Can you believe it? Tomorrow is the BIG day! We are going on our cruise
tomorrow around noon. (Maybe before.) Anyway… Today was the last
minute shopping time. Such as Target, Walgreens and CVS/Farmacy (that
is the southern Walgreens.) Today wasn’t very interesting, but I’ll tell
you, in 7-9 days, there will be LOTS of news. Well maybe tomorrow will
be interesting. Why? Because I will probably tell everyone about and
what’s on the boat. It will be VERY exciting. Well I gotta go to bed
now, see ya’ll later!
Hi everyone, in just a few days (starting on April 30th) Basher Academy
will be going on another long field trip in which we will be seeing many
of the things that we are learning about in World History.
We will be going on a trans-Atlantic cruise to Europe. While in Europe
we will be going to many different countries and seeing many interesting
things from Portugal to Greece, Rome to Dubrovnik in Croatia, Athens to
Corinth. All of these places we will be seeing history right before our
eyes. Just going to Rome is a journey through history but going to
Athens, Corinth, Barcelona, and other cities will give us a taste of the
cultures of many different countries.
OK now I will tell you what I thought of the trip since that’s the
number one question that you ask people when they come back from a
vacation. It was great, I was able to see the lives of many different
people groups, from the Dao (pronounced: Zow) in Sapa to the Cham in the
Mekong River Delta. I got to see rice being harvested, planted and rice
fields that were already harvested. One of the sad things that I noticed
was that much of Vietnamese culture is based on Buddism. Well I have
thouroly enjoyed being able to share this wounderful, rich culture in
this blog. I hope that one day I can go back to Vietnam to see my
wonderful homeland once again. I’ll be sure to keep a blog that trip
too.
It was about a for hour trip to Shaghai and then we had an eight hour
layover. It was long and hard. We ate a meal and shoped and bored
ourselfs to death. Finally the gate opened and we checked our bags and
went to the plane. It was a ten and a half hour flight to San Fransisco.
I slept and worked on my blog for most of it. We had thought that all
the movies that they were playing were going to be bad. One of the ones
that they showed was Ramona and Besis. I would have watched it but I
thought that it was another of those bad movies and nobody told me that
I could watch it. We made it to San Fran and had a three hour layover.
Then we had another three hour flight to Denver. We bussed out to our
car and were a little worried that our car wouldn’t start. It did and we
drove to our house. Hannah slept all the way and mom and I dosed off for
a minute or so. Dad luckily didn’t dose off and we made it home safe.
So, we are back safe in Saigon. No problems on the plane, but the
transportation to our hotel was aweful. I guess the guy who was supposed
to pick us up, was wrong on the timing, so we waited for about 1 hour,
till mom decided to call the guy. After waiting another half hour, the
guy FINALLY showed up. He said, wait for 10 minutes, and I will get your
ride. But of all things, another guy,( the guy who picked us up at the
airport last time,) showed up and said to come with us. So we loaded up
the luggage in the taxi, and ALMOST started out agoin, but then, the
first guy said to wait another 10 minutes, and he would load us up into
a “big” van, the van was the size of the other car, but we FINALLY
succeded in getting to our hotel. We got a warm welcome, so that is all
to tell you what we did this after noon.
Today is our last day in Vietnam. We woke up and ate breakfast. Then we
hung out for a fem minutes to find things to do and work on the blog.
Then we went shopping for a while. We ate lunch at a place called Wrap
and Roll. In this restaurant you were served the food that you ordered
with some green vegitables, noodles and rice paper. Then you rooled it
all together. It was really good and then we went out and shoped a
little more. After that we went back to the hotel and asked if we could
have a small room for the night so that we could have a room until we
leave at one o clock tomorow morning. They let us and we moved to the
other room. Then we went swiming for a while to cool down. After we were
refreashed we went to the room and got packed up. Mom and Hannah slept
for a while and then I laid down to try to sleep for a while. I never
did but my body got to rest. By this time it was about time to fialize
out packing and go to the airport. We went down with out bags and got
into the car. We made it to the airport but the gate wasn’t opened yet.
