9/3 Bullet Train my ass from Kyoto to Osaka

Last night i slept like at 2 and woke up by 8:30am to go visit some temples with some new german friends. I met this kid phillip aka ‘kawaii’ means cutey in japanese. He had invited me to tag along with his group of 8 friends to visit the Golden Temple, Silver Temple, and the Imperial palace. All of them were amazing to see, there was so much culture behind it and especially the second temple where i took lots of pics due to the awesome natural scenaries. We hit up 3 temples with lots of bus rides but were able to complete them all in about 5hrs. Afterward, i parted ways with the groups and headed down to Osaka for dinner and more exploration. Once in Osaka, i just walked around the surrounding area of Osaka station. There were plenty of things to see but nothing really extraordinary thou. You can definitely see the difference between Tokyo and Osaka. I decided to visit the Umeda Sky Tower with the floating garden. It was a pretty nice view up top of the entire city, YES, i know i am a sucker for high rise. I help a few ppl to get their cameras to take some seriously night pictures. It was such a romantic place where i wish i’d a loved one there with me to enjoy the glamorous views and experience. I had a wonderful time regardless. Shortly after, i got a bit hungry and was contemplating on what to feed my sexy self.

One idea was to visit Kobe and grab a Kobe steak there…then that process would required to get on the bullet train and then a longer trip to come back to Kyoto for the night. So i decided to start up early around 7am tmr and hit up Kobe for an early lunch, then head over to Nagoya for a few hours, then back to Tokyo to check out Odaiba and Atarikaba. There’s a Sony & Toyota building there that is really cool and i am hoping that Atarikaba would have lots of cool nerdy toys to play with. K, i am out. nite nite.

9/1 Memoirs of Ernesto

Note to self…always book hostels ahead of time. Sucks ass when u have to move to a diff hostel every night. Luckily, i left my bag at the last hostel that ill be staying at so heck of a load off my shoulders. Second hostel was weird. It was more like a house chopped into rooms and beds. I didnt have too much complain about it since the owner was really really nice and it kinda gave me that at home feeling when we are required to take off our shoes at the door. He recommended for me to visit Nikko up north of Tokyo. So i did and it was amazing place for a day trip. I had hiked up to the several shrines, water falls, and sacred bridges there. Stopped over some local mom and pop shops to pick up some small bites. It was a great experience. That’s what i was looking for in my travels. After Nikko, i took the kick ass Shikansen “bullet train” into Tokyo and then decided to check out Harajuku since it was Sunday. What a really fashion place!! Lots of cool & trendy ppl all over the streets. I was suppose to go visit Meijin Shrine, but was so busy with Harajuku & Shibaya.

Last night’s hostel was nice. It really has that true hostel feeling i got when i was in San diego. Lots of ppl gathered around at the lounge area. All u gotta do is speak up and ppl are really friendly. Met a few ppl from Germany, Australia, and other european countries and we were ironically watching Pearl Harbor DVD. I was exhausted from the full day of walking so crashed by 1am. So i got up and checked out early from hostel. Decided to visit Tokyo Dome since i do like baseball somewhat. Snapped a few pics and off to Mt Fuji. It was such a freaking mission to get there. It was train after train…then 1hr bus ride. So it was about 2 1/2 hrs each way. The weather sucked ass thou, so it was zero visibility. I hiked up 30mins and then just came back so i wont get back too too late into Kyoto. Once again Shikansen ROCKS!!

Tonight i decide to walk around a bit in Kyoto just around the hostel since it was so centerly located. I walked around lots of area with guys in suits advertising for brothel like services. At least that’s what my instinct is telling me…or maybe it could have been jus a massage, but i hightly doubt it. lol. Anyways, so on my way back i saw a real geisha inside a taxi with a customer. Face all painted white and smiling..with a fan at hand. I tried to whiggle my camera out but by the time i did, the taxi was already far gone 😦 Anyways, i met some new friends here at the hostel and will be meeting them early in the AM to go visit temples. Also gonna head ova to Osaka in the early evening. Out!!

Tokyo Drift

Been a while since my last post. Guess ive deprived my blog of much attention since all of it was divered onto family and Carrie time. We have been having a really amazing time. We have been thru HK museums, lots of eateries & dessert places, Movies, and even thru a Category 9 Typhoon. How much fun was that?! It was just good good time. The thing i love HK most has now drifted to an end. Before i left, my fave cousin Sum Yee & Uncle 3 setup a really nice dinner with everyone. My Aunt was there as well. I had even asked Carrie to come along since we are practically family. Lol.

