Alright, here goes my Vietnam update!

Sat (Feb 17): Skipping this. Read the runabout here.

Sun (Feb 18): We started our day with a 1/2 day tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels with Sinh Cafe, Vietnam's largest tour provider. As it was during the Tet holidays, there were plenty of travelers taking tours that day. So we stood in a pack of sardines in front of the Sinh Cafe office for 30 mins while waiting for our bus to board. The Cu Chi Tunnels are a series of tunnels created by the people in the Cu Chi area during their resistance against the Americans during the Vietnam War. During the tour, we saw how they structured their tunnels, how they lived, and traps and weapons used to defend their position. A short 15 minute video made in the 196o's showed life around that time, with an emphasis on killing Americans. The black-and-white video introduced a few men and women who were given "American Killer Awards". I'll bet the Americans on the tour didn't appreciate that too much. I also fired 5 rounds of M-16 and an AK47. Very loud. Pretty fun. And got kind of close to the target.

The rest of the day with Saigon Hotpot is described quickly here.

Mon (Feb 19): We spent out morning in Cholon (Chinatown). But with Tet still in the air, most stops were closed, and there wasn't too much to see on the streets. Cholon's probably best known for two things: Binh Tay Market (which was closed) and the pagodas/temples. So, we casually made our way around 6 or 7 temples and pagodas shown on our Lonely Planet map. After a few, yes, they get to be repetitive. But each of them has something somewhat interesting. Part of the fun is also imitating the locals in their praying traditions. In many pagodas, there is a wooden horse. People pray to it, touch it's head, waddle under its belly, and shake its bell (no, not THAT bell... a real bell hanging from its neck). What I liked the most were the circular incenses hanging from the ceiling in a cone shape. Kind of neat. Though kind of dirty with all the ashes landing on your head and shoulders as you walk beneath them. But still, kind of neat visually.

In the afternoon, we were joined by Saigon Hotpot members Linh and Ngoc. At only 23 years old, Linh is the founder of Saigon Hotpot. Together, we went to Central Saigon, down Dong Khoi street (the high-end street). Around that area, we saw People's Committee Building, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Central Post Office.

After circling around Central Saigon, a bus ride took us to Binh Quoi Tourist Village, which is basically a large park area and a buffet all for a flat entry fee. With Saigon Hotpot's help, we got in for free and just went in to walk around without eating. We sort of regretted it later because the food looked pretty good and seemed fairly traditionally Vietnamese. In hindsight. We ended up having a very cheap dinner (<$1US for Hue noodle soup; Hue is a city about 10 hours North) just behind Ben Thanh Market. Although the cheap noodles weren't altogether too bad. And pretty street (i.e. local).

Tues (Feb 20): Another Sinh Cafe tour - this time a one-day trip to the Mekong Delta (Ben Tre and My Tho). This tour was kicked off with sleeping on a bus for 3 hours, and then a motor boat ride. First stop was at a rice paper factory (and when I say factory, don't think big machinery; think primeval equipment like woks, rulers, and hand packaging). We sat aboard a row boat through a winding path within the delta while donning Vietnamese straw hats. We had a short stop for fruit and some painfully screechy Vietnamese singing. From there, we hopped onto a carriage pulled by a small horse to a coconut factory, where they make products out of coconut shells, and had some tasty honey tea with bees flying about trying to get a bit of that sweet honey goodness. Another motorboat took us to a coconut candy factory.

With a bit of leftover time back to HCMC, we swung by the People's Committee Building and Rex Hotel again to see them lit up at night.

I'll write about Vietnam soon, but wanted to share a link. One of the t-shirts I bought in Vietnam had some tape residue from the "size" sticker (which shows "M M M M M M" for medium). I just found a great little PDF from Cornell University called "Removing Stains at Home", which provides solutions for removing 250 types of stains. It's an old publication (2002), but new to me. Might be useful for those of you having babies right about now. Of course, it just depends on whether you can get your hands on the materials they state.

Removing Stains at Home

Back in Taipei.

It was a disasterous end to a great trip.

Checking out of our hotel took 15 minutes because we had to sort out some mis-charges (they thought we drank from the room minibar) and our complicated room bookings made things more difficult. BK, NK, and I left our hotel at 10:50am for our 12:45pm flight. The taxi driver took a slower route to the airport and it cost us 104,000 VND (USD$1 = 16,000 Vietnamese Dong) - in the past, we'd only paid about 64,000 VND. Our check-in took a long time too, because the Eva Air lady couldn't find our flight bookings in the system. Then we had to pay a $14USD/person airport tax, which should be paid, but a lot of people get away without paying it -- but we didn't.

