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Tag Archives: blogsherpa

Chapter 15

22 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by Ted in blogsherpa, travel packing, Travel Photographer, Travel Photographs, traveling, Vietnam 2011, wanderlust

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blogsherpa, ho chi minh city, Ted Nghiem, Ted Nghiem Photography, travel, Travel Photography, Travel Writing, Vietnam, vinasun taxi

Day 14

I had some good sleep regardless of the cast poking into my chest.  Then Eric knocked on my door for me to watch Vincent.  Little did I know it was 9 am already.

9 am?!  It felt like 7!

Then again there were no windows for me to know that the sun was out.  I went back and forth from Eric’s and my room to brush my teeth and watch Vincent.

But once I finished getting dressed and brushed my teeth, Vincent and I went downstairs to get a pastry breakfast.  The breakfast had more variety than Duc Voung’s but, it was mainly meat and pastries.  We ate as much pastries as we could stomach it and went back to watch cartoons.

When Eric and Ann came back, I went back to my room to re pack my things.  Since I am with one hand, I had to pack my things efficiently.  Since I had to check out at 12, I started to pack at 10 am.  I packed all my books into my check in back, all the plugs that I don’t need in there, and any non essentials and expensive things in there.  This way my day pack will only have my xrays and journal and my camera bag having my camera, ipad, and pens.

After I finished, I stashed my things in Eric’s hotel room and we went to check out.

We went for lunch and a stroll around the city.  I learned who those guys in dark olive green were.  They were tourist police who helped tourist cross the street in HCMC.  We stopped at this corner ice cream shop to get some ice cream.  The dishes were pretty small.  Hmmm…

We finished our ice cream, which wasn’t long at all and went back to our hotel room to relax from the heat.  Taking a little breather in the mid day was perfectly normal when traveling in Vietnam.

We stayed in till 5 pm when we went back out to get one last dinner together, since I will be leaving for the airport at 8 pm.  My flight wasn’t till 11 pm, but I rather be there early.  We went to dinner at this one alleyplace eatery that we have been to before.  We ordered our food and I got some banh mi to go.

The Banh mi was finally finished when we were about to go!  And those are usually really fast to make too!

Since it was almost my time to go, I said my byes to Eric, Ann, and Vincent.  Proper ones this time.

“Have a safe flight back!”

“Let us know what happens when you see the doctor!”

“Byeeee!”

I hopped into the Vinasun taxi to grab my gear at the hotel.  I went into the bathroom to wash up a bit and didn’t realize my cast knocking over the glass cup.  Shit!

Next thing I needed to happen.  Breaking something from the hotel.  So I cleaned it up, left a note, and money for them.  And keeping just enough for my taxi fare to the airport.

This time on the way back there was no parking ticket fee.  Sheesh, that guy from when I got here was trying to pull a fast one.  Good thing I was impatient and jetted that taxi!  I gave this taxi driver money and tip, since I didn’t need the rest of the dong.

Grabbed my gear I went into the airport.

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Chapter 14

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by Ted in blogsherpa, travel packing, Travel Photographer, Travel Photographs, traveling, Vietnam 2011, wanderlust

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blogsherpa, Mekong delta, Ted Nghiem, Ted Nghiem Photography, Travel Photography, Travel Writing, traveling, Vietnam

My last full day in Vietnam.

I woke up numerous times from the aches and pains from my arm, roosters calls, and sleeping way too early yesterday.

The pains were too noticeable that I just stayed awake from 6:30 am.  Vincent and Ann woke up too, but they woke up because of the roosters.

There was this huge platter of fruit from the fields waiting for us to eat.  I ate most of the fruit there, Chum Chubs (spelling?), jack fruit, dragon fruit, this custard apple, and.. durian.  I had some Durian, which my family knows that I don’t particularly like.  At all.  But it was nice out here cause it was fresh.  I still didn’t like it, it had a very pungent smell and it was very slimey to eat!

That was how I spent the morning, eating fruit and guzzling down Vietnamese iced coffee.  So I am supposed to sip the iced coffee… I am told.

We had to leave at 4:40 pm and Ann’s cousins and uncle took us on their moped to wait for our bus at the stop.  Vincent was riding with me and his uncle, who was zipping through those small alleyway streets.

“Great… more mopeds.”

“Isn’t this fun, Uncle Ted?!” Vincent yelled in the blowing wind

“Uhhhh….not really, Vincent!” I shouted back

Ann’s cousin laughed in return.

