Report about Vietnam

  The first city that we went to is Hue. When I arrived at Hue, the first thing I realized is the temperature is way higher than in Ha Noi. In Ha Noi, we still have to were long sleeve shirts. However, in Hue, we only need to where t-shirts. For lunch, we eat three of the foods that Hue is known for. Nem lui and bun cha nuong is my two favorite dishes. That evening, we went on a boat to watch a performance on the Huong River, a famous river in Hue. The performance was mostly singing. The singing was done in traditional Vietnamese style along with traditional Vietnamese musical instruments such as Dan Bau. This musical instrument had only one string, but it was connected to a handle which could be bend to alternate the sound that the instrument emits. It was pretty good, except they speaks in a different accent that we use in the North so I can't understand much.

 On the second day, we doesn't go as much as the first day. We only went to one landmark, and it was the Thai Hoa Palace. The people there translated the name of the palace to "Supreme Harmony Palace", which was the funniest name I have ever heard. If they had only emit the word "supreme", it wouldn't be as funny. This palace used to be the place where the king of Vietnam would live. It was finished in somewhere about 1819. The Thai Hoa Palace was inside the City of Hue, which back then was surrounded by a thick wall. The city had since expand outside the wall. Most of the Forbidden City, the place where the king and his family members live, is mostly destroyed. Only the passage way between them remained. When the Communist captured the city, they killed most of the people who lived there. However, some still escaped the city and survived. The grandmother of the driver whom took use back to the hotel used to live in the city during that time. She escaped and tell the story to her childrens.

After we’ve left Hue, we went to Bien Hoa to visit a brother of my grandfather. We embarked a train at 11 am. We intended to go to Sai Gon, but since there was a station at Bien Hoa, we stopped there at about 5 am. We waited until 7 am. There, I went to a cinema to watch Kong: Skull Island. Kong was the first Hollywood movie filmed in Vietnam. Most of it was in Ha Long. Midway through the movie, the whole mall got a power cut. We have to wait for like 10 minutes for the power to come back. But, however, it was still a good movie. At afternoon, my grandfather's brother went with us to Sai Gon to visit another relative. We have dinner there. We stayed at Nha Khach Cua Nguoi Co Cong. My parents and sister slept in one room and I with my grandfather's brother in another room. That night, I had the opportunity to play Smite, a new MOBA game that I have just downloaded on Steam, with a friend of mine from Greece whom I made friend when I still play AtWar. On the next day, we went to Can Tho. There’s a foreign lady on the bus that we went on pronounced it like Can Tour. I slept mostly on the bus so I don't know what was on the road. At that place at night, we went to a night market. We ate dinner there. My dad ate so much fruits that he doesn’t need dinner. I at sticky rice with chicken which was very delicious. I also drink mango smoothy. At first, we went around the night market area; but later, we walk near the dock. We first intended to walk to the restaurant on a ship. But we walked too slow that we can’t arrive there before the ship went out. After that, we went to Rac Ra to visit another relative. My relative had a guest house there, so we stayed there for 2 or 3 days. After that day, we went to Ha Giang, which is were we are now. We stopped at a market. There, I bought a key decoration that shaped like a katana, a Japanese sword. We are going to stay at Ha Giang for 3 days. And on Sunday, we are going to Campuchia. This evening, we went out to the night market. After we have walked for a bit around the night market area, we stopped and ate dinner at the night market. I ate rice with pork ribs. It was delicious, and I like it. After that, I walked with my family for a bit until my mom and younger sister said that they wanted to go home. After we have reached our hotel, Du Hung 2, my dad and I continued to walk. While walking, we found a hotel name Du Hung. We walked to a place near the place where we stopped to walk home. This place is better than the other places near the sea because the smell is better there. While I was there, my dad talked on the phone. While my dad was talking on the phone, I tried to climb a platform as high as my chest by running for a short distance and jumping up. I was kinda proud because it was higher than any other platforms that I have climbed and that I was able to jump down from it, even though it wasn't the highest place I have jumped off.

Since today we doesn’t go anywhere and that I just mostly stay at our room and play games on my computer, and the meals we have are in the hotel, I’m gonna talk about a notable event that happened in the last few days that I have forgotten to talk about. We have went to U Minh forrest. U Minh was a national forrest. We went on a canoe to go on the moat. One of the places that we stopped is a tower that was built so people could climb it and watch the storks. I would like to go on it except that fact that it was made out of wood and 10 meters tall. Normally, this won’t be a problem. However, on top of the tower, you could actually felt it swaying a little bit. After that, we went to the restaurant in the forrest. There was an old monkey there. We feed him cucumbers. But when my younger sister fed him, he ran at her and grabbed her. The result was that she was scratched on the leg. My mom thinks it was the monkey’s bit, so my parents had to gave my younger sister a shot.

