Rocky IV

4/5/12:

Flipping through the channels we see that one of the greatest boxing movies of all time is about to come on: Rocky IV. Just as the movie is about to start the screen goes black and then the picture below comes up. Neither of us can read Vietnamese but I'm fairly certain this is not the opening credits for Rocky IV. We stare at this screen for about 5 minutes with no change and no Rocky.

We have no clue what the screen says but we're pretty sure it goes something like 'we cannot show a movie where the country who perpetrated the destruction war beats our BFF Russia!'

This place is crazy.

Sand and Fairies

4/5/12:

Today was one of those 1000 picture days. In true Blue fashion we started our day around 11AM (I do like my sleep) with some yummy breakfast, fruit shakes and iced coffee! We also decided to rent a scooter and go see some sights.

After breakfast we headed out to see the famous sand dunes of Mui Ne. This place is known for having some sweet red and white sand dunes looking more like a desert than tropical country. We read the dunes were pretty far but we didn't mind since having a scooter means freedom and free A/C!!!! After getting slightly lost and seeing some really pretty countryside we made it to the white sand dunes. It took almost an hour but it wasn't a bad drive at all. Once at the dunes we're greeted by the normal tourist stuff: 'rent my ____ here' or 'buy my ____ here.' We gave them a smile and moved along to the dunes and saw some people renting 4-wheelers (ATVs) for $10/20 minutes. Sold! Carolyn and I both rented one and set out for some awesome sand dune shredding! It was $20 well spent!

On the way back home we got pulled over at a random police check point. Great!!! The cop told us to get off the bike and step away from it. He then asked for my name and where I'm from. I said 'United States' about 5 times with no luck. He then pulls out a note pad and asks me to write it down which I do. After writing United States he says 'oh, United States.' Yes that's what I've been saying. But I keep my cool. He then proceeds to ask a few more questions like where's my license and registration? What do I do for a living and what's my birthday. I'm a little concerned that they're going to cart us off to some torture prison somewhere since my our country perpetrated the 'American War of Destruction.' But after a few more questions he seems like he going to let us go. He asks what I do for a living. I quickly conclude that he's gauging how money I make so he can decide how much he's going to fine / scam / rip me off. Rather than saying engineer I decide on another much poorer profession: student. He gives me a quizzical look and then says we can go. Yes!!! Outsmarted the con artists!!!

Further down the road we stop at the fairy stream which is supposed to be this wonderful little hike through dunes and other stuff. We pay 5000 dong ($0.25) to park and are led to a crappy little stream and told to start walking. The water is only ankle deep and the bottom is soft sand. The sun was on his way to bed so it's nice out and not too bright. We walk a little way and come upon this amazing gorge with huge red and white mud walls. It was beautiful! Water seemed to be coming from the wall but we couldn't figure it out until we followed a little slot canyon up the wall. Seriously the water was coming from the wall. Like its seeping out of the mud walls. Not from the top but the bottom. Craziest thing I've seen. Needless to say we took a million pics. A bit further up the mud walls opened up and we got to a small waterfall. All in all a great hike!!!!

So for dinner we drove down to a Mexican place a lady told us about the other night. On the way we realized we're not staying in the heart of Mui Ne. We'd read that the buses drop you off far away from the budget places hoping you'll stay at one of their 'partner' hotels. Well this is 100% true. It's not all that bad though cause our hotel is super nice, on the water and has a great pool. Anyway, we made it to the eatery and had some of the best food on this trip so far! Neither of us like Asian food very much so of course our amazing dinner consisted of pizza, fajitas and guacamole dip!!!! DELISH!

Tomorrow we're gonna lounge around the pool and do a little planning. Got a trip to Italy to work on!!!!

Pics:
1) Carolyn on the ATV!!!
2) Local lady in the fairy stream.
3) Ostrich. There were places that you could take a rise on an ostrich. One guy did it although he said he weighed 220 lbs! The poor bird almost buckled under his weight. I couldnt watch so I left. Awful.
4) Us in the fairy stream.
5) looking down one of the little slot canyons at the fairy stream.
6) The view from our hotel.
7) looking over the fairy steam.

