Saturday, November 25, 2006 at 6:39 PM
hmm, what shall i say, OT2 was a F-R-E-A-K-I-N-G H-O-L-I-D-A-Y!!! heck, even fansipan was fun and enjoyable. arrgh, image explosion now, all bursting out, sianz. vietnam is well, as wilson always says, madness interactive. so i shall try to remember this madness day by day. DAY 1saw a lot of weird stuff on scooters that night in hanoi, a 5 person family squeezed on a scooter going against traffic, teenages as young as us doing initial B, yep. night train was an interesting experience though, bunking with a vietnamese and 2 french. total communication breakdown. only knew "Sin Chow", "bonjour" and "merci". try stoned silence for 10 hours and you'd get what i mean. DAY 2saw a pig getting butchered up in the morning, apparently i only saw the tail getting chopped off. wilson's bunk saw the pig's head getting mutilated. yuck.so we arrived at Lao Chai station where things became madness interactive again, throngs of people crowded outside the station, scooter taxis, touts...blah blah. went off to Sapa which was freaking high up in the clouds, something like Genting Highlands. Royal Hotel seemed royal enough, much better than what we expected. First Contact with chicken noodles with soup, which seemed heavenly at first, simple noodles with MSG. got on the bus to some national park which contained fansipan, apparently we thought that the porter baskets were light. big mistake. imagine carrying an anvil on your back with 2 uncomfortable straps. ouch. what happened next was just alot of mud. which i thankfully was protected from by my wonderful boots. what a wonderful feeling dry feet and socks are on the mountain, oops, hahahasomehow the porters managed to bring Vietnamese subway for lunch, amazing shit. finally reached base camp which actually sold coke (fine seet you win this time), tiger and mineral water. that's 2 on the amazing shit count. dinner was a 5 course dinner with almost unlimited rice. in the middle of the mountains. 3 on the amazing shit count. saw alot of stars that night, porters and the guides held a bbq, with loads of happy water and weed. learnt vietnamese maths that night, mut hai batt, YEO!!!DAY 3yawnz. climb to summit became quite boring. quite some abseiling to do. apparently, gloves do prevent rope burns. hmm. the summit was quite windy and cold too, the porters actually sang "Vietnam, Ho Chih Minh!!!!" at the top. don't you just love being in a communist country. wind nearly swept us off and the guides showed us that the forehead is good tool for cracking hardboiled eggs. that's 4 now. then the porters began swinging from tree to tree and hopping their way down on SLIPPERS. 5 on the amazing shit count. quite a boring night of packing and bandaging of wounds. didn't really feel much reaching the top, afterall, we had been through korbu. which i might add was well, challenging. DAY 4lotsa mud again downhill.boots rock. had fruits awaiting us at the end thanks to the porters. its times like that which make you wanna join their ranks, hahaha. rest of the day spent in Sapa exploring up and down. kinda thought i lost my baggage for an instant. apparently there's the top shelf. those H'mong girls are quite smart, they actually pick out your name from a conversation. neat huh. the hotel was pretty creeapy at 12 midnight when there's a storm going on outside and stella screamed like a mad women, which practically woke up half the hotel. DAY 5one entire day to sapa. me and eugene explored the city till the max, saw lotsa weird stuff. saw a buffalo head in a bucket, with the rest of it spread through 3 stalls? amazing what it does to your lunch. hahaha, saw first hand of vietnamese initial B, they are mad. aww, man, i miss Sapa. overnight train again, as usual, i was alone. great. apparently there was a mix up, so we had to find our guide, who was somewhere along the train. imagine. then, there was a major arguement between the french and vietnamese in my carriage. luckily i didn't piss them off, otherwise it would have been one heck of a battle. DAY 6 and 7breakfast which was a buffet, totally rocked. what more can an odacer want?took the slow and boring coach to haoloong bay. found out that a hurricane tore through it the night before. freaky. some ships became submersibles, bless them. haoloong bay is nice!!!!! totally relaxing, what a holiday should be. first time we did night kayaking, some scary shit considering we almost got lost in strange waters. we all attempted suicide by jumping off the boat, luckily all attempts at it were failed. went back to hanoi where we had the longeeeestttt dinner of all. i waited 2 hours for my steak, hahaha, well, that's hanoi for you. DAY 8rule 1 of crossing the road: never step back. rule 2 of crossing the road: motorists are skilled. they will auto siam you if you freeze in the middle of the roadrule 3 of crossing the road: honks are an effort at healthy communicationwith these rules, you can travel hanoi!
Monday, November 13, 2006 at 10:40 PM
4 more days to fansipan, where we'll be freezing our butts off. starting to appreciate all the creature comforts that i have, aircon (not that i would be needing it on fasipan), a soft bed, warm bath, warm meals. fianlly in the OT mood, which means that the mad rush to pack my bag has begun, arrrrghhhhh, i suck at packing. totally. just look at my OLC bag, which was a dump. gonna need to pack properly this time.
Friday, November 10, 2006 at 2:14 AM
yesssssssss, PW'S OVER!!!! heard the advert for "Just Friends", "the words that a guy least wants to hear from a girl is we're just friends", it totally ain't true. guys and girls can be well, just friends.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006 at 10:14 AM
its hard to imagine any incentive when going out with parents, afterall, they would only find the time to criticise you. which would totally piss you off. and make you in no mood for anything at all. PW's gonna be over soon, woah, some people were shouting out loud "PW'S OVER!!!", gosh, how i envy them. grrr, just 1 day more. and the nightmare would be over. then we'll leave it to the J1 batch next year to deal with it. haha
Sunday, November 05, 2006 at 9:25 PM
was sitting outside a department store today when i wondered if everyone had a favourite toy sometime in his or her life. no doubt the favourite toy changes, from a ball, to an action figure or a doll, maybe an iPod now. and the old toy gets chucked away. its weird that you can feel that your toy is the best one in the whole wide world even if you know that it has a million other copies in the world.