Video Courtesy of: Robert Whitworth

I find myself laughing everyday at this place I’ve been calling home the last 12 months. Do I actually live here? I can’t believe it most days! Why? Why do I find myself in shock that I live in Vietnam’s largest, most populated, ‘liberal’ city? Saigon is like your crazy uncle or cousin. The one that never follows the rules and the family just roll their eyes at, we’ve all got one.. and Saigon is just that. Vietnam’s crazy relative that lives life off the wall and breaks all of the rules. Compared to Grandfather Hanoi up in the North where all the rules come pounding down on the country.

1. There are more motorbikes in Saigon than there are ants on this planet. Just try and picture the traffic. So, imagine the people on bikes function like a million ants that are taking over the city, crawling and zooming into every crevasse as they race to get from A to B. If there is something in their way like any ant the driver will either go over it, hit it, or flood around it with 20 other bikes taking over the other lane of traffic and causing chaos.
2. Random Cheesy Pop Songs live on forever. Last Sunday at 8AM after a night of Saturday drinks my Vietnamese neighbors (they speak zero English) decided to CRANK Celine Dion’s Power of Love for everyone in Saigon and Hanoi to hear. Is that EVER necessary? I was in my room with the door shut, fast asleep, and it woke me from a grizzly bear slumber, pounding on my walls from across the alleyway.
3. Motorbike car seats? Sure, they exist here too. An infant on a motorbike!? Yea of course, how else would they get home from the hospital? A car seat here is a tall chair that balances in between Mommy or Daddy’s legs on the bike. It’s the law for adults to where helmets but children 15 and under are allowed to stand up on the bike seat clutching to their parents neck as they zoom in and out of traffic, no helmet needed. OR a pillow is placed in front of their face so they don’t bang it on the gauges if they are standing up in the front of the bike.
4. Abundance of the most exotic, most delicious tropical fruits sold practically on your door step for under $1.00. Mango, jack fruit, dragon fruit, papaya, watermelon, banana, pineapple… Vietnam’s got it all when it comes to fruit.
5. Rolling Power cuts suck and are scheduled in almost every neighborhood. 100 degree sunny days with no fan or A/C in your apartment is just cruel and unusual punishment.
6. Beer is 50 cents.
7. If I go to a cafe and sit outside I never have to leave again. People come up selling cigarettes, lighters, glasses, shoe shines, gum, books, fruit, drinks, bar snacks, lottery tickets… anything and everything.
8. Public toilets display signs that say “No standing on the toilet seat.” The ones with drawings showing the person using the toilet wrongly are the best.
9. At home (in the USA) families go out and buy huge Minivans and trucks when they have kids. My parents swear they have to have a truck for those random times when they need to move random big things like furniture, or take a big load of trash to the dump… Motorbikes are trucks here. Families of 4 or 5 easily fit on ONE MOTORBIKE. People strap anything they need on the back of their bikes. Dressers, cow meat, water jugs, propane tanks, small couches.. you name it and it goes on the back of a bike. Motorbikes are built FORD tough.
10. The city stops functioning and falls asleep from 11-1. Bank employees will pull out their blanket and sleep on the bank floor. Teachers & students sleep on classroom floors. Office workers sleep on their keyboards. Everyone takes a siesta as if someone pushed the power button while they were in the middle of working and they just shut down in mid thought.
11. Monsoon Season. It rains everyday for a few hours, and when it rains here all hell falls down. Streets turn into flooded rivers.  People drive home from work or to work in ties, skirts, and business suits on a motorbike in rain that is coming down so hard you can’t see 3 feet in front of you. The rain is going sideways from the wind, arriving to work with PUDDLES in shoes, squishing through classes the rest of the day.
12. A maid  cleans my apartment every week for $5.
13.  Walking across the street is a real-life, live or die Frogger game.
14. Flaunting fat is the new fad. Old men love to show off their big beer bellies, they pull up their shirt, and sit with their Buddha bellies hanging out, rubbing them their belly like it’s a magic lamp granting them a wish.
15. Vietnam celebrates the Chinese New Year or Tet, and it is extremely important. My school gave me a pig’s leg with the foot still on it as a happy new year present! A card would have been fine.
16. Everyday I see or hear something new like… live chickens clucking in the back of my taxi as I get dropped off across the city & all I can do is shake my head, laugh, and think.. Oh, Saigon!

