Updates and other stuff

Life is busy… Hwa is loving school and will finish in the middle of July and start again at the end of August.  I’m working more at ILA now with a couple of twin eighteen year old girls who want to study in New York,  best thing is their lessons are in the morning so I can work whilst Missy is at school and not worry about baby sitting etc.  When Mum and Dad were here we took some really nice short trips around Da Nang,  the best for me was visiting Ba Na Hills.

The only way to get up there is by cable car and it was high and spectacular.  Apparently the French had built houses in the hills years ago and it has only fairly recently been discovered and now is a tourist hot spot.   At the top are a couple of hotels and a building site – they are building a French styled theme area,   doubt it will add to the ambience of the glorious landscape but …

 

 

The enormous buddha at the top

This is what is going to be built at the top

 

This is where they are at .....

 

Well worth the visit though the pictures of the journey up and down in the cable cars don’t do it justice it was gorgeous.   We also went to Hue for the weekend.   As this is the ancient capital of Vietnam reviews from friends had been really good and I was excited to go.  It is 3-4 hours away from DaNang and we booked a coach which cost $3.50 per person each way ( apparently you can go for just $1.50 but I felt the luxury would be worth it for my parents :)   We didn’t know but we were getting a sleeper bus ( we went during the day) and it was most perculiar.   Getting on the bus you were given a plastic bag to put your shoes in and they weren’t joking every seat was a bed!   We had booked the upstairs back row, which was a bugger to climb up to but once there really comfy.

The view from my bed upstairs

 

It was so funny we giggled a lot especially me pushing my mum up by her bum up the wee ladder.

stylin' on the back of the bus

First impressions of Hue were ‘dog poo’  saw a lot and it thought it was a lot dirtier than Da Nang.   We a booked a trip but as we had arrived late we had missed the lunch part then got told off by the driver for having to get some sandwiches.   We drove for half an hour up incredibly bumpy trails and caught up with the group at the first temple.

So we were told that we had 10 mins at the temple so we took it – then we got told off ( again) for being late ( which we werent’) by this time I was getting a bit pissed off but fortunately there were no more telling offs after that.   We zoomed through another couple of temples

peaceful, tranquil etc etc

 

Am I allowed to admit I am a bit templed out?

Now I was told told these soldiers were life size and yet I was taller I love it!

 

Yes I was taller than every single one of them....

After what felt like fifteen temples although I think it was only three or maybe four we got on a boat which took us back down to the centre of Hue.   Everyone says the food in Hue is wonderful, shame we didnt’ find any… The saying goes that if a woman is born in Hue she will be a better cook than any other woman born outside.   End of day one part two to follow….

Fame but no fortune…

I embarked on my next career completely by accident,  I was asked to do a voice over for a wedding commercial for the Sandy Beach Resort in Da Nang.  Having never done anything like this before I wasn’t sure I could do it well but thought I should at least give it a try especially as the payment was a couple of nights in the hotel.

I was surprised to find a proper studio in Da nang...

The guy that did the Vietnamese version was a professional, and he had a deep sexy voice,  they didn’t like my deep sexy voiced version so I ended up having to do it twice!  Anyhow they loved it and I am now the proud owner of a DVD ( of the cheesiest wedding you ever did see) voice over, oh and two nights at the hotel, which we will take in May.

Following on from that Ly the  Sandy Beach marketing girl who I worked with on the voice over invited us to the first Hotel Earth Hour in Da Nang.  So we boarded the bus with all the press and Mum , Dad ,Hwa & I participated in singing and a lot of hand holding during the hour of darkness.

It was hosted by the pool area and it looked gorgeous

We lit candles which were then floated in the pool, the pictures were dreadful until I managed to utilise other peoples flash..

During the dark hour – we were entertained by a band from the Philippines ( they were pretty karaoke but very energetic) and we of course had to sing songs too.  Far too much Michael bloody Jackson but we were there so we all joined in the spirit of things,  next thing we knew we were surrounded by cameras – real paparazzi stuff.

cute huh?????

It was a really nice night only spoiled by the lack of free booze – the food was nice though!

A couple of days later a couple of people sent messages saying that they had seen us on TV,  yep  they weren’t filming for nothing we were on National Vietnamese TV !!  Then the press started rolling in…

In bài viết này

“Giờ trái đất” ở Sandy Beach Đà Nẵng

Tất cả các quan khách, phóng viên và du khách có mặt tại Khu nghỉ mát Sandy Beach Non Nước Đà Nẵng đã cùng nhau thắp nến, thả đèn hoa đăng và hát lên ca khúc “ Heal the World” để hòa chung vào không khí của Giờ Trái đất.

Tối 26/3, tại Đà Nẵng khu nghỉ mát Sandy Beach Non Nước Đà Nẵng đã quyết định tổ chức chương trình tắt điện nhằm hưởng ứng chương trình Giờ Trái đất toàn cầu năm 2011.

