trang's

Brittany and I decided to call this trip our "New Zealand Reunion Trip 2009" because it was pretty much just that. Besides for Vietnam, we were traveling to meet up with some of the people we met while we studied abroad in New Zealand in 2007. Our next stop was Thailand, and our goal was to spend as much time as possible with two of the loveliest Thai girls: Nok and Taw. And Sly, Britt's older sister, joined up with us for this segment.

Nok and Taw and their families welcomed all of us with open arms. And I still cannot believe the lengths they went through to make us feel like part of their families.

[Dinner with Nok's family.]

[Makes you love them ants, eh?]

[Wandering around town. No Thai needed to communicate effectively.]

[Taw's mom took us to Pattaya because she likes to holiday there.]

[Nok's aunt just finished this house days before we arrived, and they let us stay in this beautiful home near Khao Yai National Park!]

[Impressive Buddha statue. I didn't go all the way up. :(]

[We decided to visit Trang province only because it was named after me.]

[This was the beautiful waters around Ko Adang island (in Trang province).]

[This picture makes me feel like celebrities holidaying on the coast of Thailand.]

[We did a little hike up Ko Adang for even more spectacular views: look at that water!]

[Life is beautiful.]

[The chicas on the wooden boat to Ko Adang.]

[I seriously can't get enough of the crystal clear water.]

[I like this picture of the guysworking on the wooden boat.]

[I am pretty much really popular in Thailand.]

As always, I have to show pictures of the food. I am sorry I don't remember the Thai names for a lot of the dishes, but it's not completely my fault: there are no common anglecized spelling of Thai words.

[This pretty much summed up my dining experiences in Thailand.]

[Vermicelli with all sorts of sauces.]

[Pad see ewe at its best!]

[Yum! Banana, Nutella, and condensed milk roti.]

[I wish that I remembered what this was, but it was the best soup ever! With fried pork skin!]

[My Thai friend, Natt, introduced me to this delicious coconut cream dessert.]

We stayed in Thailand for two and a half weeks, and it was the first time in my life that I spent that long in a country where I can't speak the primary language. A lot of people couldn't speak English very well, so at times, it did get a bit frustrating trying to convey my ideas. And it didn't help that people thought I was Thai! Haha.

[We left Thailand on Sly's birthday, so made the most out of it as possible, by staying in a hotel.]

[I noticed that the hotel got some wicked mirrors. Sisters have matching bodies.]

[This captures pretty much all the modes of transportation in Thailand: ped, bicycles, scooters, motorbikes, cars, buses, Skytrain...]

I'm sorry this post wasn't better, but I am strapped for time. It's my last day in New Zealand. I'm flying out super early tomorrow and arriving in California in a day! Then it's back to Texas and the start of the "real world" on March 31st. It's beautiful outside right now, so I am going to enjoy every last drop of the golden rays!

Since this update is so overdue, I will really condense the month I spent in Vietnam.

[Central Vietnam from the skies.]

[Aerial view of Ho Chi Minh City.]

If you are thinking of traveling to Vietnam, avoid the Lunar New Year. Everything shuts down then. It's a three-day holiday, but a lot of people take a week or even a month off for the festivities. It's like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and birthday all rolled into one. So if you have a lot of family in Vietnam, then it's a great time to visit, but if you don't, then expect all your travel plans to be delayed. We didn't think to take this into consideration, so a lot of our travels had to be altered or abandoned. Nevertheless, the trip was still really enjoyable.

[This is the view from my aunt's house. All the houses are skinny but tall.]

Here are some of my favorite memories:

1. Spending time with my extended family
I don't see them very often (four times since I left Vietnam in 1992 to be exact), so it's really nice to see how they've changed and grown over time. We came at a really great time for them because they were allowed to take a break from the seven-day work-week or the six-day school-week.

[My family goofing off at the family beach day.]

[Most of the family was there on the first day of the new year to wish good health to each other.]

[People line up in the neighborhood streets to watch the dragon dance.]

[Days leading up to the new year are very festive. Days during and after, not so much.]

[It's a really, really big holiday for the Vietnamese.]

[Posing with traditional new year foods.]

[My aunt got super happy because she got a red envelope (means money).]

[We spent a lot of time during the new year playing cards and the "numbers game".]

