Tasty hearts and Fusion

Why is it that my parents always have to try and trick me into eating things that I absolutely would not eat had I had a choice.

I mean, when I was over in Vietnam my mum was like to me here, have some of this, it's like chicken. Little did I know, what I was happily munching on was two frog's legs. But I admit, it was pretty tasty haha.

And THEN she even tried telling me that eel was really a fish. Eels are not fish. Eels are eels. Do I look 3 years old to you? Ok, scrap that. So wikipedia tells me that they're an order of fish. I don't care, I'm not eating it.

Anyway, here I thought that once I was back home in Melbourne I'd be safe, right? But no, my congee was mixed with some strange looking pieces of meat. So I said to mum, what's this mum, is it beef? And all I'm met with is silence. Now, I know that silence is not good. If anything, silence is the worst. It's evil. If anyone replies to a question of yours with silence, back away. Turns out she was trying to sneak pieces of animal heart into my congee. Like I wouldn't notice. I mean cmon, if you're trying to sneak stuff into my meals at least try not to put 20 pieces in there. Obvious much?

Ok, enough about food. I had my first real night out since I got back from overseas. We were planning on heading to seven but they were knocking people back (yeh screw you), so we headed on over to Fusion at Crown. I have to say though, the crowd sucked, and there were some minor dramas throughout the night, but all in all, it was not too bad. R&B room sucked though. You'd think that being in a club, they'd play music that you could dance to, not mellow stuff. Ah well, whatever.

Fooled by the scales, and memories of vietnam

I stepped onto the scales today, and for a split second my heart jumped for joy because I thought I'd lost some weight during my trip to vietnam. But no, that all came crashing down a second later when I realised that the scales weren't set to zero. Biggg sigh lol. Well, on the bright side, at least I haven't gained any weight after all that eating and sleeping I did on my holiday.

I haven't even been back 2 days yet and already the reality is kicking in, and the stress level is reaching high. What part of leave me alone is so hard to understand?

Oh, and here's an example of crossing the street in vietnam. I miss it. We cross the road too damn proper here haha =p



It's 2am and I'm not yet sleepy. I've really got to adjust back to melbourne time, but I can't (or can't be bothered). Well, guess it's time to catch up with my Gossip Girl XOXO.

How fun it is to get ripped off...

The bad thing about holidaying in vietnam is the fact that you will most definitely get ripped off at one point or another (more often than not actually).

If you're a foreigner (i.e. white) you'll reallyy have a tough time here. Expect to be ripped off at least double the price. Especially at stores where they don't have marked prices. Even if they do have marked prices, expect to be ripped off anyway. The marked prices are sometimes not even the real price, and they're just there for you to feel like you've bargained the price down.

This rule of ripping people off doesn't just apply to white people, it also applies to viet kieu (vietnamese people living abroad) - i.e. me. The bad thing about me and my mum is that you can spot that we're tourists from a mile away. We don't dress like everyone here, and we're not yet black from the sun. My mum has red hair and trust me, as soon as I open my mouth to speak, the price of everything probably doubles because you can instantly tell that I ain't from around here. I really should have paid more attention in viet school. But even so, there's no way of hiding my english accent.

So anyway back onto my story of how we got ripped off. Me and mum were at the Ben Thanh market again yesterday and we saw this really nice set of a lacquerware bowl, plate and pair of chopsticks. The marked price was 180,000 dong for one set ($16 - bloody expensive for vn!!). So my mum was like cmon, what's the real price? The shop girl was like okay I'll give it to you for 150,000 dong. So then my mum was like well, what if we buy 10 sets? make it cheaper.. And after alot of bargaining and no, that's too expensive and just tell us the REAL price! we ended up getting it for about 110,000 dong or so for each set. We sure were happy with ourselves for getting the price down from 180,000 to 110,000 so when we went 3 stalls down and saw the exact same set, we were like hmm.. I wonder how much they are here. Imagine how shattered we were when the girl was like oh they're 85,000 dong for a set. And that was her initial price. Imagine what we could have gotten them for if we had had a chance to bargain with her.

So, the moral of the story is:
Shop around for prices before buying ANYTHING. Lesson well and truly learnt.

Oh, and what's with vietnam's xmas craze? Aren't the majority of people here supposed to be buddhist or something?

P.S. This giant snowman at my hotel is creeping me out.

Traffic in vietnam and other things..

Anyone who has been to Vietnam will definitely know the hazards of crossing the street here. It must be because of the insane tax on importing motor vehicles or something(think - US $70-80,000 for a Camry), but most of the population here rely on their motorbikes. According to my most reliable source (Wiki), there's about 6.5 million people living in Saigon, so you can imagine the insane amount of traffic especially during peak hour.

