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Once upon a time, there were 2 Maries
Aug. 12th, 2002 07:43 pmAnd they were laaaaame! (So not everyone will get the joke, but that's okay!)
G, you've got competition! I was told today that I'm lovely, have a lovely smile, and am hen ke'ai! *blush* He didn't call me "Em", though, except when we were saying our ages and since he's older than me, I'm em to him.
Where are we now, you wonder? We are not on Phu Quoc Island! Listening to M-P's misgivings for the past two days must have gotten to me, because I woke up at 3 in the morning with a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me that we shouldn't go. I really hate giving up and turning back, but I couldn't do otherwise. Good thing, too, because my stomach has been very tender all day; I'm hungry but I can't eat much for fear of upsetting it even more.
After we left the internet place, we went back to the hotel to inspect their restaurant. Just reading the menu was worth the price of our food (which wasn't that much for the quantity they gave us) -- there were all sorts of exotic dishes listed, such as chark and chirken, and that much sought-after drink, soda eater. As you can imagine, this caused fits of giggling, and the poor waiter couldn't figure out why we were laughing.
After eating our chirken, we went back to our room and dissolved into giggles again while watching a Vietnamese soap opera. I think they redubbed the voices, because they always seemed a little off. Oh yeah, and it had the best actor ever in it; while he was waving his arms at the sky, cursing something or other, even his dog lost interest and walked away. *rofl*
Okay, maybe you had to be there.
I fell asleep fairly quickly despite the rock-hard (but clean!) pillow, and woke up later having come to the above-mentionned conclusion. I told this to M-P, and we decided that we'd ask at reception to see when the first bus for HCMC was leaving.
This might have been a bad thing, but for the fact that having to take a mini-bus back to HCMC let us make contact with the friendly locals.
To begin with, both the girls at the reception desk at our hotel (which was paid for by the travel agency, and breakfast was even included!) were very nice and helpful. The one on duty this morning told us that we would be better off calling a private car company, which turned out to be a 14-seat mini-bus quite similar to the one we took from Can Tho yesterday. This one, however, was an antique Toyota, that immediately broke down.
Well, I don't know if it broke down or if it had been planned, but after the driver had picked up a few more people, he drove to a garage and a couple of mechanics immediately set to work, taking apart a whole wheel.
While we were waiting, we tried to talk with a guy who was also along for the ride and who spoke some pretty limited English. When we saw the guys messing around with the wheel, we wanted to be sure that we were going to go where we wanted to go, so we asked if the mini-bus was going to HCMC. But everyone obviously thought that we were asking if we were *in* HCMC (did we look that dumb?) and we received several "No!"s.
After a while standing around, we managed to have a conversation of sorts with Nhan, the guy who spoke English. He translated a bit for another lady, who wanted to know if M-P and I were sisters (I have the feeling that we'll be hearing that question a lot in the next few weeks), and we managed to communicate our names and ages.
Still we were waiting, and the guy whose garage it seemed to be came to us and started speaking to us in French, explaining that there was a problem with the brakes. Great. We were going on a 7-hour suicidal drive on a mini-bus with faulty brakes! Then he invited us inside his house, where his daughter, who spoke English, gave us some juice to drink while we admired her cute little baby daughter.
Finally, the driver came and told us that the bus was ready, so we got back in. We had been put in the last seat, the bumpiest and most uncomfortable one, and I was drinking water laced with 7Up to calm my tummy.
Thanks to M-P's father's compass, I was able to chart our course and follow where we were on the map. At about 1 o'clock, we stopped for lunch at what seemed to be a major rest-stop for buses headed in various directions. Since tourists very rarely take any kind of public transport, we caused something of a stir, and were stared at much more than usual. We ate lunch with Nhan, who paid for us (though we paid him back later, ignoring his protests), and explained that we were being charged more than him for the same dish because we're foreigners.
Our new friend is a 21-year old student, studying computer science in HCMC. It was something of a challenge to talk to him, because besides having a limited vocabulary, his accent is very thick, so we had to resort to writing things down to understand each other. This combined with M-P trying to use some of her Vietnamese, but it was all quite fun. When we got back on the road, he sat in the back with us, and we learned that he also speaks Chinese, so I was able to have an actual conversation (sort of) with him in Mandarin. When we reached HCMC, he even accompanied us to our hotel to make sure the driver took us to the right place - very kind of him! We exchanged e-mail addresses, so we'll most likely get in touch with him when we return to HCMC at the end of our trip.
Now, back to the lame bit. Since we've decided that we are going to stick to our original return date (damn job!), we're not going to Cambodia after all. Yesterday's little adventure caused M-P much stress, and though I found the whole experience interesting and am very glad to have met all those nice people, I agreed that from now on we should be lame and stick to touristy places and groups, so as not to miss out on the major sights. Tomorrow, a 7:30 bus to Da Lat!
Another decision we made concerns our health. We have come to the conclusion that air con sucks! So from now on, at least for the next few nights, we're getting rooms with fans. It's cheaper, anyway, and we want our semi-sore throats to get better.
I noticed, reading over my recent posts, that my English seems to be crumbly, and I say "Many many appologies!" (Black Adder); when I'm typing this much, I don't take the time to review what I've written, so you'll have to live with the mistakes.
Hmm, I think that's all for now. For anyone who may be interested, here's what I ate today:
- Pho and Lipton Yellow Label tea for breakfast, but I only ate half the pho.
- White rice and very good braised chicken and some vegetables in sweet sauce, though not half as much as I would of eaten had my stomach been less cranky (I barely put a dent in my serving!)