Some people started to line up and we asked them if they were in line
for our flight to Shainghi. They were and so we got in line. I took
forever to get up to the desk and when we got there she couldn’t find
our tickets! Finally she found ours but she couldn’t find dads! After a
while she was able to locate dad’s ticket. Needless to say, we were the
last ones at the check in counter. Unfourtunentaly she couldn’t check
them to Denver so we would have to spend all of our time in Shanhai with
our bags. Then we went to our gate and got onto the plane…(Look at
the next post for the rest of the story.)
Today was our last day on Phu Quoc. We swam in the ocean and in the pool
for a couple of hours and then packed up to go back to Saigon. After we
were packed up we went to the resorts restaurant for lunch. It came
late, thirty miniutes after we ordered. We only had fifteen minutes to
finish our meals. After lunch we were picked up to go to the airport. We
got onto the plane fine and on the way we had one last view of Cassia
Cotages. We knew that it was Cassia because of the houses and a
house-boat in th water just outside Cassia Cottages. It was a very short
flight. It was only about one hour long, half the length of the trip
from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City. We got to the airport and went outside
to find our guy. There must have been some confusion because there
wasn’t anyone there. We had to wait for thirty minutes to find anyone.
He then took us to the wrong taxi. Another man showed up and said that a
big van was coming. Then instead of waiting to get the van they decided
to move us to another taxi that was the exact same size as the one
before. We made it to the hotel and went to reseption to get our key and
go to our room. The told us that we had to pay for the room that we
stayed in last time and the room that we are going to stay in this time.
We wanted just to pay at the end so that we could use as much Dong
(that’s the currency here) as we wanted for shoping and then use the
rest to pay the bill. Then if there was any leftover cost we would pay
it in dollars. We tried to tell them but they said that we had to pay
anyway. We paid some in dong and some in dolars. Then they said that we
owed another twenty-eight cents. We asked what that was in Dong and they
calculated that for us. It came out to be six thousand Dong so dad
pulled out his walet and gave them a five thousand and they said one
more. Mom then pulled out a one thousand and put it down, a little
violently. Done. We went to our room and got settle in. Then we swam for
a minute went out for dinner and went to bed.
This morning we hung out at the beach and the swiming pool. Hannah
played with her Norwegen friends. Then for the afternoon we decided to
go on a motorcycle ride. In Vietnamese you would say that we went on a
xe om (say ohm). We went up to reseption and asked for a mortorbike for
te afternoon. First we went out to lunch. We went to a german place and
had sandwiches. They were good and then we got back on our motorbikes
and went south. The road that we took was the one that we went on with
Johns Tours but this time we got to enjoy the scenery better because we
were going slower. Unfourtunently the motorbike that dad and I were on
didn’t work properly. When you tried to accelerate it would go for a
second and then putter and die. As soon as you let off it started to
work again. Sometimes when we were ahead mom and Hannah would spead up
and pass us going “HONK HONK” with their horn. We drove along the beach
and then went across a really scary bridge. All it was was a few metal
poles suporting wood with sheat metal on top. It looked like they were
making another bridge to the side of it. We made it accross and kept
going allong the beach. We were hoping that there would be a place that
we could turn off and go through the forest but there wasn’t. Mom was
getting worried that she would get sunburnt so we turned around and went
back to the resort. Or at least tried. We we were supposed to fill up
the gas taks of the motorcycles at the end of out trip but dad and I
missed the gas station. I looked back and mom looked bewildered. I told
dad to stop and pull over so we could figgure out what was wrong. Mom
pulled up and asked where we were going. We said that we were looking
for the gas station and they replied “it was back there!” So we turrned
around and went back. We filled up and then went to the resort. We
played in the pool, had dinner and went to bed.
