Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

Turns out I can't fit the country of Vietnam into one post. Seems fair enough considering how much I enjoyed it. From Saigon we flew to Hanoi in the north of Vietnam and spent two days there before heading out on a two night cruise through Ha Long Bay. Hanoi was a great city, although the pollution unfortunately took away from some of its charm. It had a very walking old city, with lots of little alleyways that would named for the products they sold their. There was what we called "shoe street". As you can guess the street was covered in backpacks... JUST KIDDING. Checking to make sure you all are paying attention. There was a backpack street however, and I bought a brand new real north face day pack for the insanely cheap price of $15. After two days exploring Hanoi we were off to Ha Long Bay. If I can ever get Picasa or Flikr to work I'll post some pictures cause this place was amazing. It is made up of an estimated 2,000 islets around about 1500 square kilometers. To put a picture in your heads, it looks like there was once a huge island in the middle of the bay, and a bomb hit it, exploding the island into, well 2,000 pieces and the pieces scattered themselves all around the bay, somehow floating above the water. There are various floating villages, in the more sheltered parts of the bay to avoid the typhoons. The people that lived on the lake used to float around from fishing spot to fishing spot, but when Ha Long Bay became a UNECO world heritage site in 1994, the government made these people relocate either to floating villages, or to the mainland. The floating village we visited was a sort of self sufficient kibbutz like place. Each house had a special spot, and a special fish they caught, then the fish would be pooled together and sold as a community, the funds would then be redistributed around the community equally. It seemed to work extremely well and everyone in the village lived fairly equally and happily.

The company we went with specialized with the more off the beaten track places in Ha Long Bay which was awesome because we never ran into that many other people. The food on this boat was incredable. Each meal (excluding breakfast) had at least 5 courses choc-a-bloc with amazing seafood. The highlight of the trip was the final night when we had a bbq dinner in a huge, two cavern cave on an island correctly named "Paradise Island". I expected it to be an average walk in, be able to see the outside cave, but it was completely surrounded by these amazing walls with two entrances. When you were inside the cave, you felt like you were in the center of the island.

Ho Chi Min City!

Hey all. Currently writting this post from Laos but I'll keep the summary to one country at a time. Vietam was amazing. I flew into Ho Chi Min city, my mom met me at the airport, and we took a taxi to Kevin and Tracy's appartment. The first thing you notice about Ho Chi Min is the motorbikes. There are about 3.5 million motorbikes in the city compared zith only 350000 cars. Ho Chi Min; formerly known as saigon, has an estimated population of 10-11 million people. It zas the former capital of South Vietnam before the communist party took it over in 1975 marking the end of the Vietnam war. There are 19 districts in Ho Chi Min, Kevin and Tracy live in district 7 where many of the ex-pats in the city live. You can see Kevin's school from their window it's so close. was greeted with a care package mom brought all the way from the US for me and a delicious home cooked mexican dinner (the food I had missed the most). Sunday we visited the orphanage Kevin goes to almost every weekend. A bunch of teachers and student from Kevin's school came aswell. The orphanage is run by all these buddist nuns and is set beside a beautiful temple and gardens in the middle of the bustleling city. There are 94 girls at the orphanage and when they are 16, they are givin the option of whether or not they want to become a nun. This is a really cool aspect of the orphanage because in many other orphanges run by some religious affiliation, the children become practacers of that religion whether they want to or not. That afternoon we visited some seriously depressing war museums. The really depressing museum was the War Remmanants Museum. This described in detail the war crimes of the French from 1887-1954, and the American war crimes from 1955-1975. It showed gruesome pictures of the war and terrible consiquences of the bombing like agent orange, where a high number of Vietnamese had horrible birth difects due to the bombing. The museum is of course completely one sided and all of the "facts" must be taken with a grain of salt, however there is a lot of sad truth in that museum. The next day after stuffing my face full of sushi for the first time in more then three months, (for the insanely cheap price of 20 bucks for the three of us, man I love Asia) we flew to Hanoi.

Check In

Hey all. Just checking in from Thailand. I can't believe that term 1 here is almost over. This is crazy! Its been seven weeks at school already! Man, time flies here. Golf is going well. My swing and setup looks completely different, but I still haven't quite been able to master transitioning that strange new swing from the range to the course. I hope it happens soon. We've played two tournaments since I got here, and I didn't play very well in either one of them. However, I'm really exited to play in the next tournament and improve my score even more. Boarding is an interesting experience, it's very new for me. It's cool having friends to hang out with the whole weekend, and the trips are cool. We usually go to one of three or four places each weekend. Airport plaza, a major mall in Chang Mai, Rimping, an outdoor mall with lots of good restaurants and a western grocery store, Night Bazar, and outdoor night market, and Central Plaza, which is a bit like airport plaza, but more Thai. The best thing about boarding is that you can sign out to the day students houses for the weekend. I have done that twice so far this semester, both for the golf tournaments. Its nice to have the freedom to go wherever you want around town. Schools going well and I'm super exited for my October break trip. Well, I've got homework to do but I'll try to get another post in soon.

