Written by Jane:
As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in our apartment in Da Nang with basically useless wifi internet due to a city wide internet slow down. Meanwhile, Brandon is at a fire show on the beach in Koh Samet, Thailand. This afternoon, I got one of my wisdom teeth removed at a Western –friendly dentist where the dentists and staff know enough English for native English speakers to feel comfortable. I had already gone to this dentist to get a cavity filled, and I felt very comfortable and safe. For the wisdom tooth extraction, the dentist only gave me local anesthesia and no laughing gas, unlike how it’s done in the US. After she told me there would be no laughing gas and she started pulling on my tooth, my heart was racing and my stomach was in knots. Even though it didn’t hurt, I let out a small yelp as she was struggling to yank it out. Thankfully the tooth came out very easily, and it was over in about ten seconds. Fifteen minutes and less than $50 later, I was done. Now it’s just sore and uncomfortable, thankfully not painful. I haven’t even needed to take the pain killers I got. Since then, I’ve just been taking it easy, so I figured this would be a good time to blog about our travels this past week. For our work permits, we have to go to a foreign Vietnamese Embassy to receive new visas. We’re both very interested in Thailand, so we chose to go to Bangkok. We also needed to stop in Ho Chi Minh City at the American Consulate to get some documents legalized for our work permit. The work visa in Vietnam is not an easy process. We were happy for a chance to travel and see some new places in Southeast Asia. Ho Chi Minh City Our first stop was Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city in Vietnam, for less than 24 hours. We had heard and read that Ho Chi Minh is very fast paced and congested, like most huge cities. Motorbikers don’t follow traffic laws (if there are any?). When we were there, it was very common for motorbikers to drive on the sidewalks to get around the slow moving traffic in the street. Like Hanoi, it’s a full time job as a pedestrian to stay out of the way of motorbikes and cars. I almost got clipped by a motorbike that was driving on a sidewalk full of pedestrians. Luckily I was able to get out of the way in time. We ate at a couple of awesome vegan restaurants and spent all of our time running errands. I was so happy to see several vegan and vegetarian restaurants in the relatively small area that we walked in. One of the perks of living in a big city is more options. Visiting Ho Chi Minh made me even more grateful to live in Da Nang. I love the slower pace and smaller size of Da Nang. It’s more peaceful and laid back. And of course, we love the beach! Bangkok Bangkok is huge! It reminds me a lot of NYC in that it’s huge, dense, and congested with traffic. It has a good vibe, it’s hard for me to describe but I liked the energy of the city. Most people that we talked to knew very decent English, which was a refreshing change. We got into Bangkok after dark and had some issues trying to find our Airbnb as it rained on and off. The first time we got lost, we stopped at the nearest restaurant for food and wifi. The Thai food was amazing!! Then we proceed to get lost again and retreated back to the restaurant where luckily the owner knew where our Airbnb was. The next day we headed out to the embassy to drop off paperwork for the visa. We hailed a tuk tuk outside of our Airbnb. I’d seen them in videos before, so when I saw one I jumped at the opportunity to ride in one. Tuk tuks look like a motorbike with a trailer attached behind it where passengers sit. It fits two people in the small seating area. It’s an awesome way to experience the city and feel the wind on your face. It was really fun! Near the embassy, there was a large market on the street selling prepared food- lots of meat dishes, grilled bananas, and fresh fruit carts. The fresh fruit carts were awesome because they would cut and bag the fruit right there so it was fresh and ready to eat. I loved it! About half of the fruit was served ripe, which was pretty good since it’s hard to come buy ripe fruit in the markets. We loaded up on fruit and headed to Lumpini Park which was down the street from the embassy. Lumpini Park is a large park in the middle of the city, similar to Central Park in NYC but much smaller. The park was very green and beautiful. It was a nice break from the hustle and bustle of the city. We found a shaded picnic table near a large creek to sit down and eat our fruit. Right as I was biting into some delicious pineapple, Brandon says, while looking at the water, “Is that real?” I froze and turned to see a large lizard sitting still by the water about 10 feet from us. When we saw it breathing, we knew that Lumpini wasn’t like NYC’s Central Park. We watched as the lizard swam across the creek to the other bank. As the lizard walked up on to the opposite bank, I sat down relieved