Month: January 2015

Happy New Year!

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Hey guys! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and new years! I am back in the thick of things at work after having a glorious two week vacation with my family! It was beyond nice to spend time with my parents and sister:) It felt like forever since we had all been together.

We spent about four days in Ho Chi Minh City. The first night we went to see the AO show. Mom and dad were sleeping before the show started haha! Probably not the best idea to take them to a show their first day:) Then we went to see Ben Than Market, the War Remnants museum, Lisa and mom got dresses made (they turned out beautifully!), and we lounged by the pool. It was a great start to our vacay.

Then, we were off to Da Lat. It is north east of Ho Chi Minh so it was a lot cooler. It was the first time I have worn a jacket since being here:) We went on an amazing tour of the city. We toured a silk worm factory, a coffee plantation, a rice wine “factory” (more of a man’s house), the elephant waterfalls, and a Buddhist temple. Every stop was just as interesting as the last. The coffee plantation specializes in weasel coffee. This is where they feed the coffee beans to the weasels and they poop out ripened beans. It was very interesting:) Our tour guide was so kind and informative! I would love to go back there!

From there we flew back to Ho Chi Minh to regroup and the next day we flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was so different from Vietnam, very metropolitan. We did a lot of shopping:) We also went on a tour around the city. It was less impressive than Da Lat but still interesting. We were taken to a pewter factory…haha! I do not hold a strong passion for pewter but it was ok. Then we went to what we thought would be a rubber factory but ended up being a tree on the side of the road. The driver got out and cut the tree. This yellowish liquid poured out and then hardened into rubber. It was pretty cool although we all had a good laugh! From there we went to some outlet shops…less impressive than the rubber factory, if you could imagine. Lastly, we went to the Batu Caves. This was a temple inside of a mountain. It was really cool. You had to climb about 200 steps (if I remember correctly) and there were monkeys all over. I got some really great pics. After a lot of shopping, some great food, and a movie, we had to fly back to Ho Chi Minh.

Our last two days together were spent by the pool relaxing and went for a nice dinner down the street from my apartment for new years. Lisa and I planned to go downtown for the night. We hopped in a cab and found out that numerous bridges were closed because they were being used for fireworks so the traffic was crazy! The normal traffic is crazy anyways but this was something else! We finally got downtown. We were about to cross the street and two guys almost ran us over with their motorbikes. Lisa yelled at them and then the one on the back of the bike grabbed my purse and ripped it off my arm!!!!! There went my phone, bank card, money, etc. I tried to keep calm and salvage the night but we decided to head home:( So we spent new years by the pool with some drinks. The next day, Lisa went back to Abu Dhabi and the following day my parents left. It was really hard to say good bye, we had a such a great time. I came back to my empty apartment and the silence was almost unbearable! I miss you all very much and hope your holiday was spent with the people you love. Talk to you soon XO!