One thing to note about crossing the street here is that the people on motorbikes do not stop for you. So if you're standing by the side of the road waiting for the traffic to stop so you can cross, then good luck, and see you next year. I've figured out that the trick is to slowly edge your way across the road at a slow and predictable pace and simply let the motorbikes dodge you. Don't try running across the road or that'll be the end of you. Quite terrifying if you've never done it before. Luckily for me, this ain't my first time here lol.

Just from observing the people driving past, you can see a great deal of acrobatics going on - I mean, the number of people you can fit on a motorbike is really quite amazing. Let's say Dad's the driver, Mum's sitting behind him, toddler wedged between them, and another kid doing a balancing act up in front of Dad. That's four people.. on one motorbike. Thank god they finally introduced the helmet rule this past year. People also carry their sleeping babies on the motorbikes here. Honestly, I don't know how the babies fall asleep because if it were me, I'd be terrified lol. Here's an example (not my own pic btw - forgot my camera cable back at home):

One thing I've decided while I'm over here is that I'm going to start my own little doll collection. I want a doll to represent every country in the world. I also want the dolls to come from the actual countries. Abit ambitious, I know. But hey, at least now I can say that I have a hobby. Here's the first addition to my collection, bought from the Ben Thanh market (it's dressed as one of the hill tribes of vietnam and is made with sapa fabrics, or so I'm told). I'm also pretty sure I got ripped off considering I paid 100,000 dong ($9) for it.

Something that's going onto my list of things to do next time I'm in vietnam is to get an ao dai (our national costume) tailormade for myself. I can't even remember if I ever owned one, but I feel as if I should have one as backup incase I ever happen to err... need... one.. not sure at what time I would need one, but I still feel like I should get one! But I must leave this til the next time I'm here because I need to lose weight have no time to get it made. They're actually quite beautiful when you think about it and compare it to some other hideous national costumes out there (google England's 'pearly kings and queens' costumes).

And on that note, I feel I must mention the fact that I am a whopping size XL here. Going from a medium to an extra large sure is doing nothing for my self-esteem. Sigh. Well, I suppose it's not my fault that everyone here is stick thin and flat as a surfboard. Everywhere I go I feel like a beached whale. Even my size 7-8 feet feel like elephant feet seeing as no one has my size.

Quite depressing actually...

It's time to get down to it..

The changeover is complete! With everything thats been going on in my
life lately, I feel like I need a fresh start, and with it, a brand
new blog.

Goodbye Xanga (not that I've even blogged there in the past year),
goodbye facebook blog - you were really crap to begin with, so that in
the end I couldn't even be bothered blogging anymore.

After reading Marlene's blog (scatteredrecollections.blogspot.com),
I've decided to get back into it. You'd think that being overseas
would equal less time on the net, but no, I'm actually on more than
ever. I'm going to have major Internet withdrawal on the plane heading
back to melb.

So let's see.. how has my trip been so far? Well it was my fourth (or
is it fifth) time going to france - jealous? But really, you can only
visit the same monuments so many times before you end up having photos
looking eerily similar. Believe me, I'm even wearing the same jacket I
was wearing in the photos I took the last time I was there - minus the
scarf.

Same with Vietnam. This is my fourth time now, but luckily for me I
never took pictures the previous times so there's no doubling up here.
phew. Although I think that once you've been to a place too many
times, you end up spending more time in the hotel than doing anything
else.

Also, shopping is hard here. Sure, it may be cheap, but my perfectly
average AUS sz 7 feet are considered to be enormous elephant feet in
the world of size 5 feet. I've heard the sentence "I'm sorry but that
was the largest size" more than I'd care to hear. And I haven't had
the guts to try the clothes on yet.. imagine what I'd hear then. sigh.

And besides the size factor, there's also the issue with everyone
being obsessed with fake brands and tacky jewels stuck on everything
you could imagine - shoes, bags, belts, you name it. Its like a sea of
bling shining up at you every time you step into a store. Its also
impossible to find a bag without the words Gucci, Prada, LV, Chanel or
Chloe imprinted on the side in an obviously fake way.

AND. What is with those sale assistants that follow you around the
store?? They are 2 steps behind you the whole time, I kid you not.

Ok, ok, I know it seems like I'm complaining a whole lot, but I've had
a good time. Really. I love the insane traffic, the skill you need to
cross the street, the fact that it's possible to buy a meal for 4
people for only 15 dollars, going to the market, riding around the
city with no particular destination on the back of a motorbike (albeit
without the wind blowing in my hair anymore since these new rules
requiring you to wear a helmet). I just love the general atmosphere of
a bustling city. Melbourne, as much as I love it, has more of a
laidback attitude, and isn't quite the same...

Well, that's all from me for my first post. Time for me to go lie in
my hotel room and watch some tv.