2. The history lessons
I realized before the trip that I really don't know too much about Vietnam. So this time around, I was going to change that. I visited a few museums, went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and conversed with my family about the country (and especially about the war). I got a lot of different sides to stories, but it was interesting to hear them all nevertheless.

[Cool perspective shot on the way to the Cu Chi tunnels.]

[That's how tiny the Cu Chi tunnels are. Those VC are pretty talented.]

[Standing in the bomb shelter of the Independence Palace.]

3. Seeing an ox up close
I was born in the year of the ox, and 24 years later, it's the year of the ox again, and I was there for the new year celebrations! So it was really cool that I got to see one up really close. And sometime during my amazement with the gentle and hardworking creature, I probably irritated it, so it almost charged at me. I guess it didn't help taking countless pictures with the water buffalo from all different directions.

[We're like sisters!]

4. Shampooed
You've never had your hair washed until you've gotten it washed in Vietnam. It's not your normal lather and rinse sessions. Here, the wonderful fingers of your hairdressers massage your scalp and your face! Then, you get your face covered in thin slices of cucumber, but I only had that done once because I learned that I was allergic to cucumbers. I can still eat them just fine.

[I am pretty much an addict.]

5. The market
I really enjoy living in the heart of the Phu Nhuan Market. Everything was available within a few steps out the door. Vietnam is a very early-rising country. At 3am or 4am, some people are already getting up to set up shop for the day. By 6am, most of the community is already up and ready. Britt and I woke up really early one morning to help my aunts with the pho shop. Then we saw the making of chinese doughnuts and vermicelli. The latter was really cool because I generally don't think of my noodles coming from somewhere else other than a box or package from the supermarket.

[We weren't much help to my aunt with setting up her shop.]

[The meat market right outside our door.]

[You can pretty much get anything you need in the market.]

[My uncle's family's vermicelli noodle shop.]

[Very tiny pieces of dough transformed to beautiful Chinese doughnuts.]

At night, the main market closes, but many food stalls line the sides of the streets. My favorite Vietnamese dish, bot chien, quickly became Brittany's too. It's taro flour fried with eggs until golden and crispy on both sides, then topped with shaved papayas, fried shallots, and delicious sauce. Yeah, my mouth is drooling for it now, too.

[Droooooooooolzzzz.]

6. The Hue airport fiasco
My two cousins, Brittany and I decided to take a trip to Central Vietnam. Me, bring the frugal shopper that I am, decided to buy our tickets online because the travel agencies were all closed down over the New Year holiday. My family has never heard of such a thing, but I assured them that back in the States, I use the internet to buy everything for much, much cheaper, including my plane tickets. After spending quite a bit of time researching flights, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that the price for our return tickets were worth about a quarter of normal ticket prices. I tried searching again in a new browser to confirm the ridiculous price, but then decided it was just a glitch in the system, and bought four tickets.

On the early morning of 11 February, after enjoying ourselves in Hue and Da Nang, we packed up all our belongings and got to the airport way before our boarding time. The lines were long, the service was longer, and people were pushy. But we held our calm and waited our turn, confident that despite the slow queue, we were sure to not miss our plane. Until...they couldn't find any of our names in the system. Turns out, I had stupidly bought the tickets for 11 MARCH. No wonder the tickets were so cheap. We ended up spending the day in the Hue airport, bought new tickets, and made it home before Brittany and I had to leave Vietnam on the 13th for Thailand.

7. Da Nang
Da Nang's a really beautiful city in Central Vietnam. Sadly, it's on the verge of development, but thankfully, it's modeled after the likes of San Francisco and Wellington. We were there just in the nick of time, though, before beautiful coastlines get transformed into never-ending skyscrapers. It's the fourth largest city in Vietnam, but hopefully, it doesn't take after its sister cities in terms of the pollution and overcrowdedness.

[Da Nang has really beautiful coastlines.]

[What better way to tour the city?]

[Since we didn't get to ride a basket boat on water, we rode one on sand.]

8. The food. Oh, the food!

I know I've probably talked about this a lot, but there's nothing like getting Vietnamese food in Vietnam. Thankfully, not many people have discovered frozen foods, so most of the dishes you get are all fresh ingredients. A friend who is currently in Vietnam started a food and drink photo album, and I was inspired to do the same. However, a lot of the time, I find myself gorging down the food before remembering to take out the camera.