Experiencing Mui Ne

The coast line of Mui Ne is located 30 km east of the provincial capital city of Phan Thiet. Taking a taxi or motorbike ride through the area allows anyone to see endless resorts with unlimited white sand beaches and coconuts trees filling the views. It's like a scene from a hollywood movie with breathtaking landscapes with good looking people in their swimsuits walking the shore lines.

Moon's family and I did many activities during the week as we ventured through the region checking out the local culture and villages in South Vietnam. Some of the activities that we did were:

1. Took a local bus to the east side of the Mui Nu village to see people taking crazy carpet rides down the red-yellow sand dunes. These sand dunes have developed over many years with the wind collecting the sand and creating it's wonderful mother nature artwork of lines and curves. Of course for a small price, we all did the crazy-carpet ride and took many photos of our actions.
2. Swimming in both the Ocean and in the man-made swimming pool in the middle of the resort. It was great experience for everyone because the water was clean and fresh. We spent endless hours walking up and down the coast line and often jumping in when the bigger waves putting on a show for the locals and the tourists. If we were tired of the bashings from the waves, we would all settle in the resort swimming pool and relax without having to worry about the waves coming over our heads
3. We used different modes of transportation to commute through the region. We have walked, ran, piggybacked, taxied, motorbiked and the biggest highlight of all was driving a 1968 American War series Jeep. I kid you not! It the same model where the windshield comes down, the doors removed, a huge back seat for the family members and even better, the original colors of the American War USA Army colors.
   
4. Went to the base of a mountain that has Vietnam's biggest budda within the Pagoda there. Upon our arrival, purchasing tickets, the whole family took a Gondola car (Just like Sunshine Village in Canada) to the top of the mountain and visited the Long Son Pagoda.
   The budda at the top was a lying down budda which is certainly out of the norm compared to the other budda I seen in South East Asia.

There were plenty of activities to do before we made our way back to HCMC before our flight back to Hanoi.

Off the Coast of Mui Ne

Before I left for Europe, I promised Moon that we would take Moon's family to the Southern coast of Vietnam in the cities of Phan Thiet and Mui Ne. Between these two cities, they are one of Vietnam un-tapped tourist beach areas as they both show little signs of overcrowding or over commercialized.

Both Moon and I have purchased the Vietnam Airlines and Pacific Airlines family tickets leaving Hanoi on July 8 departing to Ho Chi Minh City and coming back to the capital on July 15th. We would spend the first part of the day in HCMC and taking the late evening train to Phan Thiet City (5 hours) and 30 minute taxi ride to the Hawaii Resort in Mui Ne. Upon our return, we would spend another whole day in HCMC as it was the first time for Moon's mother and sister.

We both chose to return and stay in the Hawaii Resort because we have developed a great personal relationship with the owner who we have met last time in spring of 2006. He is a Viet Kieu (Oversea Vietnamese) who have originally escaped from the South after the fall of Saigon in 1976. He has established family in Southern California and a married son living in Hawaii. Many members of his family have invested into this low profile (word of mouth marketing) hotel resort which we both think it's one of the most beautiful places we been too with nearly 100 percent privacy.

Moon's parents / sister shared one villa and we stayed in another which was a few meters away from them. The resort itself is vastly covered in palm trees and other natural tropical plants gives the place a real Vietnamese green feel. In the middle of the resort, hosts a large swimming pool with a nice shadow end for those who cannot swim well can stand and also can do the water dance. They have made the temperature of the water slightly cooler than the air so it does give a refreshing feeling when swimming there. At the end of the property, leads directly on to the white sand beach and eventually into the Gulf of Tonkin with endless 1-2 meter waves crashing into the shore.

Chasing Documents

Knowing that I made plans with Moon’s family to take a holiday off the coast of Southern Vietnam starting July 8^th, it was important that Moon and I made a full 100 percent effort to submit the local government outstanding documents required for her Canadian Student Visa Application. We had to venture on my motorbike downtown to the Ministry of Justice to pick up the Vietnamese version of Moon’s criminal Background check document and find a qualified notary to translate it into English for the Canadian immigration officials based in Ho Chi Minh City. Moon has requested the express services for this specific document as normally it would take three weeks for them to prepare it. With some “greasing the wheels” money, we managed to obtain the document in last than one week.

We hit a dead-end when we both found out that the government recently outlawed all the private notary clinics in Vietnam forcing local people to go through the official government channels to have these documents notarized. Once again after some heavy searching, Moon managed to find a place in the city and she requested the “express greasing the wheels service” so we can have it completed as fast as we can. We just don't want to wait for a long time for the visa because every day spent in Vietnam means a day less preparing for school and work in September of 2007.

I hope that the Canadian immigration officials will not be as busy this summer with the applications so hopefully the processing time for Moon's visa will be smooth and we both can leave before the end of this month.

