First Sunday in Ho Chi Minh
Sunday, March 4, 2007 09:13

Shopping day today! Babbled broken Vietnamese, bargained, and bought loads of stuff..! =X But um, don’t worry, they’re mostly S$5 for each item – after all my auntish talk and bargaining. Seriously, except restaurants and supermarkets, you can negotiate prices for almost every store and item here! Insanity! If I were to bring this ‘skill’ back to Singapore I think I’d be chased out of stores with a broom. Or rolled eyes from the shop owners.

Things I bought:
Wooden flute*
Necklace*
Frameless GUCCI spectacles!* (Don’t ask why I bought it for)
Pencil case*
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Vietnamese version ($3.90)
English-Vietnamese Dictionary ($1.90! Like – OMG!)

*Not expensive at all

$10 can buy you at most 5 packets of chicken rice in Singapore, not inclusive of those in FC 1,2,3 and 6, but here! You can bring back at least maybe 4 kg of books. No kidding! That dictionary is even cheaper than a wad of useless plasticine.

Thought I bought the most items, the amount is still out of league as compared to what the other 3 spent! Sense of accomplishment! =P

Anyway, they do have very expensive things there. Ho Chi Minh is divided into several districts (yes, they put it on the map), and it’s not the bigger the better! District 1 would be the most opulent district, and district no. is proportional to poverty level! A blouse in D1 can cost like S$69, or US$35 etc. ok. And they have this ‘Zen Plaza’ which is almost like Singapore’s Metro; no fun shopping in it =/

If you’re Siewlee’s brother or sister reading this, she has gotten herself into a dilemma of whether buying a pair of boots at S$11.90 would be a waste of money, and you might want to reconfirm with her Tingting and Zhongxin’s feet size. She’s having problems with both! Other than that she’s pretty fine. Funny thing is in the same room at the same time, she can feel extremely warm/stuffy while it’s Antarctic for me. Is it hers or my problem? Hmm.

Randomness

All it takes is a slow internet and a malfunctioning blogger to drive me nuts. Now I have to retype this again. But nevermind, since they’re all still sleeping, (like for the 57th time!!) and I have nothing to do.




Our daily night activity! And another record to record: I, May Wee, did not win any rounds for straight two days, apparently worth about 40 rounds of Mahjong. Can you believe it?!?! I don’t!!! =( Only won at the very last round – after I swapped places with Siew Lee because before that I was sitting in front of Samuel that jinx)

It’s Sunday today.. are you washing your laundry now? I should be, if I were at home. Oh well. It’s an off day but I have this feeling by the time we get out of the hotel, we can have lunch already.

Life is pretty great over here! Great colleagues, great boss, great cheap food, great cheap things (one can opener costs $0.25??), great aunties who wash our uniform and um.. the more tedious clothing. (I do wash my own clothes .. um ok?). Yet to have diarrhoea – ok I’m not like expecting a diarrhoea or something, I’d be nuts to do that, but you know, things just aren’t as hygienic over here =S . And seriously, very seriously, one can get knocked down on the roads any minute. Eeps.


Ok let me tell you more about the cake decoration department then. From what I know, they’re the most highly paid department in the bakery, they work in an air-conditioned room, with chairs! Siewlee and I are practically big time slackers over there. Self-declare, we say. Our favourite words are ‘Tan Sau’ which means ‘finish work’ and ‘An Com’, which means ‘eat rice’. Our colleagues feed us with agar agar and guava, more to come, and we stop work as and when as we like. We’re not really doing work, but more like going to a school to learn some basic cake decorating skills with cream. When we’re tired, we just stop and look at others decorating their cakes. But don’t worry – I’m sure they have great patience with lazy students just as they have with their cakes! =D The average time they need to decorate a normal sized cake is about 5- 10 minutes! Cream of the crop, like literally. Bad news for you if you’re a left hander, because they make you do piping with your right hand >=/.


Colleagues - Camera shy colleagues



Anyway, if you’re kind enough can you help me call my home and tell my grandparents I’m fine?? I have no autoroaming = Useless phone = Use pd/samuel’s phone = Expensive!! $2.04 per minute whereas the internet café here is like S$0.30 per hour!!!

Oh btw!! Congrats to those who did well for their A levels!! Congrats to those who didn’t (in your opinion)!! I don’t know, just congrats! At least you have one less worry on your head! And ahem to the one who got three As, you know who you are, with ‘you’ being WENDY HUANG ZIQIAN, one subway treat for every ‘A’ you’ve got! Applies to the rest as well! Ms poh, retard, Xiuyi (I know you have loads). And I’m serious about not getting souvenirs for you Ms. Poh!! ^_^

Well, that’s about it! Need to wash my socks!

Xin chao!!




Night scene in Chinatown

In the Vietnamese hat