll show in later pictures. It was fun and I mostly listened to the conversation and looked around the place. Pretty much the next day was going to the palace at Hue with dad, Uncle Hoa, and cousin Cuong.
It rained on and off so we saw a lot of the place but missed an entire section. Going around there was fun and very interesting, lots of foreigners were walking around. Lots of Australians and Chinese people around this area. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it wasn’t raining so much. Pretty much the story of my entire trip in Hue. The rest of the day was just me reading for my touchpad and relaxing cause it rained so much.
Just throwing this in here, I read so much during this trip so far. I’m at book 7 of the Dresden files and they are about 200-300 pages each. That goes to show you how much free time and nothing to do I had. There were exciting moments but most of the time its just filled with me reading, eating, or listening to conversation between family members and sometimes I throw in a word here and there.
The next day was pretty much what I just described above, the whole day was just me reading and eating. There was absolutely nothing to do and I slept about half of that day off too. It was a wasteful day but somewhat relaxing. That and I can’t remember much of what I did since it was about 1 weeks ago.
The next day was cousin Mini’s birthday and I was getting closer to the relatives that were around my age. We celebrated at night by going out to an outside eating with her friends and some of the relatives. I drank a lot that night and got drunk…I had the whole foggy thoughts, uncoordinated movements, and everything except for the feeling of having to throw up. It was fun, we ate then we went to karaoke but I didn’t sing. Had a really good time and enjoyed the company of family. Mini passed out in the karaoke room and her boyfriend took her home. An accident happened and her foot was scraped and the right mirror of the motorbike was missing when we went to check up on her after the karaoke. It was all good though and things turned out okay. It was still a good night and I went home and sleep pretty much instantly. Sorry, forgot to take any pictures of that night.
The next day of gonna be the day before my last day and I still hadn’t going around much so even though it was raining a storm that day we decided to go and visit the sites.
This was the place we went to and pretty much all of us were soaked. These were the relatives that I hung out with during the whole stay. We visited the tomb of the last king I think it was.
I took a lot of pictures but I’m only showing a couple because I don’t have time to upload them all right now. We went to another place after this, it was a huge white statue of I forgot what its called but here’s a picture.
After that, we decided to head to a restaurant and eat before we headed home. We ordered some beef with noodles which was easy to eat and some rabbit mixed with greens which tasted and looked a lot like chicken, I wouldn’t be able to tell it was rabbit if someone didn’t tell me. I ate only a bit of that then we finished it off with some beef stew and bread. It was good and fun
Here was the table after we finished the beef and noodles.
This is Dang and Mini.
More relatives, I can’t remember the names right now.
and the last one. These were the people I hung out with the whole time in Hue. It was a fun last day before heading off the next day to Da Nang. It was adventurous and very very wet. On the way back from the restaurant the person who was driving the motorbike hit a root and I almost flew off but stopped myself on the spiked tree of the root we hit. It hurt pretty bad and at the time but was insignificant to the fact that the alarm on the motorbike went haywire and wouldn’t turn off which made it look like we were stealing the bike. We raced through the rain trying to find a place to turn off the alarm, yes it looked really shady to the first bike repair shop we went to and they sent us away. The second one helped us and we got home okay with no cops arresting us. Made some good memories and enjoyed my stay there. If I get the chance I might go back to visit again during my extra month stay.
That concludes my trip in Hue and most of the significant things that happened that I can remember. I’m currently back in Saigon and just chilling. A friend’s daughter’s wedding is tomorrow and I’m writing this pretty late so I’m gonna cut it off here for now. Hopefully my next update will be soon and cover my trip in Da Nang and Hoi An. I need to catch up to whats currently happening so I don’t forget everything. Enjoy the post you 5 people out there reading this.
This is where I typed up my last update post; in that exact spot I sat and typed it all.
So I haven’t go around to writing anything up for a while…and a lot has happened since my last written post. I have been in Hue for a while, not sure exactly how many days and I’ve never got around to updating much or taking that many pictures. I still have a good amount of pictures to post though.