When we got to our stop we had to wait for our bus, but it looked like a while.  A taxi pulled up and Ann’s cousin negotiated a flat fee of 300.000 dong to take us all the way back to HCMC.  That was 2 hours away and for 300.000 dong?  That was a steal!

So we piled into our taxi and happily on our way back to the hotel.  Happy because we weren’t being packed into a van like sardines.

As the night pressed on, we noticed the driver starting to fall asleep.  So we did our best to keep the driver awake till he got to a swap stop.  At the stop he changed spots with another driver so he could go back home to go to sleep.  It looked like he had a long day.

We were finally dropped off at our hotel and I checked into my room.

Ahhh flushing toilets!  And showers!

Doing my business, I plopped onto my bed trying to grab some comfort, which couldn’t be found because of the cast poking into the sides of my chest.

Eric kocked on my door telling me that they were going for dinner.  I went for my last bowl of Pho.

Chapter 13

20 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by Ted in blogsherpa, travel packing, Travel Photographer, Travel Photographs, traveling, Vietnam 2011, wanderlust

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blogsherpa, Mekong delta, Ted Nghiem, Ted Nghiem Photography, Travel Photography, traveling, traveling with a broken wrist, Vietnam

The Countryside

I woke up with some pain in my wrist for obvious reasons.

When we unloaded the bus, I went straight for a VinaSun taxi to take me to the FV hospital.  But he didn’t know where he was going, so he went the long way to the hospital.  It got to the point that I had to call the hospital to give the driver directions.

The representative said that I had to be dropped off at the ER since I had to wait for the orthopedics to come in and since I already had a cast on.

When I got there, I saw the rep. he looked like Andrew… holy…

Anyway he told me that I had to wait in the lobby till about 8 am so I can try to see an orthopedic specialist.  In the mean time, he held onto my bag of clothes and day bag since they didn’t have a dedicated space to hold personal items.  Understandably.

I sat alone in the lobby waiting for the time to see the doctor.  It is hard to admit to it, but, the fear and shock hit me being all alone inside the hospital lobby.  Tears started to well up.  It could have been so much worse than what happened, yet, being hit like that left me in shock!  I have never broken a bone nor got hit like this before.  I certainly do not want to experience that again!

I saw that I had wifi, so I emailed Dave and Adriana to let them know what had happened.

Dave was stunned that a moped hit me, but was glad I wasn’t in a much worse state.  Adriana was shocked as well.

I finally went into the ortho. waiting room.  Where I was told the orthopedic specialist was on a very tight schedule, but I asked her to see if she could squeeze in an appointment.

When I did get to see the doctor, I was told I would need surgery with metal plates or I could wait to go home, since I was leaving in two days anyway.  Since my insurance wouldn’t cover this procedure, I would have to pay out of pocket $5900.  Surely cheap in comparison to home even with insurance, but….

Oh shit.

So I said to the doctor that I will wait till I get back to the states for the procedure.  She had my dressing redressed and prescribed me pain killers.  I had to pay 100 in USD for the consultation and then pay for my medicine and sling at the pharmacy.

At the pharmacy I had a three step process to get my medicine filled.

  1. drop off prescription.
  2. wait for the cashier
  3. wait for prescription to be filled.

While mostly like in the United States, only that the process took much longer.

When I finally got all this done, it was nearly 12 pm and keep in mind I got there at 7 am in the morning.  When I tried to call Eric, dad’s cell phone died.

Can this situation get any worse?  The charger’s pin was bent so it could not recharge the phone either, and when the guy tried to call the hotel eric was not there.  And the receptionist patched me to the wrong room!

The stars were not in my favor apparently.

After all these mishaps, he was kind enough to put his battery into my phone so I could call Eric.  Which I finally got a hold of.  I had to go to his current hotel and just wait for him there.

Taking the taxi, I got to the hotel to wait for Eric.  The taxi stopped across the street.  I asked him if he could go across, especially with the oncoming mopeds I certainly not after my accident.  But he said he couldn’t.

I paid him his fee and then waited in the lobby for Eric and Vincent.  When they came in, they were like, “Only Uncle Ted could get himself into this mess.”

Sheesh.

haha!

Eric gave me the password for the wifi so they could pack their things because we had to go to our other hotel.  Every time I tried to book a room at the hotel, I would time out.  I hope this isn’t going to take a lot of money out of my account.  Damn you, spotty internet connection!

We just decided to go to the hotel and book a room there that way.  So we took a taxi to the hotel after grabbing all our gear.  The receptionist thought she saw me before.