Bà Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Thu – Giám đốc Kinh doanh và Maketing cho biết: Lần đầu tiên tham gia chương trình giờ trái đất, Sandy Beach tự hào là khu nghỉ mát tiên phong trong hoạt động thể hiện trách nhiệm xã hội này với cộng đồng. Chúng tôi luôn đặt ưu tiên tiết kiệm năng lượng, bảo vệ môi trường, nâng cao ý thức và trách nhiệm của nhân viên đối với môi trường. Khu nghỉ mát cũng mong muốn mang đến thông điệp và khẳng định mạnh mẽ quyết tâm của đơn vị vì một môi trường xanh, sạch, đẹp và góp tiếng nói chung tích cực đến chiến dịch toàn cầu Giờ Trái đất”.

Bắt đầu từ 20h30 đến 21h30, hệ thống điện của toàn bộ khu nghỉ mát Sandy Beach đã hoàn toàn tạm ngừng. Trong suốt thời gian tắt đèn đã diễn ra các hoạt động hết sức ý nghĩa như: thả bóng bay tưởng nhớ các nạn nhân của trận động đất vừa qua tại Nhật Bản, thả đèn hoa đăng và biểu diễn văn nghệ.

Tưởng nhớ các nạn nhân của trận đồng đất và sóng thần Nhật Bản

Cùng nhau hát lên bài hát về trái đất

Thả đèn hoa đăng

Rất nhiều du khách nước ngoài cũng tham gia chương trình

                                                                              Tiến Dũng

In bài viết này

Vistors lots of visitors

We have been busy,  since coming back from The Philippines we have had two lots of visitors which has been lovely.  First came Ann and Sydney from London.   Ann works at Beggars in London and Sydney is her boyfriend.   Sydney was a bit different from what the Vietnamese expect so he got loads and I mean loads of attention it was like being with a rock star!

They were like a shade chart...

The Vietnamese were fascinated with Sydney there was lots of touching, patting and even rubbing to see if his colour came off!  He was such a good sport to put up with it all !     They only stayed with us a couple of nights but it was wonderful,  we went to my favourite restaurant over  monkey mountain -

you can rent the huts to hang out it...

The restaurant is out over the water so idyllic...

and did lots of over things that involved eating and drinking.

I love this picture of Sydney and Hwa

Anyhow their trip was over too quickly and they flew off to Hanoi and then Koi Samui before returning to London.

Our next set of vistors were my parents -after a really difficult trip to Hanoi I really didn’t think they ( my dad) would come back again but after some nagging from Hwa they arrived at Da nang airport on 11th March.  No delay’s, no lost luggage just a little jet lag and a few laughs in the delirium

The sign Hwa made for the airport

who needs whiskey when you have jet lag?

I decided that we were going to have  a relaxed time and just visit the surrounding areas, whereas in Hanoi I went a bit overboard forgetting to chill and organising a bit too much.   Turned out to be the best trip ever future posts will be about the various places we visited.   We miss you Grandma and Grandad ( Mum and Dad to me)

my life by hwa/hoa

My life is being all over the world.

The sunny day has been on a world now how does my world feel?

Mom and I  love Da Nang and  grandma and grandad  are comeing soon.

I work hard at school . I have lots of friends.  Vietnamese school is quite hard but fine really.

Da Nang is good now little bit sunny days .

 

this is my shop

 

 

There were some fun times in Manilla

There was the park across the street

Yes there were dinosaurs...

Of many many different colours

We booked a trip to visit waterfalls a couple of hours outside of Manilla and that was a great day.   I took nearly two hours in a canoe with two very experienced boat men to get us up to the Waterfalls… then we got to actually go through the waterfall, an experience not to be missed.   The force of the water took your breath away plus it was bloody cold.  They popped us on a raft and two guys pulled us through via ropes .. what a job!  Saying that the two boat men had a hard job too,  as they had to guide the canoes through countless rapids and even had to carry the boats at one point.  It was worth it though, fantastic scenery which left me wishing we could have discovered more of the country.

helmets and life jackets how attractive...

they had to push the boat uphill with their feet on the rocks. The boatmen worked 10 day shifts then got to see their families for a couple of days it was a hard life

The pre-cursor to the real thing

from afar it doesn't look that impressive but trust me up close it was a monster... the raft is on the right

An expensive mistake

Manilla erm not my favourite city!   The plan was to get to Manilla and then do some Island hopping but Chinese New Year ended that idea with no flights or hotels available for a reasonable budget anywhere,  so we were stuck in Manilla for 12 days.   The hotel would have been  beautiful 30 years ago the staff were great though but after discovering cockroaches in the bathroom ( more than one) we got our room changed – I was a bit fed up to be honest.   I think sometimes I forget how hard it can be living in Vietnam in the sense that I can’t communicate and still get lost a lot,  and when we got the the Philippines I sort of couldn’t be bothered starting all over again.   Fortunately English is the second language and it is everywhere so that wasn’t as much of a problem .