Heading to Hue
Well to start off, I left Saigon by plane to Hue and the flight took about an hour. We barely made it on the plane on time because dad couldn’t find his sunglasses and they were in his bag the whole time. The flight took about 1 hour and it wasn’t quite as smooth a flight as going for the U.S. to Taiwan or Taiwan to here. We landed and the first thing I noticed was that it was like 100x less humid here in Hue than in Saigon. Saigon was like a sauna with its humidity and high temperatures. We got picked up at the airport and headed to the house in Hue. The house looked pretty huge but I didn’t get to go inside at the time because we headed from there straight to grandma’s house on the beach about 20 minutes away. The roads and everything changed so much. There was actual roads that lead from Hue all the way to the beach. There was a huge bridge that crossed a really wide and long river to get to the house. It looked less countrysidey and more modern. We paid a visit to grandpa’s grave before we entered the village because it was right at the entrance to the village. It was a very nice grave area and cool because at the area is also the name of everyone in our family and I saw my name there and so many other names. After the visit we headed to the house and there was pretty much a full cement road leading all the way to the house. There wasn’t just all sand walk areas anymore so going around was much more easy. The village seemed so empty and didn’t as lively as it was 10 years ago. I arrived there and talked with the family. Sat around a while then headed out to the beach later on with dad. We saw in the ocean and the water was warm, it was really nice and refreshing. A relative told me that the giant black ship that was on the cost was sold to someone and isn’t on the beach anymore. I made me realize that so much has changed in the last 10 years. Families in the village have moved away and whole houses are no longer where they were. It was nostalgic being back at the village but so much has changed and I don’t know if they were always like this because I can’t remember or if there was a lot of change. I went to sleep that night with dad in the only room in the house with air conditioning. I haven’t slept a good night in Vietnam yet. I seem to always wake up at odd hours of the night and then try to sleep again. Guess I’m not used to the sleep schedule yet.
At Grandma’s House
After that day it would be the only sunny day I would have in Hue for pretty much my entire stay up to now. I’m sad I didn’t enjoy it more because it has made a lot of things now much more depressing and prevent more things to do. The second day consisted of waking up and visiting the brother of grandma in another village kinda far away. It was raining endlessly and I didn’t realize it at the time that it pretty much would never end. We went everywhere by motorbike through rain or shine and by crossing a river by boat too. We had to get to the other side so we loaded up the motorbikes into these long wooden boats and went across the river. The housed we visited were kinda not that nice and didn’t look any better. We visited a relative that was a teacher but she was sick so was taking the day off. I realized that even in Vietnam teachers have it pretty tough. After that visit we head back to cross the river and then back to grandma’s house. It was a brief 2-3 hour visit and I was left with nothing to do the rest of the day except read from my touchpad. The rest of the day was uneventful and nothing of significance occured. The next day we would head back to Hue and stay there for a bit. I was pretty tired of just hanging out at the village while it was raining with nothing to do. I looked forward to heading to the house and finally seeing the three story house that is connected to another house that I heard about a while back. Oh and I couldn’t update any of these days because I couldn’t get a internet connection anywhere out at the village.
I think I’ll post a part 2 of heading into Hue and what I did there.
Test
Co Quy’s place
After leaving from SFO the 12 hour flight to Taiwan was just either sleeping or listening to music, pretty much half the people were Chinese or Vietnamese with a few one or two that weren’t. Nothing significant happened and we landed in Taiwan for another 4 hour layover until the flight into Saigon. The airplane food was alright and not too bad. Taiwan airport was pretty nice, lots of expensive stuff and dad almost bought 150$ bottle of cognac but we decided not to. Ate some Japanese food while waiting for our next flight. It tasted pretty good mom and I got the spicy beef udon noodle soup and dad got the pork miso soup. After that was another 3-4hr flight from Taiwan and then we arrived in Saigon.
Getting through customs and all that was pretty fast because mom was in a wheelchair and the people helped to get all our luggage really fast. When we got outside, mom’s side of the family came to pick us up and there was a lot of people. We went by taxi to Co Phuc’s house and stayed there for the night, lots of things happened but I can’t remember cause that was 3 days ago. Co Quy took me to see the main business area of Saigon and it was really nice, the streets are so crazy here and the driving is so hectic. Not much happened since then besides the wedding but that will be for another post I guess.
So far been enjoying the trip except for the intense humid heat that never goes away. Nothing stolen so far so I’m okay in that department. Might go check out the PC Cafe nearby soon and play some Crossfire, DOTA, or any other games they have. I’ll hopefully have more pictures and videos uploaded later on and probably none of my posts will be as long as this one hahaha…
So I’m on my seventh beer and it hasn’t hit me yet. Mom is getting mad at me for drinking so much.wedding is getting better with each dinner course. Might update some more later.
The wedding couple.
Finally I get internet and it is at the wedding three days later. Been fun so far. Videos won’t be up for awhile. Typing this all on my Droid so can’t say as much. Wedding is pretty loud and busy but interesting. I tried the beers you recommended Phi. Also it is unlimited beer tonight and I’m bored as hell so I’m gonna drink about 10 beers if I don’t get full. Family is nice but I wish I could communicate better with them. I’m gonna go try and enjoy the wedding now. Cya