“what happened to you?  Last time I saw you you were ok.  It must have been a little while ago.”

Hmmm.. I don’t remember going to Lan Lan 2 before.  Either she saw me coming in and played that card or she has crazy precognitive thought!
I took a quick sponge bath, since I haven’t showered in a day and I still had blood and grime all over me from the accident.

But what really needed to be cleaned were my clothes.  They were dirty, sweaty, and smelly!

Eric told me that the plan was to go to Ann’s relatives in the Mekong delta.

We packed only day’s worth of clothes and left all other things inside the hotel room.  I tucked my ipad and hyperdrive into the hotel lock safe and only brought my camera gear and clothing.  This was going to be tough with one arm.  Even with the lower amount of things that I was bringing.

We met up with Ann’s mom, who was shocked to see my wrist broken, and went to Sen for lunch.

In the middle of the meal I had to use the bathroom and when I went to the bathroom the lights went out.  There is no window light and being in a cast, made it kinda hard to find everything.  Luckily I remembered where the toilet paper.  Behind me.  No pun intended.

I cleaned up and went back downstairs to pay for the meal.

We left for our bus stop, which was really seedy, but then when I saw the bus we had to load into, it was much worse!  We packed into the bus like sardines!  The driver drove like a maniac, weaving in and out of lanes and speeding up on bumps.  Let me tell you about those bumps, every bump we felt and were hit by the shock!  We bounced up so high till our heads hit the ceiling!

After two hours of this, we got to our stop to get onto the mopeds to get to the ferry.

Mopeds?  Really??  Again with the mopeds!  When we crossed the busy intersection, I closed my eyes and held on with my dear life!

What made this worse was that my driver was going really fast.  As fast as his moped could take us with our combined weight!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!  The fear was still fresh in my mind from the accident, couldn’t you drive just a little bit slower?

Luckily the trip only lasted a frightful twenty minutes because we got to the ferry.  It was a little tug boat that brought passengers across the delta to the other side.

The Mekong delta was supposed to be gorgeous, but the locales used the river to dump their trash and waste.  Leaving the river polluted and dirty.  We passed shanty houses till we got to the relatives place where the grandmother wanted to touch my broken wrist.  Ann’s mom told them what had happened to me and they proceeded to stare at me.  

While Eric and I stashed our stuff into our room, Vincent already ran off with his cousins to play.  We took a stroll around the neighborhood where I got to practice with one handed photography with the 1D mk3.  It was pretty heavy, but doable.  The problem that I ran into was changing the AF point, since it was a little tricky to press the button and keep the camera slightly steady.  But other than that I can still shoot!  Thank goodness for primes!  

Still, I told my friend, Junshien, that I wouldn’t be able to 2nd shoot for him when I got back in Boston.  I was strategizing how I would even drive to work with my left wrist broken.  

Cleaning myself here was the by the bucket method.  They have a bathtub and running water, but to save the water here since it is collected from rain, we used the bucket method.  Not something I haven’t done before and it made cleaning myself with a cast easier.  It just took a little longer.

Afterwards we played this card game, where I did a lot of winning.  haha!  But I was really tired and went to bed early.  So I went to sleep first, almost pulling down the mosquito netting with me.  oops!

Chapter 11

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by Ted in blogsherpa, travel packing, Travel Photographer, Travel Photographs, traveling, Vietnam 2011, wanderlust

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blogsherpa, bus break downs in cambodia, phenom pehn, sinh cafe, sinh travelers, Ted Nghiem, Travel Photography, Travel Writing, traveling, Vietnam

When your bus breaks down, fix it.
We had to leave.  You can insert a sob story here, cause we didn’t want to go!  But we had to.

Waking up at 5 am Kim took us back to the Sinh Cafe for our bus back to Phenom Penh.  Taking his business card, we said our goodbyes.  I hope to come back to Siam Reap aand him as my tuk tuk driver.  You really create a bond with your tuk tuk drivers, so if you head out there be prepared for some people who know customer service!

It was hard to say bye to Angkor Wat.  We could have probably stayed longer, but we decided to head back into Vietnam anyway.


It only took a few hours into our trip when the bus’s suspension balloon popped.  Great!  The first place we stopped to investigate, the other passengers thought it was their right to invade a local’s shack to wait and use their bathroom while waiting for the bus.  Now that was extremely rude!  And.  They didn’t take off their shoes.  What.the.heck?