Anyways, without further details, other than I have arrive into Tokyo 6am from a 1am flight outta HK. I forgot to print out one of my hostel info so i was stuck in Tokyo for a while. Left Haneka airport and had to stop by a Shawanaga Station to get my 7day Japan Rail Pass. Then i walked around the unknown area for a bit in search for local eats. Found this small place with quite a few ppl going in and out. So i bought my first JP meal in a bento box form. Then i stopped by (check it out..not 7eleven)..it`s 7-interation…something like that…to get a cold drink. Decided to sit next to a bum that was a few step away. Haha..but no money was thrown to me ;( Afterward, i had to struggle to ATM and Internet so i can find out the hostels details. Hostel was about 30mins away and when i finally found it, then the jerk off told me that check in isnt for another 2hrs. After check in, i decided to just head out into town even thou i was extremely tired. Decided to visit Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building…which had 2 observatory up on the 45th floor for FREE 😉 And then i had decided to go walk around the vicinity for a few hours. Tokyo at night is freaking awesome. The streets are light up like a christmas tree. I love the small streets…it really get that local feeling of being somewhere else. Dinner was kinda undecisive because there was just so darn many. End up at a local chain called Sukiya which had lots of bowl type of food with rice or noodles. It tasted so darn good that i might consider going back there again tmr by my hostel. I want to get up around 8am tmr so i can move my stuff to my 2nd hostel and get an early start on my day. Thinking right now on whether i want to go visit Mt.Fuji on Sunday morning since i think ill have some time to finish up Tokyo on wednesday.

8/12 Why am I at Dalian?? Better yet, where am I staying in Shenzhen?

With the spur of the moment, instead of heading over to Tianjin, Jinan, Nanjing, and Shanghai..i decided to train my ass to Dalian. Why? cuz i read an article about it and it was furthest away from Beijing. I figure i’ll be visiting Shanghai and Beijing again in the future, I might as well check out other cities that are more time consuming to get to. I feel bad that i didnt get to say goodbye to Gloria and have lunch that day. Also didnt call Carrie as i had promised because my SIM card went bad or something. I was phoneless!! The train from Beijing to Dalian wasnt as nice as the one from Shanghai to Beijing. Then again it was almost double the price and it had shit load of stops. They dont announce which station they are at, so every freaking time they stopped, i popped my head out to read signs that i cant read. Language has become such an impact since i’ve step foot into China. It’s very frustrating when voices are exchanged, but nothing is being understood. Looking for Chinese tutor when i settle down at home. After checking into my hotel here, i decided to take a walk around the market here for lunch. Found this place where they sell a bowl of like tofu-fa with like a thick broth. Mama’s number 1 rule, always go to where there is a crowd. I think it was 0.80 for a bowl and it tasted awesome. Then i saw some skewers for like 1 RMB, so i bought and ate it. Now that i think about it…i dont think it was chicken. I might have been frog legs. Stepping outside of the market, i see this place with a line of ppl and nosey enough i checked out what they were cooking. They were making some sort of oversized bun. They are round and flat…cooked inside a round oven. Everyone wanted the fresh and hot ones. So i waited for one too. That thing tasted so good!! it had like sweet sesame thingee inside. I dont even know what it’s called!! It’s like a one night stand!! i didnt even knew her name, but u know it was good. Lol. My plan for this unfamilar city was to head toward the beach area and figure out how long it would take for me to get that 701 bus 1RMB to the airport. My flight to Shenzhen@6pm. Just found out that i have an uncle that lives there. So gonna look him up before heading back to HK.
I got to Shenzheng around 10pm. I have no idea where i am going or want to go. I kinda saw a hotel from a website and figure i’ll wiggle my way into that general direction. First hotel was called Shanghai hotel, looks pretty clean from the lobby perspective. Do you guys have any room for tonite? Yes, but you’ll have to check in at midnight for the midnight special. Hmm…Okay, i’ll grab something to eat and come back. Got some stir fried noodle off the street kart for 5 RMB and a cream soda from 7 eleven. Since, i still had some time before midnight strikes…decided to take a further walk. Motel 268 in neon signs strapped to a 20 floor building. Walked in and asked the same previous questions and they had the room at a lower price than the other place, so i’d asked them to show me the room. In the corner of my eyes, i see and slightly hear the staffs giggling right after i had asked for a room.  I didnt knew what that was about, but i went ahead to check out the room.  The place was nicely decorated and everything was very clean. Inside the room, you’ll notice the most obvious which is a ROUND BED with mirrors in the ceiling and condoms & lube was more widely available than Parenthood for teens. Bathroom was exotic and had that rainforest type of shower head. I went back down and gave them the Okay to stay for the night. Nothing exciting in Shenzhen except for the food and if u r nerd enough for electronics. Headed back to HK earlier than i had anticipated. Back to mother land 🙂