View of Manilla from the Hotel

Getting lost though that was another issue,  the hotel didn’t have a map! so we were directed to the nearest Mall to go to the post office,  the directions were super wrong and we got insanely lost.  In the heat and my general dislike of everything at that point we argued and then got a cab to the Mall.  I was so overcharged by the cab driver ,it should have been 50 pesos I was charged 500 pesos ( and the cheeky bugger still asked for a tip) but at that point I still hadn’t managed to work out the exchange rate properly, but we spent the rest of the day in a huge air conditioned mall.  Deprived of western shopping for over 6 months now I nearly squealed when I saw Marks & Spencers, Top shop and The Gap.   Unfortunately the prices were high, very high so apart from a couple of skirts for Hwa from The Gap in the sale, very little was purchased.   The one thing that struck me about Manilla the most was the amount of fast food restaurants and the amount of overweight people, I’ve never seen anything like it.  Over the course of the 12 days we struggled to find any fresh vegetables so our diet  and my waistline  suffered,  Hwa of course didn’t put on a pound!

An Olympic sized ice skating rink in the middle of the enormous Mall of Asia

Manilla is heavily polluted,  thick black residue /dust everywhere and don’t get me started on the smell of the sewers,   but what got me most of all is the poverty.   Desperate, poverty everywhere… families, children, solo adults, disabled, disease ridden people which what looked like leprocy,  it was tragic to be honest and made me feel like crap.   Some people had inventive ideas in ways to collect money though such as the old man just outside our hotel.

dogs with begging baskets

and the man who owned them, outside every day in the scorching heat.

On a trip to Chinatown to celebrate ‘Chinese / Vietnamese New Year /Tet  that’s when I saw the street kids.  At first just a few but after a few hours they must have numbered over 100.

fighting over a coin a passer by had thrown them

 

some kids we gave money to and had a chat with....

 

a little girl who never mentioned her father but her mother had gone away and she was living with her grandmother

A harsh introduction to Manilla in our first few days it did get better … honestly

A Vietnamese Wedding

Mr Dung ( pronounced yum) our caretaker at the apartment is great we get on with him s and his family so well, despite the language barrier, and we were invited to his son’s wedding.   We got the invitation four days before the wedding – none of this months in advance type thing, apparently that is usual here.   It was on a Sunday at 11am so I could work and have have enough time to get changed and go.

The entrance to the wedding

Weddings here are big business – hell we live across the road from a six story restaurant which is exclusively  for Weddings and there is a whole row of restaurants that are only for Wedding ceremonies not for the general public round the corner.   What was nice about this wedding was that it was at Mr Dung’s house ( pronounced Yum) a more intimate setting.    He is not a wealthy man but the custom here is that the groom’s family pay for everything, so goodness knows how this has affected his family economics as they didn’t skimp on anything.

a packed house ( well an awning outside of the house) there were a couple of hundred people there

Chou’s family came to pick us up as Mr Dung (Yum!) lives outside of Da Nang, and she was wearing jeans!  I know that it is acceptable that  people don’t dress up for weddings but it seems so wrong,   I took the piss out of her for hours after!.   We got there and being the only Westerner I got so much attention it was a bit embarrassing to be honest.   In Vietnamese culture you give the Bride and Groom money rather than gifts and they made me go on stage with Hwa to give them the envelope so they could get pictures- phew I was so nervous.   I was going to give them a million Dong which is about $50 but i was told to only give them 500,000d  - I snuck in  750,000d.  I like giving money as gifts so they can really get what they want.

Vietnamese Champagne - not so good

So after selected families had their picture taken on stage with the Bride and Groom the food was served – lots of it,  chicken, huge prawns, soup, rice, fruit, and a couple of dishes that didn’t look too appetising to the western eye.  During all this the happy couple came round to every table to say hello and greet their guests, I’m not sure they managed to eat anything.   The beer and soda was flowing at this point, and as I was the only woman drinking our table soon filled up with men trying to get me drunk.  Mot, Hai, Ba …. something else in Vietnamese and you have to cheers and drink.   I showed restraint ( it was before noon) and stopped drinking too rapidly.

The happy families along with a priest ( next to the bride)

The bride all dressed in traditional Vietnamese costume was absolutely beautiful but she hardly smiled, apparently thats just the way she is – she wanted to get married.

Neu ( Mr Dung's daughter) didn't smile in any pictures..

So the last hour of the wedding was karaoke,  there was a live band and anyone who wanted to sing could.  Some were good some were downright awful but it was all over by 1.30pm   it really was a great wedding.