Being an adult sucks

It's down to the wire, we need to make a major life decision and we have no idea which to choose. Michael applied to get his PhD and the two front runners are USF (St. Pete, FL) or SDSU (San Diego). There are so many reasons why each would be great, our hearts tell us USF but our heads tell us SDSU, being an adult sucks, 5 years ago this would have been easy. Last week we decided on USF for reasons I'll get into in a minute but then I couldn't sleep and felt like I was suffocating, it's more financially responsible to for us to stay in San Diego.

USF - offer is full tuition and 22k a year to be a research assistant. They have contacted Michael many times to see what they can do to get him to get him to go there. Degree is in Physical Oceanography.

Positives - Michael loves the feel of the school, big school but small dept for him on a separate campus much like it was when he got his masters. Seems more one and one.
- We already have family and friends there
- We have a transitional place to stay
- The cost of living is far less then CA

Negatives
- I'll have to find a job which means moving with no second income and I won't have insurance (I can get it through the Army if I'm in a bind). I'm in the middle of a job career crisis and am currently reevaluating what I want to be when I grow up but since we are traveling and the move would be soon after that time is a factor.
- The above assumes that for a while we won't be contributing to our future which scares us to death, your supposed to fund young and often and we do a pretty good job of that now.
- We would have to forever surrender our kitties to their awesome foster parents as the friends we are staying with are allergic and moving them via plane for 5+ hours is torture for them.

SDSU - offer is full tuition for three years, we pay for one year out of pocket. Degree is in Computation Science which is more technical than USFs degree. He'll be working with an advisor but he'd be another body sitting it a cubicle in a large room.

Positives- Michael can work half time while attending school and I can work full time therefore our lifestyle will change little. We'll keep our health insurance, contribute to our future and not exactly have to live like college students
- We love San Diego and although it's far from our families we have a great support group of friends
- We get to reunite with our fluffy friends

Negatives
- SDSU isn't accredited to give PhDs so his second year he'd have to pay out of pocket because he'd be attending Clairemont Graduate School in LA which means commuting for a year.
- Michael would have to work and go to school full time.
- Although the stability of my job is great, I hate it but the perks are so good I'm afraid I'll just stay.

Florida is a big life change and has a lot of 'what ifs'. If I get a decent paying job then I wouldn't have to make that much for it to be equal to what we'd both be making in San Diego and Michael could just concentrate on school but we'd give up the big security blanket of our current stable jobs.

San Diego is more stable but the school isn't as appealing and he'd have to work. The 'what if' here is that he can apply to a program through work that would pay him half time to attend school but it's competitive and if he got in it wouldn't be until year 2, also he'd owed work a year for every year they gave them.

Our decision has to be made in 10 days and we are completely torn.

Vietnam and I are not friends

Vietnam and I have had a rough ride thus far. It's been bad experience after after experience. It started with a pedicure. They walk around the streets handing out flyers, I find one, verify a price with the guy and am whisked away but I suddenly feel something off and should have ran at that point. The guy I talked to seemed to be arguing with a worker. The lady takes me up 5 flights of stairs to a dungeon type room with some chairs. Another woman appears and gets a bucket to rinse off my feet but doesn't rinse anything, the water jut sits there. As time goes on its apparent to me that the one working on my feet has no idea what she's doing. A painful, completely unsanitary (and yes I've already lowered my standards knowing where I was) mani/pedi ensues. I hand the lady my money and she tells me I owe her more, we go back and forth and I ask for the guy I talked to downstairs, she tells me he doesn't speak English and they work for the same person. After 5 minutes of going back and forth and getting no where I just left, I figured she had 5 flights to yell but she didn't say anything. Up until now I just would have paid it since this is a communist country and I've read a lot of stories where a dispute over $5 costs a tourist $100 because the police are corrupt and what not. By the time we leave I'm steaming. There's a massage place across from the hotel that a guest recommended to me so I go in for a foot massage and bad experience #2 occurs. It's dirty and not a foot massage, it was a one handed calf massage and this place seemed like 95% brothel 5% massage place. I leave unhappy, get to the hotel and check my shorts as its felt like she got oil on them and she did! I had a longer pair of shorts on rolled up so when I unroll them there are two huge streaks of oil. I immediately put them in the laundry, they return surprise surprise stained. I march over and tell the woman about my issue, I'm so fed up at this point but I keep cool, she shrugs and points to a spot on my leg saying that's where the massage goes up to. I brought two pairs of shorts to travel, looks like I now have one. I curse to myself for an hour about how much I hate this country.