After overpaying for the taxi ride, between 3 people, we only had 6,000 VND left (about $0.37 USD). So, I decided to try to spend it at the airport stores leading up to the boarding gate. I got to a shop that sold a bunch of little things. I asked a lady at a store what I could buy for 6,000 dong, and she asked a guy behind her. The guy, perhaps her manager, pointed her to something and said something in Vietnamese. She walked over and picked up a pack of candy. Then, she walked to the cashier while ripping off the price tag. Of course, seeing this, I make a bee line to the candy rack and check it myself. $0.25 US. I walk back to her, she gives me the candy pack, and says "This is 6,000 dong." I asked her "Isn't this 25 cents?" she says yes. Since I only had a 5,000VND bill and a 1,000 coin, I gave her 5,000VND and walked away. Damn people trying to dishonestly make money off foreigners.

Boarding the plane was delayed about 15 minutes, but we got to Taoyuan International Airport on time at 5pm. During the flight, I had the pleasure of having a child sit behind me. I need not explain more than to give 3 words: banging, kicking, and crying. I hate kids on planes.

At the Taiwan customs, it took the 3 of us more than 30 mins to get through amidst a packed room of arriving travellers.

Finally, after getting out of the departure gate, NK and I bought our bus tickets to get back to Hsinchu (a ride with a switch midway at ChongLi bus hub). After 45 minutes on our bus, it seemed as if we should have made our change at the bus hub 15 minutes earlier -- then I saw the Hsinchu highway exit pass. So I talked to the bus driver to discover we boarded the wrong bus and were heading to Taichung, another hour away (which meant we'd have to take another hour to get back). But the driver was kind enough to let us off at the next highway exit in Toufen. From there, we took another bus to the Hsinchu train station. And then another taxi ride to my office where we left our scooters.

All in all, it took us more than double the time to get home, and probably close to double the price.

But up until to the day of returning, Vietnam was a great trip. We saw a lot, learned a lot, and enjoyed the different sights and sounds. I'll slowly start putting my impressions and experiences from the trip over the next few days.

Chuc Mung Nam Moi from Vietnam!

We arrived yesterday in Vietnam. The weather here sits around 32 degrees C, and it's not really all too bad.

Vietnam's much cleaner than I thought, actually. Although you'd hardly call is clean. Our hotel sits in the Backpacker Alley in Saigon, and at roughly $10/person, it's not too bad.

Just a quick recap of the last couple of days:
Sat (Feb 17): First went to the War Remnants Museum, Xa Loi Pagoda, Spring Flower Festival 2007, Mirianman Temple, and finally walked around La Loi Street to observe the Tet (Vietnamese New Year) lights and crowds.

Sun (Feb 18): Spent the morning on a 1/2 day tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 1 hour away from HCMC. Got back to the hotel where we met with our voluntary guides from Saigon Hotpot. They took us down Nguyen Hue flower street, and then we went to a Saigon Hotpot member's house where his mother cooked us dinner and we had a small celebration the Vietnamese way. It was great, and their friendliness and hospitality were surprising, geniune, and very appreciated. Tomorrow, we have a long day ahead of us. Lots to see. Lots to do. Better get some sleep.

Simon Fraser University recently launched its new SFU brand. Lead by a simple red block with "SFU" in white and a new "Thinking of the World" tagline, the website was has been redesigned too.


The Common Look and Feel website gives more information about the design, as well as downloadable templates.

Between this and UniverCity, it seems there've been a lot of changes since graduating only 3 years ago.

Three years in a row I haven't won any prizes at our company (lunar-)year-end party. But we had a good party this time, with lots of red wine. Lots of people drunk. It was fun. At at least I won the largest prize at our departmental party, which is good enough as a 4th place prize at the company party (value-wise). So, I guess I can't complain.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Lunch for the next few days will be salads.
Today's salad (which won't differ much from tomorrow's):
- romaine lettuce
- red bell peppers
- orange bell peppers
- thin cucumbers
- mushrooms
- alfalfa sprouts
- another type of green sprouts
- cherry tomatoes
- japanese salad dressing
- fresh ground pepper
- vegetarian chicken nuggets (on the side)

Never been fan of mouthwash, unless it was in someone else's mouth - in which case, I encourage it. For one, mouthwash burns. But more importantly, I always found it too inconvenient: the uncapping, the pouring, the drinking, the re-capping, the swishing, and finally the spitting. Not to mention that there's always a bit of liquid left in the cap when you screw it back onto the bottle. But finally, I found a way around all those unnecessary steps.

I put my Citrus Listerine into a squeeze bottle with a little pull-off cap. No longer going for exact measurements, I just pull off the cap and squeeze as much as I want into my mouth and swish away. My mouthwashing time overhead is reduced to 2 - 3 seconds. Damn I'm good.

Some final thoughts on Japan...

• Some Japanese people spit too. And not to the side, but right in front of them.
  
