The Black World Of Solitude.

Sunday, 20 March 2011

HCM City - Day 3

Day 3. Quite a normal day.

Ok, today we visited two schools. This school is the Le Hong Phong School for the Gifted. The students there are really fluent in English.

Next, we went to the former building for South Vietnam government to have a look at the interior. I will not upload all the photos I took there, because there's just too much.

Ok and this is the third school we went to. It's the School of the Future, where the students there are disabled. It was pretty sad to see them, although they show no signs of sadness at their condition. We were greeted with a performance by them. However, when we had to interact with them, there was a communication breakdown for they couldn't speak english (and so do the teachers), and we only had three Vietnamese students in my class. Since we were split into more than 3 groups, we had a hell of a problem, and decided to resort to body language. Lesson learnt: always have a translator with you.

Ok, there should be more photos, but I wasn't in the condition to take any.

After the visit to the school we went to the Ben Thah Market, a famous marketplace for foreigners. As such, the stuff there are overpriced, and the salespeople there could speak english. However, my stomache carried on to the third day.

Once we reached the market I needed the toilet, and the place was extremely crammed. Worse still, the saleswomen kept grabbing my arm and pulling me to their shop. There's only one toilet, and it's extremely far away. Had to fight the crowd for the toilet. I had diahorrea.

After buying some stuff where I got scammed to buy a shirt which costs 480 000 dongs (I don't know how to bargain but managed to pull down the price from 590 000 dongs), my friends and I decided to go to a nearby noodle shop for dinner (dinner was at our own expenses) and Bill Clinton of USA went there for the noodles before so we could trust that the food was clean. Had some noodles, and had yet another stomache.

After that, the night market at the Ben Thanh Market opened (7pm Vietnam time). Owing to my condition I decided to stay at this Trutti Frutti or whatever the name is, since there was a toilet that was accessible. Stayed there for quite a while until I suddenly felt out of breath. Then, I went outside with my friends for a walk in order to feel better (the air inside the shop was stale, and I took some diahorrea medicine after heeding instructions from my mom back in Singapore). After a while it was time to return to the hotel.

And so that was the third day, quite a normal day. Unfortunately, no pictures for the Ben Thanh Market, since we were rushing to buy stuff to sell back in our school (we were forced to, for this annual school event). It was also unwise to take out my camera since there were so many people around, someone could just snatch it away. I heard from the local tour guide that someone had his/her bag slashed open and the thief stole the stuff. Therefore we wore our bags on the front.

Tomorrow (or maybe the day after) I'll post about the fourth day. On the fourth day we went out of HCM city for Dalat, a nice, cool place which reminded me of Taiwan. Beautiful scenery, but the journey itself took the entire fourth day. Check back on the blog for pictures :D

And unfortunately, term holidays are over, and tomorrow's the start of a new term again until June. Damn.

=(

Labels: Mohenjo-Daro

人之命，若无意，何生乎？18:07