8/10 Not an Olympic Virgin

Today, Gloria and i decided to start a bit later and head over to Tianmen Square to do some tourist visits. We stopped by the Beijing Railway station so she can help me buy a train ticket to Tianjin, but with the spur of the moment, i decided to go to Dalian instead for 260 RMB on 8/11 @6pm.  I have no idea why or how long i am going to be there, but i’ve already gone so far….i figured, i might as well. Afterward, we got to the Forbidden City and took some really cool pics. Oh, we even caught the female cyclist competition when we were there. We both heard a roar and then a bunch of cyclist just zooms by us. It was so cool. Gloria is so cool that she had invited me to go see the Gymnastic Game that night. We got there on a special line 8 subway and i mean our hearts were pounding and our eyes are wide opened. We were just estatic that we were able to be even closer to the stadiums than previous night. We took a tons of pics and then we grabbed some snacks before we head into the National Indoor stadium. At first, it was a bit confusing cuz the they got the Vault, Uneven Beam, Balance Beam, and Floor exercise going on all at the same time. We got the hang of it, and it was just fun to be part of the Olympic history. Very cool. When we got out of the stadium, it was raining lightly and we caught some more night pics. Then it started raining harder. Gloria and i decided to go crazy and started jumping around in the rain like little kids. Then water from the ground started shooting up from the floor. We got so freaking wet. Our cameras go wet too, but they are ok. I cant explain the feel and moment of it. Truly, i was happy to be there at that moment. In life, we all look for small stupid moments that means big when we look back. That was one of it. Being wet and cold, we stopped by a chinese place to eat some great ass food. That was such an amazing day. Heading to Dalian Next!!

8/8 Beijing Olympic Opening

The over night train from Shanghai to Beijing was freaking awesome. It was a room with 4 ppl and very clean & cozy. It took about 12 hrs..so i slept in shanghai and then woke up in Beijing next morning. Booked a stupid hostel that is far far away from city. The worst part was that no one knows how to get there. I swore that i thought i was scammed over the internet cuz i had to paid in full over paypal to a UK account. Anyways, after 4hrs of bus, taxi, and lots of walk…i’d finally found it and just went straight to bed. An hour into my sleep, some tiny gal with short hair and a guy friend knocked on my door. She said ‘is there a guy from HK in this room’ and i was like ‘…uhhh..i am from HK’. I guess i chated a bit with the guy at the receptionist and he told her to look me up. What a pimp, heh?.?  So, Gloria, William, and myself headed into the city for a walk and a bite. Come to find out…Gloria and I had similar backgrounds. Given that we were both born in HK and spent some part of our lives living in the US. We both had kick started our friendship rather quickly. Also mind you that today was 8/8/08 the Beijing Olympic Opening. I cant recall the name of the place we were at but it was like a central gathering for ppl all over the world to celebrate. We took so many pictures with so many ppl with giant flags of their home country. The spirit was very high and we just had the best time of my life!! At night we tried to get toward the Bird Nest stadium to watch the fireworks but they had blocked the roads far away and we only caught a glimpse of the fireshow.