• Toilets in Canada are plumbing. Toilets in Japan are electronic devices. They have seats that heat your bum bum, electronic consoles for bidet, wash, spray (and at different angles and strengths), have gears that lower the toilet and cover slowly instead of letting them drop, and provide a handwash with the water used to fill the tank for the next flush. This is the kind of toilet I'll have when I buy a new home.
  
• The more I see, the more I realize that Japanese people don't really dress up all that much. Only in certain areas.
  
• But food in Japan isn't as expensive as everyone says. You can get a ramen (noodles) for 670 yen, or a chicken curry + miso soup for 290 yen. But of course, you can also eat very pricy meals here.
  
• Women will do their make-up on the subways, which is kind of strange when you see two people sitting next to each other.
  
• There are a lot of homeless people. I've mainly seen them around the Tokyo National Museum area and Ueno Park.
  
• Polite? Only kind of. They're polite in the Asian way of being polite, but not when they need to cram onto a packed subway. Then it's no holds barred. They'll push and shove until they're on, and leave it to the people behind them to push and shove more.

[written 2 days ago]

I guess it's hard to keep up with blogging while on vacation. The days are long and packed with activities, which doesn't leave much time for sitting down and giving updates. But I'm doing that now.

The exhibition I attended was okay. Slightly on the boring side for me. As I expected, this wasn't really a pressure situation, and there wasn't too much work for me to do but stand around and help with the demos if need be.

Saturday:
Headed from Shin Yokohama to Tokyo, and met some coworkers (in Japan for a ski-trip) at their hotel. Went to Yoyogi Park (dead grass and bare trees?), Harajuku (uneventful on a Saturday), Shinjuku (just walking around and shopping for gifts), and then to Hard Rock Cafe at Roppongi. A few (4 - 5) coworkers bought Nintendo Wii's, which is much cheaper (and available) in Japan. That night, I stayed at CY's place - which is much further out, smaller and dirtier than BC's. But who's complaining?

Sunday:
CY, his friend N, and I went to Harajuku and took pictures of some of the interesting artifacts (people) all dressed up. Visited Meiji Shrine (pretty nice), and went to Shinjuku for the rest of the evening. The evening was an eat-fest, having different kinds of katsu, sweets, and maki's in a food center downstairs from Shinjuku Station, then hitting up Yakitori Alley, and finally landing at an izakaya restaurant. In between the eating, we also went to the Toyko Metropolitan Government Building to overlook Tokyo at night from 45 floors up. Stayed at BC's place that night.

Monday:
Was up-and-at-'em before 7am to go to Tsukiji Market where top notch sushi is to be had with the day's catch. It's a huge market with tons of edible goods from the sea. According to most travel resources and tourists, you should go for a ~3000 yen breakfast of sushi at one of the restaurants next to the market. My ski-trip coworkers told me that they had 3100 yen and 3500 yen meals -- roughly 10 or 11 sushi pieces. Based on what I saw at the market, and from I gathered from them, I decided to approach it differently. I started with a 3000 budget and decided to buy my own seafood straight from market-folk, thereby cutting out the middle man. My critria: no cooking necessary, and as little as possible (because they normally sell in larger quantities). I got two pieces of Japanese tuna cut into sashimi slices, Hokkaido uni (sea urchin), raw shrimp ready to serve, 5 large scallop, fish eggs (the big kind, not ebiko), and salmon sashimi mixed in some flavoring. Then I bought some microwaved white rice, soy sauce, and wasabi from a convenient store. I ended up going over budget, but for my 3842 yen, I got far more food than my coworkers - though less variety, and possibly lesser quality (assuming the people buying for restaurants pick grade A ingredients).

I made another trip to the Metropolitan Building to get some "near aerial" photos during the day. Then met CY at Asakusa. Walked around Asakusa until after it got dark (around 6pm or 7pm), and went to Akihabara. Met up with BC for dinner, randomly finding a restaurant. This restaurant, whose interiour was designed to look like a cave, had incredibly cheap prices... but deceivingly so. A mountain of deep fried chicken filets just $550 yen, and a large piece of fish only $700+ yen. But what they didn't tell us was that each person had a table charge of $380 yen. Anyway, all added up, still a pretty good price for the food that we had.

Tuesday:
My last day in Japan was spent walking around Ueno. Packed most of whatever hadn't been packed in the morning, and then walked out to a couple temples and then to the Tokyo National Museum. After the museum, and went to a couple more temples. The highlight of the day was going to Jomyoin Temple, where I saw an old man sitting quietly alone painting the temple. I said 'hello' and just watched him painting for a few seconds. Then I asked him if I could take his picture. He showed me his beautiful artwork from his sketchbook, let me take photos of them, and then gave me a postcard-sized copy of one of his paintings, which I asked him to sign on the back. All this done with only hand gestures and "this" and "thank you" in Japanese. Went around Ueno a bit more afterwards, and went back to BC to pack up the rest.

Now I'm on the Skyliner train back to Narita Airport. Looking forward to getting off my feet and getting some rest.