PlayStations next big video game:

Driving in this insane city of motorbikes and honking horns should be turned into a PlayStation game. You have 10 minutes to get to work on the other side of the city, you are in a rush and need to get there in a flash. On the way to work “WATCH OUT” you’re dodging fruit carts, buses that are honking at you warning they’re about 5 seconds from running you over, road construction, corrupt police officers that want bribes, motorbike driving butt wipes going down a one way street the WRONG WAY, a motorbike balancing 8 beer crates on the back that you can’t see around, an old woman that has decided to walk out in front of you so you slam on your breaks to avoid smashing her to pieces, traffic circles that are in stand still jams, taxi drivers that hate motorbikes and try to hit you out of the way, the random stray animal in the street, kids on bicycles zigging and zagging across the road, men walking out in the street carelessly rubbing their bellies— all of this and you have 10 minutes to be at work standing in front of the class teaching. Funny thing is, I play this game every morning, every evening, every time I venture out.. here it’s called ‘REAL LIFE’!

I’ve been in Vietnam 12 months & been in Asia so long I didn’t think everyday would still provide me with a ‘wtf? really really?‘ kind of moments when all you can do is laugh & take it for what it is… I was so wrong!

One of the adorable antagonists at Ulu Watu, Bali

Ulu Watu is one of Bali’s top tourist destinations. There are however insane monkeys all over the place!… & they steal anything. We saw LOTS of primate pinches on our visit. But this little fella would never steal your stuff right? He’s so cute!… WRONG! The phrase ,”You cheeky little monkey” is very fitting around Ulu Watu.

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 Thanks again & happy travels!!

Bali Ha’i will whisper
In the wind of the sea:
“Here am I, your special island!
Come to me, come to me!”

Bali called to us, like it does to so many…. & we came! We were granted one week to escape Saigon’s motorbike fumes and relax amongst Bali’s peacefully green rice terraces, white sand beaches, & mysterious ancient temples. My plan: do Bali better than Elizabeth Gilbert in all of her Eat, Pray, Love glory. Bali by bike. Cruising between rice fields, driving towards distant volcanoes, and powering through monsoon rains. With our bags strapped to the back– we had nothing to lose, Bali was ours for the taking!

5. Kecak Dance

Kaka-kaka-ka-ka-ka-kaka-kaka- KA! Bali’s Kecak dance is widespread and easily seen across the island. We watched the crazy dance as the sun sank over the ocean’s horizon off the coast of Uluwatu. The dance is meant to scare off any bad spirits before the temple is put to rest for the night, but I think these so called evil spirits take refuge in the men performing the dance– it’s mental to witness! For an hour these men sat cross-legged, eyes rolling, heads and arms flailing, yelling ka-ka in a rhythmnic pattern together. Definitely an experience for the taking!

Kecak Dancers sending evil spirits far away!

4. Sideman Road

Sideman Road should have been the biggest KABOOM. The big WOW factor. Easily our number 1. It was wowing.. but I don’t know if it was the force of the rain that was mesmerizing me or the beauty of the rice fields surrounding us. We were two of the most unlucky peope in the world… during Bali’s dry season the rain god’s poured their rage down on us.  The skies opened up and soaked us on the one day we choose to explore Bali’s most inspirational road, where the beauty around you turns the drive into more of a spiritual experience– it was hard to be too inspired by the gray clouds and rain pelting down on my face… but I will say that despite the rain the infamous Sideman rice fields are infact a beautiful site and a must see for anyone traveling to Bali. Just pray for sunshine, and this will certainly be one of the best things you do! Even through all the rain we were awed at the beauty around us, so on a fluffy white cloud day I can only imagine how spectacular it would is!

3. Snorkeling through a WWII battleship at Tulamben

Feeling like Ariel and Flounder (from the Little Mermaid!) we dove into Tulamben’s cloudy waters with our rotting snorkel gear on ready to rock ‘n’ roll. The murky waters added a whole new level of eerie to the old sunken battleship. I swore sharks were on the outskirts ready at an instanst to start chasing us… and I would have to swim through the ship and trap the shark inside an old rusty anchor… or maybe my imagiantion was getting away from me and thoughts of The Little Mermaid were creeping in?! We quickly learned the details behind the mysteriously sunken ship. Japan blew up the US ship and America towed it ashore where it was stripped of everything & left to rust. A volcanoe erupted in the 60′s and (lucky enough for us) sent the battleship out to its final resting place.