I love old Vietnamese ladies ... these are the grandma's, mothers and mother in laws so cute,lovely, and friendly

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.

 

In 2010, there were 63 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 218 posts. There were 267 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 324mb. That’s about 5 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was June 16th with 238 views. The most popular post that day was Life Changes.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were expat-blog.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, Google Reader, and mail.yahoo.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for hanoi oi choi, choi oi, hanoi oi choi oi, oi choi oi, and modern slavery.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Life Changes June 2010
7 comments

2

About Lesley & Hwa May 2009
22 comments

3

Now I really know what Oi Choi Oi means.. July 2009

4

Life Changes…and the resignation email June 2010
1 comment

5

Yet another adventure with Me Dinh March 2010
1 comment

An ILA Christmas

So we had Christmas competitions for our students at ILA.   The Jumpstarts ( 4 – 6 year olds) had to learn a Christmas Carol – we picked ” Jingle Bells”  we came 2nd ( a travesty I tell you)

 

They did really well co-ordinated movement as well as singing

Father Christmas delivered spicy chilli snacks

My Senior class ( tweens 10 years to 15 years) had to do a Christmas Card.   We missed out on the best pumpkin at Halloween so I got a bit over competitive, brought in lights and we managed 1st prize.   After all that effort you would have though I would have taken a picture – but no…

Christmas Cheer

We have never had  Christmas day on our own before, so I planned an extra special time so that Hwa wouldn’t miss Grandma and Grandad too much.   The tree was up and decorated by the end of November, many presents were purchased in the UK and USA and shipped, received and re -wrapped  by the middle of December all was in hand.

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas tree ... on Xmas eve

I had also taken on the challenge of sorting out where we were all going to eat Christmas dinner for all the teachers at ILA.  Waterfront Restaurant at 4pm followed by drinks back at our apartment from 7pm to 10pm.  With that all booked and sorted, on Christmas Eve , Hwa and I trotted of to church – yes that is correct Church with Chou and her family who had invited us to join them.

The church as we waited to go inside - it was wonderfully festive

It was a regular church, packed with people, lots of regular religious artefacts around , just  that everything was in Vietnamese and the service lasted 90 minutes with no singing- oh and there was a power cut half way through which aside from the heat was really lovely as there was loads of candles.   After an hour Hwa was getting ansy,  I should point out that the service started at 9pm so by 10pm missy (and I if the truth be told)  wanted to go home.   She asked if we could leave in a normal, but certainly not a whisper volume voice ,and the woman who was standing on my left hit her , on the arm, twice really angrily!   I sort of went into a kind of shock denial mode,  did that really happen?  was that me? what the F*****!   Ten minutes later I grabbed the woman’s’ arm squeezed it so tight  she really felt it,looked her straight in the eye and whispered  in my best threatening pissed of mum voice ” touch my daughter again and I will punch you in the nose!”    We then dramatically flounced out of the church.   Of course I had to tell  Chou why we were leaving, one thing led to another , and  the vicar got wind of it too.   The woman was there the next day and was told in no uncertain terms at the Xmas service ( we weren’t there)  that her actions were not Christian and she was made to feel ashamed ( not quiet sure how) in front of everyone,  there you go justice served apparently.  I tell you what though,  this protective, mothering anger stuff can be quite cathartic..

Christmas morning was just lovely we got up at 6.30am got Alan and Mabel ( Grandma and Grandad ) on skype and opened presents.   After that we just stayed in our PJ’s and pottered and played with Hwa’s new games.   The weather was gorgeous it was a surprisingly really great day.  Then at 3pm we got tarted up and went for dinner at the Waterfront restaurant, our table was on the balcony with great views of the river so extra special.

There was 18 of us in total I think

 

The Christmas Dinner View

After, we all ended up back at my house which was fully stocked with alcohol and we partied until the wee small hours.  Hwa was amazing, she is a funny little thing,  I’m sort of desperate for her to be more confident and friendly with adults and I do bug her a bit about it but on this particular night I started to worry she was being too ‘drama school bratty” . She organised games, gave out prizes,  and commanded the attention of the whole room (  I was thrilled of course  poor kid can’t win) she was amazing I’ve never seen anything like i.

Luke was bossed into giving a speech about what who knows....

Again another award ceremony for something Hwa inspired

So because of being told off in Hanoi by the neighbours for drinking on the balcony after 10pm I planned on ending the party at 10pm.  Most people had left by midnight ,  I got Hwa in bed eventuall  and with a couple of friends still there ( I refused to let them leave)  managed to carry on drinking ( on the balcony) till about 3am.  Not one complaint, nothing, nada, I love Danang.   Shame I had to to teach at 7.30am the next morning.

Two Mabel's a happy time!