and continued eating. Seconds later, Brandon said, “Oh shit!” And there was commotion on the other side of the creek. The lizard had crept up on another lizard that we didn’t see sitting on the bank. Now they were wrestling and one fled into the water. We were officially freaked out! We decided to walk around the park some more. I was happy to get some distance from that feisty lizard. I desperately needed to use the bathroom. Thankfully there was a public restroom nearby. Brandon, who had already pointed out that there were most likely cobras in this park, took this opportunity to remind me that in past few weeks two cobras, on separate occasions, were found in toilets in Bangkok. Now I was REALLY scared! The urge to pee outweighed my fear and I luckily made it out of the bathroom without a cobra sighting. As we walked around the park, we saw several lizards on land and in the water. Before our knowledge of these lizards in the park, we wanted to do the swan paddle boats. This quickly changed since we were so spooked by all the wildlife in the park. I felt like I had left the city and stepped into the Australian Outback. We quickly left the park while intently looking out for wildlife. Brandon grabbed some street food outside of the park while we figured out what to do next. We had about four hours to kill before we needed to be back at the embassy to get our visas. We were limited with what we could do because some of the coolest things to do took all day. We hailed a tuk tuk and the driver was super helpful and spoke good English. He said that he could take us to the river where we could take a boat ride in the canals and then he would bring us back to the embassy by 4pm. That was the best idea we had so far, so we hopped in the tuk tuk. For our canal ride, we got a large gondola type boat for just the two of us. I’d love to say that it was a beautiful and romantic boat ride, but it wasn’t. It was a humbling experience. The water was brown and heavily littered. Run down homes lined the canals illustrating the poverty in the city. It’s common for people to sell merchandise out of their boats on the canals. We were approached by a man in his boat full of souvenirs and beverages. We weren’t interested in accumulating any souvenirs, but we wanted to help the man out. We needed up buying a $3 beer for our boat driver. It’s times like these, which have been common in Thailand and Vietnam, that we’re reminded of how fortunate we are. We stopped at a large cluster of wats (temples) during our canal ride. I enjoyed a fresh Thai coconut while we walked around the beautifully ornate wats. Twenty minutes later we headed back to the boat. As we headed back to the embassy, our super friendly driver asked if he could take us by a clothing shop. He told us that he gets free oil if he takes his customers to this clothing shop, even if we don’t buy anything. Happy to help out the driver, we agreed. While I was finishing a mango outside, Brandon went into the shop. As I was standing outside, another tuk tuk drove up and a Western couple briefly went into this clothing store. This must be a common sales strategy for the store. Brandon didn’t spend too much time in the shop. It was a very fancy custom tailor shop, which was something we were not interested in. Our driver said that he wouldn’t get the free oil since I didn’t go in. Eager to help our driver, both Brandon and I went back in to shop. I thought I might find something affordable that I would like. As soon as I entered the shop, a salesman started his pitch. He took me upstairs to look at the fabrics for the custom clothing. He was very pushy, so I was honest and told him that the clothing was too fancy for what I wanted. Immediately, he was hostile and asked me, “Then why did you even come in here? He(Brandon) already came in here and knew what kind of clothes we sell.” I felt very intimidated and didn’t know what to say because he was being so hostile. Thankfully, Brandon stepped in and stood up for us as we made a beeline for the door. Woah, what an experience! We hypothesize that the salesman was tired of the tuk tuk drivers taking advantage of the free oil by bringing foreigner tourists to his shop that weren’t actually interested in buying the clothes. Bangkok was full of surprises for us! After the embassy, we headed back to our Airbnb. We ate a couple meals in our neighborhood and Brandon planned his Koh Samet trip. After the long, eventful day we were exhausted. The next morning, I headed for the airport to go back to Da Nang, while Brandon stayed in Bangkok for another day to explore before venturing to Koh Samet. Since my wifi quality is so weak, I won’t be able to post any pictures with this blog post. For daily updates of what we’re up to, follow us on snapchat (we captured the lizard fight on snapchat). Jane: janeybird1 Brandon: draculaspider
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November 2017
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