Canada Day

Knowing that I will be in Hanoi over our once a year national birthday, I decided to celebrate Canada day with my local Hanoian-Canadian peers. Mentally this was important to me because I know that it will be my last Canada Day in Vietnam as both Moon and I have plans to return to Canada for work and studying in the fall.

The Canadian birthday party was held at a private serviced apartment complex overlooking West Lake which was a few minutes away from the house that I am currently looking after. I showed up late because during the party starting time, it was pouring buckets and buckets of rain on the city making it virtually un-drivable until the floods find their way into the main river stream on the far west side of the city.

Arriving at the party after the floods are finished, I was greeted with a Molson Canadian beer served by a fellow Canadian who was wearing his classic Montreal Canadian Hockey jersey. What a hoot that was. Of course with two languages in Canada, it’s important to say "bonjour" and the French Canadian greetings which is very popular in the Canadian community of Hanoi. My two best IT friends finally showed up and we got a chance to catch up and say hi as it’s been a long time since the three of us were in a single place for more than 5 minutes.

After the party, I had to quickly pick up Moon for the big surprise 2 year anniversary. Knowing that we both forgotten our 1^st year anniversary, I felt it would be cool and exciting for both of us to have a nice Candle light dinner follow by a nice relaxing night in town. I brought her a couple of presents from my European holiday that I was planning not to give to her until this night and managed to wrap them up in a pinkish decorative box filled with hundreds of red rose petals. The actual surprise was that I had her blindfolded on the back of my motorbike and drove across town to the Highway 4 restaurant where we first went to after we met for the first time.

The dinner, presents, candles, roses, night in town and the ambience was indeed perfect and we enjoyed every minute of it. It’s is sure nice to celebrate two specials events on July 1^st therefore I am looking forward to next year as we can watch the fireworks overlooking Scotman’s hill in Calgary.

Cruising around Hanoi

Upon my arrival in Hanoi, I was greeted by my wonderful Moony who I have not seen for over two months. We have kept in touch over email, internet phone and finally resorting to Skype as I have figured out how to pay with my credit card online. (Sounds weird for an IT guy with over 12 years of experience on computers)

I spent my first weekend finishing up preparing Moon's Student Visa Application for Canada and at the same time catching up with old friends from the school I used to work at. I have realized that I have arrived at a sensitive time as most of the teachers were suffering from end of year stress and they are seriously ready to leave Vietnam for their annual holidays back home in their own countries. I was also happy enough to see my closest friends who came to my farewell party in April and was more than happy to be at their farewell parties for the last few days. Some of them got new jobs in other countries, and some of them are heading back to home for good and one of them is planning his Hollywood movie script writing career on the beaches of Mexico.

My plan at this time, will be a waiting game for Moon's visa which I expect will take approximately one month and then both of us will be planning to head to Calgary to start our new chapter in our lives. She will be studying at Mount Royal College towards an education degree and I will be heading back to work in the hot Calgary Oil and Gas / IT economy. I also have plans to get back into the Volleyball action with the men's league on Thursday nights so of course there is lots of "getting back into shape" is required as the beer in Germany has made a little bit of a hill on my stomach :)

Street Food in Vietnam

I have found an interesting comment on the social website facebook with respect to the street food which makes one of biggest Vietnam's charms to the world.

Sadly enough I heard through the social website that all the street food vendors in Hoi An have been eliminated and the other cities are expected to follow:

Health Ministry to get tough on food hygiene

08/06/2007 -- 8:35 PM

Ha Noi (VNA) – The Health Ministry (MoH) is planning a nation-wide crack down on food safety violators and the building of standards for food hygiene in general, said a Health Ministry official.

At the top of the list of a new MoH plan is a public awareness campaign on food safety, to be followed by a system to manage food hygiene, a programme to analyse the risks of food pollution, a system to examine food poisoning and food transmitted diseases, a greater number of food inspections and the doling out of stricter punishments to violators.

The country's medical sector is also expected to become a major contributor to the initiative by boosting scientific research and application of hygiene standards in the area.

The new directives come hard on the heels of the recent detection of carcinogenic found in brands of soy sauce sold in markets across the country.

Why babies don't smile in front of the Photo camera?

One of my longest friends in Hanoi, Ms. Ha who was married last year and now recently gave birth to a baby boy. Both Moon and I had a chance to visit her family and had a goodbye Lau (hotpot) lunch celebration and also to meet her new baby boy Linh. For those who don't know, Ms. Ha is a good friend of Andy and myself and helped us in many ways when we both came to Vietnam for the first time in 2002 dealing with the local customs and culture.

Getting to the point of this blog, tell me, how do you make babies smile on camera?

Moony, Scotty and the un-smiling Linh Jr.

Moony, Scotty, Linh Jr and Linh Sr.