Today, we finally arrived at Cambodia. We stayed at our hotel room at Ha Tien until 12 pm. That’s when we went down for lunch and went on a minivan to go to the place where we would change to a bus that would took us to Kampat, Cambodia. I mostly slept on the trip, however. We stayed at the travel agency place for about an hour until we embarked a minivan with some other tourists that also went to Sihannoukvile. I once again slept on most of the trip. We arrived at somewhere around 6 pm. After we had checked in, we went downstair to the resort’s restaurant for dinner. My dad and I ate a 500 gram steak dish with mashed potato. Both of them tastes good. The steak is the best steak that I have tasted yet. The mashed potato was okay if it was eaten alone. But if you dipped it into the steak sauce, it tastes really good. After dinner, we went down the beach. The beach was way lower that where our resort was. Plus, the city’s water system doesn’t seems very good. And consequently, we dirty water of the city flowed down to the beach, making it smells quite bad. However, most part of it doesn’t have the unpleasant smell at all. There were people selling fireworks there. I have never seen common people firing fireworks. Tomorrow, we are going to swim in the resort’s pool.

Today is the second day that we spend in Sihannoukville, Cambodia. For breakfast, we ate at KFC. We first intended to eat at the small market, but they doesn’t sold breakfast. We bought a Family Feast that contained 6 pieces of chicken; two French fries; one 1.5 L bottle of Pepsi, which we still have it in our fridge; and a bag of chicken nuggets. Next to the KFC restaurant was a supermarket. My mom bought milk, cereal, and dried durian. For lunch, we ate steak downstair at our resort. Then at about 4:30 pm, we started to go to Independence Beach. My dad and younger sister went to swim without swimming clothes because we doesn’t intended to go swimming. I and my mom took a few pictures of one of us holding the sun. Some of those pictures are really good, while the other looks lame. Anyway, it was quite some fun. And for dinner, I ate chicken curry and rice.

Today, the most impressive event was both funny and a little bit disappointing. When I woke up, my dad and I went to the pool in our resort to swim. After that, I play games on the computer for a while until we went out to the big market for lunch even though it was only 10 am. After that, we walked to a place called World Trade Center. It was a sunny day so my mom and younger sister doesn't quite like walking, especially when we are following Google Map without wifi. When we arrived at the World Trade Center, it turned out to be a small market like the one we've been at. One of the funny things is that we have walked around it without even knowing it. I also swim one more time in the afternoon. After that, we went out for dinner. We ate at a hotel name Benny's. The pizza there was ok. The cheese and meat was good. But the piece in the endmost part is hollow inside with some parts burnt. After that, we walked along the beach. We also went into a mini market to buy can finish with tomato sauce to eat with the rice that we brought home. I also bought a can of Pringles. It seems that a can of Pringles here is bigger than the one back in Vietnam.

This morning, I doesn't go outside much. I woke up quite late, and after I've woke up, I read the fourth book of  The Spook's Apprentice series. We stayed at our room of the resort until 12:30 pm when we went downstair to eat lunch at the restaurant under our resort. In the afternoon, we went to the beach to swim. I went home early to take a bath. But I don't see my parents when I went to the beach. So I returned home. My parents eventually returned. Unfortunately, it rained so we have to eat downstair at our resort's hotel again.

Today, we woke up at  6:30 am. At somewhere about 7:30 am, our transition bus for the bus to Phnom Penh arrived. On the transition bus, we met a couple of old Chinese American. My dad talked to Mr. Tony and get aquainted with him. On the bus, he invited us to go to a health club to play badmington with him and some of his friends. On the bus, things are a bit lame. I slept on most of the trip since it wasn't until 1:30 pm that we arrived. Our hotel looks quite good. It had a mart downstair. At evening, we went out to the night market. Unfortunately, it rained. So it took us quite some time to get home. Tomorrow, we are going to a genocidal museum.

Today, we first went to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tuol Sleng's code was S-21. S-21 used to be a school until Pol Pot's regime turned it into a prison. Next, we went to Aeon Mall. We tried to go to the Royal Palace and the Killing Field, but both are just too expensive. There are some shooting range, but the lowest price is $350 so we get that idea out of our list. There is also a laser tag at Aeon Mall. But since there are only my dad and I, I don't think it would be a good idea.

Today, we woke up at somewhere about 7 am so that we could get on the bus back to Sai Gon. We ate instance noodle cup for breakfast. We waited until 7:35 am when the minivan that took us to the bus station arrived. The trip was quite long. The bus started by 7:58 am, and it was about 3:30 pm when we arrived at Sai Gon. For dinner, we ate banh cuon trang bang. It was quite good. Tomorrow, we are going to one of our relative's house for lunch.