School and Golf and Stuff

Sorry for the tardiness of this post everyone! I have been really busy with school and weekend activities, but as my mom already pointed out to me (a few times) this post probably should have come a couple of weeks ago. So ill cut to the chase since I've kept my views waiting, school here is really cool but challenging. It's only been three weeks of school and I have already felt the pressure of having too much to do in too little time a few times. But, its been good pressure, and for the most part I like my teachers (except for my Chem and math teacher who happen to be the same person =D). I'm taking five classes and they work on a block schedule here, four classes per day, 1:20 per class. I'm glad I came from a school with the block schedule otherwise it would have been a hard transition. I'm taking Geography, (which I am thoroughly enjoying), Chemistry, Math, Environmental Sciences, and English Language and Literature. We have each class three times a week so you get off days for certain classes. The campus here is huge for the student size, it's a 100 acre campus, and there's only about 450 students! The sports facilities are really good they have a full size cricket and soccer fields. Two driving ranges, a tennis academy, and an archery range. There's about 120 boarders from around the world. I have three room mates, one of them is from Thailand, one of them is from Hong Kong, and the other one is from England but has lived in Spain and Koh Samui his whole life. Everyone here is super nice and making friends has been pretty easy. The golf program is an hour and a half every day from 4:15 to 5:45. Spike, (the head instructor) is quite a character, he's a big (around the belly) guy who's not afraid to admit it or make fun of himself. He's originally from California, and so far I feel like he has really helped my golf game. He is into the geometery of golf. The mathematics of the golf swing and set up. Some days I want to break my club in half and some days I leave feeling like a have really improved. Just on a random note because it's raining outside, it rains a lot here. Also, when it rains IT RAINS. There's no afternoon drizzles here, when it starts raining here you find cover like there was an airstrike coming otherwise, you'll be soaked. Fortunately it hasn't affected my golf training yet. Well, that's all for now I can here one of the house parents in boarding coming up to check that were doing work. Ill try to take some pictures of the campus and post them on Facebook and the blog. Miss everyone in Cali!

How I Beat Jet lag, and My Tour Around Bangkok

As many of you already know I am already at my new school but I'll just do a quick review of my tiring flight and awesome tour around Bangkok. To give some back round knowledge about my flight the morning of my flight I woke up at 8am. The first flight was just around eleven hours and including traveling time I arrived in Osaka, Japan at 11pm San Fran time. I was exhausted but I didn't want to sleep on the next flight because I felt that I would get to Bangkok at 11 and not be tired at all having just sleep for five hours. So, in order to combat that possibility I drank two cups of espresso, right as I landed. I realized that was a stupid idea because I had a two hour layover. The coffee hit me as I was reading my book and I couldn't concentrate at all. It lasted until about two hours into the flight but then I crashed in the middle of Braveheart. Fortunately I was watching such an epic movie or I might have passed out right on the spot. Anyhow I made it all the way to Bangkok at just around 8am Pacific time, 24 hours after I had left. I made it into Michael's condo just in time to pass out of his spare bed. I woke up at seven, and never had any troubles with jet lag at all. I seriously considering writing a book about my expertise in the area of not having jet lag. Anyhow, Bangkok was extremely crowded, and if it weren't for the excellent tour around the nicer areas with Lucky, and the tourist bike ride with Michael, I don't think I would have liked it very much. However, thanks to those two very gracious people, I had an great time in Thailand's Capital city. Lucky took me on a tour of Bangkok's old town area including The Grand Palace which was the former housing of the king and queen. The Grand Palace was huge and really impressive, I can't believe that two people and their servants/workers lived in 2,351,000 sq ft area. Now it is a museum and tourist attraction. The next day Michael and I went on a bike ride with a group of people across the river and into the small towns. It was amazing to see there immaculate and intricate temples built in the middle of a tiny town with small wood houses and tin roofs. Monks were walking all around dressed in their various robes in was really cool. I have to say I'm getting a little addicted to Thai food and this amazing chili powder they have here. Anyways that's a recap of my flight and my Bangkok portion of the trip, I'll try to get a post in about school as soon as I can.