Then this morning we load the bus to go to Mui Ne. Buying an open sleeper bus ticket is what most travelers do. You pay one price depending on the number of stops you want to make and can get on and off at will. We decided not to do it because we plan on taking the train at least once (Michael promised this one is more Harry Potter style!) so its cheaper to buy each leg. The other reason is because we read that there's no guarantee as to what kind of bus you'll get so you could be taking a 13 bus ride in a cramped crappy bus and they tend to drop you off far from the backpacker accommodations. Well that's what we're doing today but only for 5 hours. We are in a sleeper bus, we are crammed in like Asian sardines, I say Asian because there is NO way they had westerners in mind when they made these coffins. Your feet go under the sleeper in front of you but mine don't fit unless I sit straight up and then my head hits the ceiling. There is barely 12 inches between me and the next bottom row but the seats aren't aligned so that's a plus but the person on the top bunk and behind me has their foot a mere 10 inches from my head. And to top it all off while I'm writing this an ant crawled down my shirt.

*bonus the long haired backpacker next to me who looks like he hasn't showered in a week has a lovely croupy cough and an endless stream of snot. Fun fun

We arrived at Mui Ne and it has yet to impress me but our hotel has a pool on the "beach" which is nice. There's no actual beach just a place from the back of the hotel to walk right in the water. There is debris everywhere from the tropical storm they had this week and it looks like a lot of places are closed. When we arrived we were informed there wouldn't be power until the evening, no problem we figured it was from the storm but later we found out it happens once a week. The government shuts it off and sends it elsewhere (Cambodia?), we were told no one cares enough to invest in energy. Oh and Facebook is blocked!

Pics: me in my "seat"
Michaels leg room, there's no where to put your bags and since he had a middle seat he didn't get an air vent
Bug bites after Michael applied some anti itch cream, my legs are just as bad :(

Old boring crap

4/3/12:

We mixed it up a bit today and saw some old boring crap (as Carolyn calls anything which came before she was born) and some new crap. The old boring crap was the Ho Chi Minh City Museum and some other random sites. The new crap was a wonderful (translation: it had A/C) mall.

Incidentally, I'm very excited to leave Ho Chi Minh City cause I'm getting sick of typing it out! Especially on my iPhone which isn't exactly a dream to type on. I either have super fat fingers or this device hates me.

The museum was more of the same: pictures of the 'American Destruction War against Vietnam' and how Americans tortured everyone and blah blah blah. Ok let's be clear, there is nothing funny about war. But the fact that we've seen at least 7 different names for what we call the 'Vietnam War' is rather silly. Also, everyone is certainly entitled to believe whatever they want. But the clear bias seen in these museums is a little over the top. Besides that we saw some interesting artifacts which seemed more like some random lady's toothbrush or another old man's table rather than a legit historical trinket. The captions all said things like 'Mr Than Thui used this wimmy-diddle to defend the patriotic army.' The coolest part of the museum was a group of wedding studio photographers and models doing photo shoots. The wedding dresses were super pretty and one of the ladies had some serious hair!