- A custard-apple shake and a bowl of vegetable soup
- About a litre of water cut with a can of 7Up
G, you've got competition! I was told today that I'm lovely, have a lovely smile, and am hen ke'ai! *blush* He didn't call me "Em", though, except when we were saying our ages and since he's older than me, I'm em to him.
Where are we now, you wonder? We are not on Phu Quoc Island! Listening to M-P's misgivings for the past two days must have gotten to me, because I woke up at 3 in the morning with a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me that we shouldn't go. I really hate giving up and turning back, but I couldn't do otherwise. Good thing, too, because my stomach has been very tender all day; I'm hungry but I can't eat much for fear of upsetting it even more.
After we left the internet place, we went back to the hotel to inspect their restaurant. Just reading the menu was worth the price of our food (which wasn't that much for the quantity they gave us) -- there were all sorts of exotic dishes listed, such as chark and chirken, and that much sought-after drink, soda eater. As you can imagine, this caused fits of giggling, and the poor waiter couldn't figure out why we were laughing.
After eating our chirken, we went back to our room and dissolved into giggles again while watching a Vietnamese soap opera. I think they redubbed the voices, because they always seemed a little off. Oh yeah, and it had the best actor ever in it; while he was waving his arms at the sky, cursing something or other, even his dog lost interest and walked away. *rofl*
Okay, maybe you had to be there.
I fell asleep fairly quickly despite the rock-hard (but clean!) pillow, and woke up later having come to the above-mentionned conclusion. I told this to M-P, and we decided that we'd ask at reception to see when the first bus for HCMC was leaving.
This might have been a bad thing, but for the fact that having to take a mini-bus back to HCMC let us make contact with the friendly locals.
To begin with, both the girls at the reception desk at our hotel (which was paid for by the travel agency, and breakfast was even included!) were very nice and helpful. The one on duty this morning told us that we would be better off calling a private car company, which turned out to be a 14-seat mini-bus quite similar to the one we took from Can Tho yesterday. This one, however, was an antique Toyota, that immediately broke down.
Well, I don't know if it broke down or if it had been planned, but after the driver had picked up a few more people, he drove to a garage and a couple of mechanics immediately set to work, taking apart a whole wheel.
While we were waiting, we tried to talk with a guy who was also along for the ride and who spoke some pretty limited English. When we saw the guys messing around with the wheel, we wanted to be sure that we were going to go where we wanted to go, so we asked if the mini-bus was going to HCMC. But everyone obviously thought that we were asking if we were *in* HCMC (did we look that dumb?) and we received several "No!"s.
After a while standing around, we managed to have a conversation of sorts with Nhan, the guy who spoke English. He translated a bit for another lady, who wanted to know if M-P and I were sisters (I have the feeling that we'll be hearing that question a lot in the next few weeks), and we managed to communicate our names and ages.
Still we were waiting, and the guy whose garage it seemed to be came to us and started speaking to us in French, explaining that there was a problem with the brakes. Great. We were going on a 7-hour suicidal drive on a mini-bus with faulty brakes! Then he invited us inside his house, where his daughter, who spoke English, gave us some juice to drink while we admired her cute little baby daughter.
Finally, the driver came and told us that the bus was ready, so we got back in. We had been put in the last seat, the bumpiest and most uncomfortable one, and I was drinking water laced with 7Up to calm my tummy.
Thanks to M-P's father's compass, I was able to chart our course and follow where we were on the map. At about 1 o'clock, we stopped for lunch at what seemed to be a major rest-stop for buses headed in various directions. Since tourists very rarely take any kind of public transport, we caused something of a stir, and were stared at much more than usual. We ate lunch with Nhan, who paid for us (though we paid him back later, ignoring his protests), and explained that we were being charged more than him for the same dish because we're foreigners.
Our new friend is a 21-year old student, studying computer science in HCMC. It was something of a challenge to talk to him, because besides having a limited vocabulary, his accent is very thick, so we had to resort to writing things down to understand each other. This combined with M-P trying to use some of her Vietnamese, but it was all quite fun. When we got back on the road, he sat in the back with us, and we learned that he also speaks Chinese, so I was able to have an actual conversation (sort of) with him in Mandarin. When we reached HCMC, he even accompanied us to our hotel to make sure the driver took us to the right place - very kind of him! We exchanged e-mail addresses, so we'll most likely get in touch with him when we return to HCMC at the end of our trip.
Now, back to the lame bit. Since we've decided that we are going to stick to our original return date (damn job!), we're not going to Cambodia after all. Yesterday's little adventure caused M-P much stress, and though I found the whole experience interesting and am very glad to have met all those nice people, I agreed that from now on we should be lame and stick to touristy places and groups, so as not to miss out on the major sights. Tomorrow, a 7:30 bus to Da Lat!
Another decision we made concerns our health. We have come to the conclusion that air con sucks! So from now on, at least for the next few nights, we're getting rooms with fans. It's cheaper, anyway, and we want our semi-sore throats to get better.
I noticed, reading over my recent posts, that my English seems to be crumbly, and I say "Many many appologies!" (Black Adder); when I'm typing this much, I don't take the time to review what I've written, so you'll have to live with the mistakes.
Hmm, I think that's all for now. For anyone who may be interested, here's what I ate today:
- Pho and Lipton Yellow Label tea for breakfast, but I only ate half the pho.
- White rice and very good braised chicken and some vegetables in sweet sauce, though not half as much as I would of eaten had my stomach been less cranky (I barely put a dent in my serving!)
- A custard-apple shake and a bowl of vegetable soup
- About a litre of water cut with a can of 7Up
