Vietnam

hello out there! So I'm in Vietnam now and have finally found a computer (my homestay doesn't have one. And I've finally posted some pictures! So we arrived in Vietnam after flying an hour 1/2 to Jo-burg, waiting there an hour 1/2, flying 13 hours to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, waiting there 4 hours and then flying 3 hours to Hanoi, about 24 hours total of travelling! Yikes. We got there and drove about an hour into town past all these rice fields and people working in them. We stopped the bus a few blocks from our hotel/backpacker place and then had to walk the rest of the way cuz the streets are so crazy. There's motorbikes, bicycles, women with baskets on their shoulders, people selling street food, people walking, animals, etc. so there realjly is no room for a bus. We got our rooms and unfortunately as it turned out me and 3 other girls were accidently assigned a 3 person room (but we didn't know til we left) so 3 of us ended up in one bed and one girl in the other really small mattress on the floor. The first night we had a buffet arranged for us and then afterwards a few of us went and enjoyed drinks on the roof of a building.
The next day a few of us set out for the Perfume Pagoda, one of the oldest pagodas in Vietnam. WE took a bus 2 hours and then got out at a river that was full of long, wooden boats being rowed by women who rowed us for an hour to get to the pagoda. We banked and walked alongside a bunch of make-shift restaurants and continued walking up the cobblestone path that leads to the base of the mountain. The path up to the pagoda is about a 45 minute hike but it's all along a cobblestone path so it's not that rough, although it's humid as hell here and ergo, i was sweatin like a beast. All along the path are people selling you things all the way up and there's resting stops with fans if you're willing to pay for them. At the top you descend down some stairs into a cave which houses the pagoda and once inside the cave you can pick various relics to offer money to so that you can always have love or money or food or something. I didn't offer any money cuz frankly I didn't really understand waht I was supposed to do...we left the pagoda and some of us took the cable car down which was really beautiful. Then we left, went back down the river, got back to Hanoi, went to a killer veggie restaurant and hit the sack.
The next day me and Elana wandered around Hanoi, walking through the food market that has all kinds of crazy foods like pots of eels, fish, crabs, squid and then caged dogs, cats, mice (yeah, they eat em) and then wandered around looking at stores. We came back to the backpacker to get picked up by our families. Me and my girl Kimberlynn (vegetarian from San Fran who goes to Barnard, just like my last roommate) got picked up by our host mom whose name we can't pronounce so we call her Miss Moon. She's cute and she lives with her really old mother, her 15 year old niece Miz and her sister. There's a few other various people who come in and out of the house but we're not too sure who they are. The house is 4 stories like a lot in Hanoi because they're only about 8 ft wide and the plots of land are so small you have no choice but to build up. We have to take off our shoes before coming in and then one wears slippers around the house. Me and Kim are living on the 3rd floor with Kim taking Miz's room and me sleeping in the library/tv room. The whole family is really nice and they make me tofu, veggies and rice with soy sauce so that's working out pretty well. Gotta watch out for food and water here cuz that stuff can make you siiick. Especially the kids trying the street food (which is pretty much all there is here) cuz that can really make you sick when you're not used to it.

So people in Vietnam stare at us constantly cuz we are just a crazy alien species. They take pictures of us too. There ARE other tourists in Vietnam though, so don't be thinkin things are like when we were in Brazil. And the majority of the population speaks English (it's required to be taught in schools now) so the language barrier isn't too rough. We are learning vietnamese though, 30 minutes every day and I've been making flash cards cuz I really want to try! It's a hard language though, it's tonal and there are 6 different tones and if you don't pronounce something with the right tone people have NO idea what you're saying.

On the subject of weird things people eat here, nearby is a village known for its uses of snakes including cutting open a snake and placing its still beating heart into a glass of rice wine and drinking it whole so that the snake heart is still beating in your stomach. Apparently it makes the boys more potent and gets you drunker than shizzle. I for one will not be participating.

Oh yeah, another weird thing here: the showers. The showers stick out of the side of the wall by the toilet and you just like, shower in there and the water gets everywehre and the floor is always wet. Who designed this system? And there's really nowhere to stand and you're holding th shower thing with one hand and trying to do everything else with the other and it's...hard.

So on to the pictures!
This is my family from the Bo-Kaap, Moena and Achmat. I can't remember if I posted this already.

This is Siziwe, my host mom from Langa

From the first day of Spring break. There's a lot of babboons in south africa and sometimes they're in the road. Sometimes there's 24 of them in the road.

Spring break, me feeding elephants!

Spring break at Monkeyland, lemurs!

At bird land, the bird that was trying to eat my dad's glasses and wouldn't get off him.

The street my hotel in Vietnam was on

These ladies are everywhere, carrying pineapple and who knows what. If you stop to look at them long enough they'll try to put this on your shoulder to show you how heavy it is.

The river we went on to the perfume pagoda

River again

More river

Descending the stairs to teh cave of the perfume pagoda. those are prayer flags coming out from it

Inside the cave, various things like this

The cable car ride down from the pagoda

A temple at the bottom

Remember those restaurants by the shore of the river we walked by? They all have dead dogs, cats, deer, whatever hanging outside. Some are whole like the dog on the left but some are chopped off bits at a time to cook like the dog in the middle. It was so sad and disturbing, but I had to take a picture so people would BELIEVE that this is real

And sadly, a lot of restaurants near where we're studying (inside the Ho Chi Minh museum) tie up live deer, chop off their antlers, and either wait a bit to kill them like this poor deer that's been tied to this lamp post for 2 days or wound them and wait while they slowly die on the sidewalk and then they cook them. Yup, Vietnam.