MERRY CHRISTMAS

🎶Last christmas I gave you my heart but the very next day you gave it away🎶

We have been singing Christmas songs for a while so We are super excited for our Christmas dinner!

I think we are all very excited about the gift exchange! 

We had a very nice dinner and after much waiting it was time for the gift exchange! Yeay!

OLeang had a game for us to play, she put a number on all the gifts and we each had to pick a number. After having a gift in front of us, a bowl with a dice was passed around the table and until the 19 of us had rolled the dice we could open the gift.

So this is how it worked... 

Dice had 6 numbers (duh!) and depending on what we got this is what we did:

1- pass gift once to the left

2- pass gift twice to the right

3- pass gift three times to the left

4- pass your gift four times to the right

5- exchange your gift with the person across from you

6- exchange your gift with anybody you want

After much gift passing we finally were able to open them!

We went one by one to see what everybody got! The gift wrapping was phenomenal! We had one gift wrapped in a KFC chicken nugget box, another one inside a spicy shrimp chips package, toilet paper, newspaper, extreme masking tape, magazines, and even a double wrapped with red and green condoms (gross!)

I thought very hard what to get that would be suitable for a boy or a girl, after much thought I decided to put together a survival kit:

"Vietnam survival kit"

VIETNAMESE HAT: To protect you from the sun or keep you dry on the rain

FACE MASK: To protect you from the fumes and keep your lungs healthy

PHO BOWL: Because every Vietnamese loves pho

CHOPSTICKS: No explanation needed

SPOON: Because slurping pho is unacceptable

INCENSE: For all that praying in hundred thousand temples in Vietnam

Some of the other gifts were: beers.. TONS of beers, tiger balm, cards, a kite, hats, a rubber chicken!!! Coasters, and even a sleeping sheet for all those dirty night trains!!!

After so much fun....  group picture :-)

Bicycle ride through Hoi An

After rushing from our cooking class we went on  a great bike ride in Hoi An!

I thought that my worst bike ride ever was in Zambia going thru bumpy roads but this ride wins the medal!

We rode through rice paddies and on very bumpy one small lane muddy or sandy paths! Many of the girls had a hard time on the bike and we had 2 minor accidents and one big one! 

The scenery was beautiful! Going through the rice paddies was kind of magical even though it's the wet season and there isn't any rice actually growing. 

Our first stop was at an organic farm where we were able to all water the plants Vietnamese style!!!

Our second stop was at a place where we could ride water buffaloes! I decided to skip it since I had zero interest on getting on top of a very dirty animal and get inside a pool of extra dirty water and get my pants wet!

Sophia and Laurie (aka Loli) decided to go first! While riding the buffalo, Laurie's decided to take a huge dump right there and then on the water where they were dipping their feet... Gross!

We continued our journey and we stopped at the beach! It was windy and cold but Lukas and Kai wanted to go swimming! The ocean had massive waves and looked extremely strong. I do not know much about oceans other than they can suck you up and kill you so to me it seemed like a bad idea to go swimming and the whole time they were in the water I was super nervous that our group would lose two members (in El Salvador, it is really dangerous!)

On our way back to the hotel we got into a boat that took us back to downtown Hoi An.

Cooking lesson :-)

For this morning Becca, Anne Marie, Dini, and I booked a cooking lesson!!! Yeay!

Apparently it is a very popular thing to do while in Hoi An. I think Edgar as well as Alex recommended it to me so I knew I just had to do it!

The morning started with a little rain so when we got to the restaurant the chef gave all of us traditional Vietnamese hats to wear to the market to keep us dry! We all looked so cute that the restaurant owner even sent a photographer to take pictures of us at the market to promote the cooking classes.

               

                

                   

Since I don't eat meat they were able to adjust my menu to seafood... The only bad thing was that  Becca had to pair up with me and couldn't cook meat for herself!

As a group we all walked to the market where the chef explained to us how things work at the market. For fish,  he said the best thing is to get there early in the morning when the boats arrive and get them from the fishermen because what happens is that all the ladies selling seafood have bought them from the fishermen and now are re selling are a higher price (makes sense!)

Then we passed through the dead chickens, followed by the fruits and veggies. The chef showed and explained to us all the different kids of eggs they sell at the market and different ways of cooking them.

After that we went inside the market, we passed through the meat section which was extremely sad! They even had lined up hearts!!!!!! :-(

Then we stopped at a stall with noodles, spices, flours, batters, cutters, etc. He explained the differences between the flours and the spices as well as the different kinds of rice papers and what makes a good spring roll. The guy got a little pushy on us buying from that one lady at the market and the prices seem very tourist like, as in very high for regular Vietnamese people!

Once we bought a couple of things we went back to the veggies and got ingredients for our meal and more cutting boards, knives, and peelers.