Tulamben's eerie wreck lurks below this peaceful horizon

2. Munduk

We found the ‘real‘ Bali in the Northern mountains at a little overlooked agriculture town called Munduk. Munduk is famous for it’s beautifully structured farming terraces, perfectly placed on top of each other, and full of fruit, coffee, cloves, vegetables, and rice which sprout from the rich volcanic soil. The clouds always seemed to roll in during the day, but the morning hours teased us with views of distant volcanoes looking high and mighty as they reached into the skies. The view and the beauty of Munduk wasn’t what made me fall in love and broken hearted to leave.. that was all thanks to One Homestay & its kind-hearted owner Kadek. Kadek owns a small house, perched on the top of Munduk’s steep hillside. He does it all too. He’s the owner, the cook, the trek guide, the cleaner, the cashier, the tour operator, and a friend. Fair prices for the best Baliense food we had during our whole stay in Bali, the cheapest price for a room in the entire town, we played Baliense instruments with his family down the road, and he sat talking to us about the changes he’s seen in Bali and what tourism has done for him and his family in the last 10 years. A real guy, down to Earth, and running a homestay not for the money but for the love of travel.

The view from our room was amazing!

1. Ubud

The small town of Ubud wins the award for one of the most alluring, peaceful, and artistic places we’ve ever been. We spent a few days hidden away from the world in our very own 2 storey bungalow. Situated in the middle of a lush, green rice paddy, with our own pond full of fish in the front. Paradise. We spent our days lazily wondering around, weaving in and out of the rice fields from one terrace to the next, smiling locals pointing us in the right direction, taking in everything around us. Upon arrival to the laid-back, artsy little town, we were immediately floored by its beauty & charm creeping out of every palm tree, rice field, art store, and crafty coffee shop. With every turn of my head I could easily understand why Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love chose Ubud as her sanctuary of love.

Balinese famer reaps rice in Ubud's beauty

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Here are a few of the photos entered on Facebook and Flickr, happy voting!

Make sure to VOTE here:

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Lau (hot pot) is the restaurant’s signature dish and they’ve got every kind of hot pot you could possible want. A hot pot is you guessed it.. a giant pot that sits over hot coals and everything inside bubbles and boils together into a tasty stew. Delicious. Not only does Ho Ba Kien‘s restaurant serve up the best Lau in Saigon, it serves it for dirt cheap. Everytime I leave I am ‘roll me over on Thanksgiving Day‘ kind of stuffed and I’ve never paid more than $5 dollars. Beer & food included. The waiters have all come to know us, & know exactly what we are going to order as we walk in. Our favorite-go-to-dishes are:

1. Thai Lau (Thai Hot Pot) It has the perfect amount of spice added to it and is jam packed full with seafood. Clumps of fish, shrimp, squid, clams, mussels all steamed together in a spicy broth. The pot boils over coals at your table & you’re free to take your bowl and dig in. Take some noddles or rice and pour the steaming hot seafood soup over top. My stomach is growling just thinking about it! Easily one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes.

Look at all that seafood.. for less than $5!

2. Bo Nuong Vi  (Seasoned Beef) I don’t know what they use to season the beef [maybe lemon grass?], but it is so very tasty! The beef is cut into thin slices and a grill is brought out to your table so you’re able to cook the meat yourself. Our friends come over to our apartment just so we can go next door and indulge in some of this tasty treat!

Dinner sizzling away on our table

3. Goi Ngo Sen(Lotus Salad with Shrimp & Pork) Whenever the sad day is that I head back to the US of A I don’t know what I will do without this salad accompanying most of my meals. Most Vietnamese restaurants serve it, everyone loves it. It may sound like a funny combination with the shrimp and pork, but it’s not.. trust me! The salad is normally sprinkled with peanuts and the lotus serves up the perfect tangy taste mixed with the other flavors to have a little tasting party in your mouth. MmmMMmm, good.

My favorite Vietnamese dish, Lotus Salad

4. Com Chien (Fried Rice) Rice is a given. It’s apart of every meal in Asia. Whether its seafood, vegtable, or fish fried rice I certainly am a fan.

Ho Ba Kien Restaurant is one of the best neighbors I’ve ever had. It’s never to loud (closes at 11), is always ready to feed us, sells beer for  50 cents, and is one of the tastiest places to eat in Saigon. It’s one of Saigon’s best kept secrets if you ask me!

Travel Photography!