The bus let off a loud honk to get everyone back into the bus as we had to go to the next village to find a bus and truck repair place.  The owner of the shop came out to give the bus driver and his helper tools.  But the driver and the aide did all the work.  If you drive a bus in this neck of the woods, you have to also be your own mechanic!  

But we didn’t have a spare balloon, so we had to wait for a passing bus to give us one of theirs.  If they would stop.

Meanwhile, the tourists decided it was their right to take pictures and swarm the children of the owner.  With nothing to give back to them.  That is extremely rude and unethical!  Any readers reading this, who also photograph, if you pull people aside to photograph, give them something; tools for education or at the least money.  I wouldn’t necessarily give money as that will then lead them to believe that they won’t need an education and they could just rely on tourist money.

An hour and a half into this, they got the part and repaired the part.  And off we went to Phenom Pehn with the bus driver honking like a madman!  On the way, we saw other buses pulled over for the same reason as ours.
We finally got to Phenom Pehn and just like arriving, I had to quickly deliver the kids to the pool.  We had to leave immediately!  When I finished, I saw our guide who was the guy we drove in with.

Luckily this time, the bus driver of this bus did not see the need to honk as much as the other one.  Thank goodness!  I could actually sleep in the bus… well, sort of .

When we finally got back to Ho Chi Minh City, we went back to our first hotel that I made a reservation.  I reserved a room for three adults and one child, but the clerk said I booked for 1 adult.  In the notes of the field it says three and one child.  But since we were only staying for one day he let us slide.  Strange.

But we only stayed for one night anyway.  We could have decided to stay a little longer, but you know, let’s not.  By this time, I wanted a personal adventure so I decided tomorrow I will go to Dalat.

We went to Sen for dinner, where the service was pretty slow and our servers were pretty clueless- bringing us the wrong dishes, not bringing us and then bringing us and then not bringing us our utensils.  Uhm.  great.

But the food was good, like expected.

Chapter 10

08 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by Ted in blogsherpa, travel packing, Travel Photographer, Travel Photographs, traveling, Vietnam 2011, wanderlust

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angkor wat, blogsherpa, cambodia, siam reap, Ted Nghiem, Ted Nghiem Photography, travel, Travel Photography, Travel Writing, tuk tuk drivers, Vietnam

Gone Tuk Tuking.

Vincent didn’t want to get up.  He was pretty grumpy.  But since today was our last full day in the Angkor Wat and we still have not seen everything, we tried to get to see what we could in our remaining hours.  
Our breakfast was finished and since this one temple was an hour tuk tuk drive away we left early.The temple we were going to see was unique in that it was not commissioned by the king, rather a king’s teacher.  This temple was known as the temple of women.  It used a red tinted sandstone for the building material.

We first stopped at a small temple on the way, but didn’t stay too long since of our drive out to the main stop was far.

When we did get to the temple of women, we went to the bathroom where this guy selling stuff actually talked Eric into buying something!  Gasp!  Well it was a book, but still, after 10 minutes of the guy trying to squeeze a deal, Eric caved and bought one.  While Vincent was walking towards me I spotted a cute girl on the side…

We made our way to the red sand stone temple where we saw a horde of tourists who were not only standing on delicate stone, but were talking so loud it destroyed the calm atmosphere.  They were obviously not interested in the temple at all.

We left the temple to look around the surrounding areas, while we waited for the other tourists to leave.

When we returned to the entrance of the temple, the other tourists left when we went back to enjoy the place all to ourselves.  

On our way back to the main locations, we stopped by the one temple made very famous.  The temple with an overgrown tree growing on top of it!  I believe it was shown in Tomb Raider.  We met some interesting Americans there teaching children games and drawing.

The better way to interact with the natives!

Our next decision was to see the floating islands for the sunset.  Remember my last entry?  Well when we went to the old market, for lunch when it started to pour.  So there goes that idea of going to the floating islands!

So we went to the restaurant, NYDC, which gave its profits to charity.

Eric mistaken my drink for his, so he drank my entire root beer bomber drink, which was good.  But Eric’s peach drink was fantastic!  Lucky mistake!

After we finished our food, we went to the store to buy some travel food, since we decided to not go to the floating islands.  Since this was our last day and Kim has been great, one of the things I left him other than a big and nice tip was my pretty, actually really, expensive poncho.

Later that evening, we went back to NYDC for dinner.  I actually wanted to stay at the hotel so I could go to sleep, but Ann and Vincent coaxed me to go. 

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