Menu of the day:

Hoi An rice pancake and shrimp

Banana flower salad with shrimp and

Grilled fish with lemongrass and chili

Here are the chefs

We first started with the sweet fish sauce... It was extremely easy to make!

Then we made the pancake, Banh Xeo. For it we needed special pancake flour, turmeric and other seasonings and shrimp... The batter had to be very watery, similar to milk, then we had to put it in a really hot pan with oil and wait until it was brown and crispy on the edges to fold it in half and then turn it around!

After we were all done it was time to eat!!!!

We were given plates with some greens and rice paper so we cut our pancake in half, put it on top of rice paper, open up pancake and put the greens and then roll, Dip on fish sauce and enjoy :-) yummm

Our second dish was a delicious salad with banana flower that could be replaced with mango or green papaya! For dressing we used the same fish sauce!

Our last dish was fish covered in spices and wrapped up in banana leaves.

HoiAn

By 8:30 am we made it to Hoi An and headed to our hotel! 

The rooms weren't ready so we had to leave our bags in the reception and find a place to have breakfast! It was early so we didn't have so many options! OLeang finally found a spot, we ordered and it took longer than an hour to get our food!

Many restaurants here have pictures on their menu so tourists can identify what they want but this restaurant was beyond deceptive! The actual food had NOTHING to do with the food in the pictures!

Anne Marie ordered bread and jam... It took probably 75 mins to get it and it was a mini baguette with a tablespoon of jam on the side... 75 MINUTES!!!! And she decided to ask for butter and I jokingly said "you didn't order any butter!" When the waitress came and she asked OLeang had to get involved and they actually said NO! Because she only ordered it jam... How crazy is that?

I came to Southeast Asia because I wanted to learn more about their culture and have a similar experience to my trip to Africa but so far people in here have been very disappointing! I don't know if it is because I'm in very touristy places but I get the sense that all these people want is the tourists money! Nobody makes an effort to talk to you and their attitude is not appealing at all. During my taxi rides in Africa I was able to have conversations or at least learn a little of their language but over here is like they are not interested at all... They don't answer your questions and if they do they only say "yes"... Even when "yes" doesn't even make sense!

I am not trying to be negative or critical but people in here, mostly Vietnam, seem just rude and not cold.

Thinking back about my experience in Cambodia, people in Vietnam are for sure less friendly! I'm trying to think that it is a language barrier but I just get the sense that this is just the way people are in Vietnam!

Now back to Hoi An... After our 2-hour breakfast,checking our emails while waiting and playing cards, we finally got to see what Hoi An is all about! 

Hoi An is very famous for tailoring! They make whatever you want in 24 hours!!! So as soon as we left the breakfast place we started seeing tons of tailoring shops!

Hoi An is probably one of the cutest cities in Vietnam! It looked very French and is well preserved! The city is  part of UNESCO's world heritage thereford is very well preserved.  I wish I could capture the beauty and charm of Hoi An in pictures but it is mostly impossible... You have to come and experience it for yourself!

The downtown area (touristy area) is covered with antique looking houses all painted yellow! There are lanterns hanging everywhere and at night it really looks magical :-)

Our first day here we had all day to explore on our own. I went out with Becca to see if we wanted to get some things made. I decided not to but she went for a dress.

After the fitting we walked around town and booked a cooking lesson for tomorrow!Yeay!

We went into a pagoda and then saw this ladies out and they let us borrow her basket ( in exchange of buying fruit, of course!!!)

Hoi An by the river at night:

At night we all went out to an all you can eat Vietnamese "restaurant" on the side of the street!

We had spring rolls, banh xeo (Vietnamese pancake), lots of BBQ meat, and lots of veggies. All the food was supposed to be wrapped in rice paper and stuffed with the meat and spring rolls and garnish with greens and dipped in fish sauce.  We all ended up paying 90,000 Dong ($4.50) for our dinner and we were stuffed!

Night train from hell

So our guide had warned us about this train and how different is was going to be compared to the first one because we were not the first ones to sleep on it for the day! She said to expect dirty sheets and maybe even some smell.

This time I got to share the cabin with Candace and Kyle, and Beck! 

The previous passengers in our cabin had had sunflower seeds and the chewed skins were all over the floor and they had even left bags of chewed up skin on the cabin! 

Kyle's bed was full of long black hair and looked disgusting! I wanted to cry and throw up! Haha I remembered that I had a pair of gloves on my first aid kit so I put them out and we took sheets off and turned the mattress around... Not big help!

I spent most of my time playing cards in the room next door with Lukas, Sophia, and Becca. While playing Candace got to the room to inform me that our room has cockroaches.... Lovely!

Long story short... It was a lovely train ride all the way to Hanoi!