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Good Luck & spread the word–more photos the better! This is our first photo contest,… Hope you enjoy it

One question that comes up a lot from friends, family, & curious randoms– what’s the difference in teaching/living in Korea & Vietnam? Life here couldn’t be more opposite. Obviously, the massive temperature difference and the luxury of missing out on Korea’s brutal winters is a given. The pace of life, culture, expectations, quality of life, job duties, hours, pay, prices, vacations.. everything is different.

1. Korea was cushioning. I was taken care of. My life was ready & waiting for me before I even got there. My apartment, my school, students, teachers.. even making friends was taken care of for me in the first week of orientation.
2. Vietnam = dive into it, holding your breath, crossing your fingers, & hoping for the best & not falling flat on your face. We moved here with a plane ticket, lived in a hostel for a month & busted butts emailing resumes, handing resumes out, interviewing, calling about apartments & motorbikes for sale– it was all on us, no one was here to soften the blow of moving to an Asian country. It made it a hell of a lot more exciting!
3. I am almost certain that Korean public school students are spawns of Satan. Most Korean kids are in school 8am-9pm or even later, so school is their time for play. A class where you can’t understand your teacher when she is yelling at you is definitely the class you want to play in too. Plus, I didn’t hit the kids with big wooden poles like the Korean teachers  did, so that made my class even more like playtime for the students. Playing baseball, leap frog, gambling in class… you name it and I probably sent a student out for it.
4. Vietnamese students listen to me. They even respect me! They ask questions, listen intently, and I can safely say I’ve taught at more than 3 schools and have found it to be the same case at all of them. Maybe I’m just lucky, but all of my friends that teach here say the same thing. 90% of my classes have fantastic, attentive students.
5. The job. In Korea it was 8-5 Monday-Friday, without fail. If the students and other teachers weren’t there, it didn’t matter I would still be sitting there in my cold classroom shivering with no heat on fulfilling my chair warming duties. In Vietnam, the sky’s the limit. I have one friend teaching guitar lessons, I teach US History & Geography in a private school (hurray for a break from grammar!), Rhys teaches American Law at a high school,  some people work nights & weekends at Language Centers. It’s all up to you. Basically choose the hours and days you want to work & find something that fits it. Nothing is set in stone, and things are constantly changing & new opportunities always emerging. If you don’t like your school, quit & go apply at 20 other ones. I guarantee 6 of them will ask you to come in for a interview. For a while my work day in Vietnam didn’t start until 1pm & I only worked 25 hours a week!
6. Hours. It can be really hard to find a job that allows you to work 30 hours a week. If you are coming to Vietnam to save as much as you can than you need to work around 25-30 hours a week. It’s easy to find teaching jobs hiring for 10-2o teaching hours a week, but finding a steady job that guarantees you 30 hours every week can be very challenging. Don’t get me wrong, you can live on 20 hours a week here no problem. Meals can be 50 cents and a beer 15 cents. But, you won’t save much unless you are working over 25 hours. If you’re planning on moving to Vietnam, understand that it might take you 6 months of searching and picking up random teaching jobs until you find that stable income every week. We moved here expecting 30 hours from the get-go, and found out quickly that wasn’t the case for many teachers. 20 hours a week does allow for plenty of playtime and fun though!
7. The lifestyle. Life in Saigon is so fast-paced with motorbikes constantly zipping by you and a big travel/backpacking scene that sadly skips over Korea. You either jump on board or get left behind in a city this manic! Saigon is pretty dirty & has poverty everywhere you look. At times I miss Korea’s development with clean street, and technology, and well… nice things to put it plainly. On the contrary that is what makes me love Saigon, the fact that is far from being very developed. It’s underdevelopment compared to other major cities keeps it crazy, fun, and always keeps you guessing. Things in Korea got a little boring from time to time, but life here keeps me on my toes constantly.
8. We chose our life here. Our life was handed to us in Korea, which was fantastic but it has also been great to pick and choose what we want. I didn’t like my first job in Saigon, so I found another one. We looked at 20 apartments until we found what we felt was home. Freedom.
9. Show me the money. Korea is a gold mine, it’s no secret.. if you want to make a lot of money go to Korea, Japan, and if you’ve got the experience get to the Middle East. You’ll make a fortune. We make a great wage in Vietnam, especially compared to the CHEAP lifestyle but… I won’t be saving the same kind of money I did in Korea. I’ll probably save $5,000-$9,000 less than I did in Korea. That’s because flights, housing, and bonuses are non-existent for most teachers in Vietnam & everything was paid for us in Korea plus a contract completion bonus. In Korea your school tries to pay you for every little brainless thing you do. Why did we leave that kind of money? Things got boring. I don’t want to make teaching ESL my career & I  moved to Asia to teach as a way to travel. That means leaving good wages in the name of new cultures, new challenges, and new fun. It was time to go, I left Korea while I still loved my life there, another year and I’d have felt suffocated by the conforming lifestyle and Korean culture.