We walked to the river after that and took some pics, dodged traffic and walked around. The mall was next up and a much needed A/C break. Not much going on except a sweet grocery store where we stocked up on basic needs like deodorant, Oreos and peanut butter :)

Later we had dinner at a 'real Vietnamese' restaurant called Pizza Hut! Yummy. Then we searched for a foot massage place for the Mrs. Capped the night with my new favorite fruit shake and watched the crowds walk by.

Tomorrow we head to the beach town of Mui Ne. Leaving here at 0745 with a 5'ish hour bus ride.

A quick shout out to our new great friends we met on Koh Rong (Kathleen and Nicole): my favorite phrase right now is Pagi Bu!!!! Carolyn is probably going to choke me in the next few days if I don't find another favorite phrase. For all other readers, Pagi Bu (probably not spelled right) means good morning lady (or something along those lines) in Indonesian Bahasa. Anyway, we saw a bar while walking around Ho Chi Minh city that reminded us of my favorite phrase. Check out the picture of Allez Boo.

Pics:
1) Carolyn's foot massage
2) $0.50 beer!!
3) The foot massage place only uses USA products.
4) Everyone was super happy when the North 'liberated' the south ... According to the museum.
5) Apparently Spam is a hot item this year. The grocery store locks it up!
6) Allez Boo!!!!!

Good morning Vietnam

Since turning 30 I find it impossible to sleep past 0730 but I am currently married to Rip Van Winkle, Michael was not kidding in his earlier post about not doing anything with a hour starting in 0. Luckily for me the hotel provides breakfast so I knew he'd have to be up by 0900!

At breakfast we met a couple from Estonia who have been traveling for two years. They got jobs in Australia making so much money that they are finally heading home just to buy an apartment each and use the income to travel more. They gave us some tips for the city and we headed out for a walking tour.

First stop was the Ben Thanh Market to look around. I realized today that we go to the mall a lot in the States and generally come home with something but here we just do a lot of window shopping, it's easier to say no when you have to carry it for months. We did pick up some interesting flower tea, it's a dried flower that you use for up to 5 cups of tea. We picked one up for my Iraq battle and one for the Blue/Fleizachs. Michael's excited about experimenting this new find with Greg. Then we made our way over the Reunification Palace which is completely circa 1960s architecture.

Next up was the war remembrance museum for the 'American' war. It's called the American war of aggression and going through it you would think that we came in guns blazing and left without a single causality. To us it was clearly one sided but its their country and they can perceive it as they wish. It did make us appreciate the US and its ability to show both sides to most situations. 65% of Vietnamese citizens are under the age of 30 and there's currently a two child restriction on families so most of the population wasn't alive during the war.

Right after exiting the museum Michael had a fall of epic proportions and the Vietnamese got to share it with him. He has no idea what happened but all of a sudden he's yelling "it won't stop" and I hear a local yelling "whoa whoa whoa". I look over and Michael is in a complete split. He say his foot just wouldn't stop moving. Since he's a pro at recovery and people are clearly laughing he's up and walking in a flash, it's not until we're down the road a little that we access the damage and I'm bent over in laughter. Luckily he's got some heavy duty flip flops that have dual anchors because one came out and we were pretty far from our hotel. After he recovered we made our to the next stop on our tour, Notre Dame Cathedral and the post office, stopped at some travel agents to figure out how to get around. I ended the evening with an awful pedicure and an equally awful foot massage. Michael ended the evening with .50 street beers.

-M16 at the war museum, yep that's the same weapon I had in Iraq in 2011!
-almost a complete causality
-That's a happy new year ball behind us
-Cuba and Vietnam are best friends, yeah we had nothing to worry about, right?? I like how they made they made the Cuban hand dark
-Michael with his favorite SE Asia shake, I had to stop him from going twice today

Tropical Storm Pakhar

4/1/12:

So that crazy rain I wrote about in my post a few minutes ago ... Yea that's Tropical Storm Pakhar. Our first tropical storm of the year and it's in Vietnam!!! Holy cow this trip has everything.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/typhoon-pakhar-struck-vietnam-as-a-tropical-storm-at-about-0600-gmt-on-1-april/