Every now and then I get the itch for campfires, s’mores, & sleepless nights in a tent. Living in polluted Saigon, where stars don’t even exist, and fresh air is a thing of the past made my campfire urge soar out of control! First problem: where can we go camping? And second slightly larger problem: where to buy a tent and sleeping bag in this city where sleeping in the woods/jungle isn’t exactly what people call fun?

Good News Saigon Goers: You can buy cheap tents here! After a lot of looking and even more asking we were pointed to the ‘war’ market where counterfeit Army patches and badges are sold (Dan Sinh Market in District 1). There we found our perfect little camouflaged tent with matching sleeping bags. Cat Tien National Park is a 4 hour motorbike drive away, so we headed off  through Vietnam’s lush green countryside  dotted with women working hard in rice fields their faces hidden under rice hats, we pasted perfectly aligned rice paddies, and gawked at the volcanoes in the distance.

Rhys's beastly bike strapped down & ready to go!

We pulled up to the park entrance & left Rhys’s clunk of metal in a little dodgy shed for 5 bucks. My butt was to a new level of pain from sitting on an uncomfortable bike for so long & a beer was needed for all. A little boat with holes, rotting wood, and an engine so loud we couldn’t think chauffeured us across the park’s river to our camping paradise. A big open piece of land with a restaurant out back ready for all of our beer & food needs, and for the first time in weeks– stars in the sky.

We built a blazing fire (‘borrowing‘ the camp sites pre-cut & stacked wood, how nice of them!) & sat listening to groups around us play guitar & sing their favorite Vietnamese camp fire songs– which sounded nothing like “Kookaburra sitting in an old gum tree“…! Finally, surrendering for the day we climbed into our tents only to realize we bought ourselves our very own sauna. Vietnam is HOT & sleeping in a nylon cocoon, with no windows, & 2 people made for our very own sweat machine. At 5am halfway in my sweaty slumber I sat up demanding to know, “What the hell was that sound?!” It was a strange howling noise with a sort of high-pitched yelp at the end. It was the GIBBONS! Every morning, bright and early, the jungle’s gibbons come out to play & wake up the sleeping creatures around them by singing with their mate. Their songs map out their territory & ‘commitment‘ to each other. It was mesmerizing to lay in our tent & listen to them sing, envisioning them swinging freely from branch to branch high above the jungle floor hooting and hollering at anything with ears. As painful as it may sound to wake up to at 5am, it was unbelievable to listen to this endangered specie proudly sing all morning long. Read all about these fuzzy little creatures, here.

Bet you can't even see our camouflaged tent!

The camp’s main desk warned us, “**Do not trek by yourself. You need a guide, and you need to pay him $30.**” Ha. Oh, please. We took off for Crocodile Lake early in the morning since we had been awake for hours from a combination of the gibbons’ singing, the tent acting as a sauna, and too many noisy people shuffling around us. Sleep wasn’t an option, it was time to seize the day.  We rented leech socks from the front desk & took off for our jungle adventure! (Thank God for leech socks, they were crawling and sucking everywhere!) 12 miles later after fighting off leeches, humidity, & thunderstorms we were back from our adventure sore & exhausted. The lake wasn’t exactly what its made out to be, but we still had a great time stomping around in Vietnam’s jungles. Between the bear sanctuary, gibbon sanctuary, & hiking trails there was plenty to do to keep us occupied away from the land of technology. The hike can easily be done on your own without a guide, there is one trail to follow & that’s it. Nothing to it.

Cat Tien's Crocodile Lake

Back at the campsite we were ready for Round 2 of campfires & gibbons. This time we opted to sleep outside by the fire (avoiding the sauna of a tent at all costs). There is something cowboy-esque about sleeping outside under the stars next to a fire, with nothing to shield the creepy crawlies of the night from you. Secretly, it made me feel a little bit like a badass (until it started raining and I sprinted like a pansy into the tent). Once morning hit we were up bright & early again and headed home sweet home, with an extra bounce in our step & the gibbon’s song in our heads.

You Might Like:

1. Cat Tien National Park: Gibbon Sanctuary
2. Cat Tien’s website has all the dirty details http://www.namcattien.org/