The next morning we decided to go visit the great wall, but they closed out the tourist section until 8/14. Gloria spoke mandarin and she had manage to ask around on how we can get to the great wall. We had to take bus 916 and then get another mini bus, then walked around 30mins until we saw the GW. When we first got there, we were like wow by amazement. We opted to take the cable trolley up to the top. Luckily, we were walking in opposite direction against the majority. Our route was going downhill vs uphill for others. Then walking halfway on the GW…i was like..this guy looks very familiar. I said..’James??’.. holy shit. it was james from miami, we couldnt get a hold of each other over the phone and some how we manage to run into there. The GW is so freaking huge and we met. that was so awesome. We took some pics and then headed our way down. We took this cool little go kart thing down this S-shaped pathway. it was so much fun!! I cant explain how awesome that was. Took us 3-5mins to get to the bottom. Gloria is so much fun. It was getting kinda late and we had no idea how we r going to work our way back to the bus station on time. Luckily, we ran into some HK ppl and they had a car service from GW to the bus station so we just split the ride. Everything just works out in the end. I dont know how, but it just does.

When we got back, Gloria and I went to eat Xiabu Xiabu place. It was so good and so spicy…which i love. Afterward, we took the train to take pictures with the Stadiums. It was so awesome to see it for the first time. But police was everywhere, so we were running away like haitians in key biscayne. We manage to get some good pics. We headed home early to our shitty hostel that night.

8/6 Shanghai Nights

Since last post, Carrie had taken me out to ride bicycles. No no, not the usual bmx type of bike in the park. She got us to rent those 3 seaters bicycle kart! It was the funniest thing and most importantly fun with great companies. We roam around “Yun Mai Tuk” area which is really nice, because in my mind HK is a really small place but yet it has enough outdoor recreational area for the active ones to enjoy. After parting ways with her friends, we went to New Town Plaza for some quick bite. Instead of doing a normal restaurant, we did the coolest thing ever. We had takeout food from a restaurant and brought it with us to the roof top of the plaza. It was so so sweet. We sat on a bench with our mash potato escargo and spicy chicken wings, sound of water flowing in the pond, the sun going down, and smooth jazz music in the background. It was definitely a memorable moment.

Next morning i was heading to Shenzhen to catch my flight into Shanghai. Once i arrived into Shanghai…i thought i was at Pudong airport. Ooops. lol i wasnt. So, instead of doing the Taxi, i decided to take the local bus into People Square for 4 RMB. I figure that i’ll get a better scenic view on the bus than in a taxi. Took me a lil while but i figured out my way to my hostel. I love this hostel. I think it’s best hostel so far and it’s conveniently close to everything. I met a few Danish ppl and we decided to explore the JinMao Tower. One of the biggest building in the world. I think it’s top 10. That elevator just shot us up like a rocket. so freaking cool. Shanghai is pretty much like a NYC of the East. Later on that night, we decided to go out drinking at Time Passage Bar. It was out of no where, but with great companies..we managed to have a great time playing dice. lol. After a few Tiger Pints, we decided to go to another venue i’d found on the paper. We got to this place called ‘Windows Too’…holy shit…did we had a great time. Music felt right at home with Pit Bull and other hip hop shit. Ok, me whore self noticed this cute Shanghai-nese gal giving me the eye. So i make my move, for those that knows me well, “talking” is my forte. She spoke Mandarin and i spoke Cantonese. Nothing was getting across. Then come to fine out that her guy cousin became our translator. OMG, it was so annoying to have some middle man translate my words like “you are very pretty”. Lol. So, i vow to take a mandarin class upon my return. Then i met some crazy Russian girl and she freaking took me for a 30mins walk. I got sobered up rather quickly and ended the night with dim sum at 6am.

Next day waking up at Shanghai noon, i decided to use up that one day pass for Yao Ming’s California Fitness gym. It felt great to having the blood pumping in my veins after a month and half of traveling. That night, It just so happens that my brother’s friend Helen and her friends Bo Lai & hubby Billy are in town as well. It was Billy’s bday..so we first stop over to an Art Gallery of BoLai’s friend..they even fed us well. Met some really nice ppl at that venue and took some silly pictures. Next, we went over to Bar Rouge which had a kick ass roof top view over shanghai city night. It was awesome..i ordered an AK-47 and it tasted like tandarin. lol. Later on, a bunch of Billy’s friends from Apple had showed up. The light the bar up on fire with lighter fluid…i think it was called ‘flaming shanghai’?.? it was fun. We headed over to another place by Fuxing Road Park…omg, did we had a kick ass time or what. Bottles are upside down and we be drinking and dancing like a fish. Met 2 gals that was from Miami too…how cool was that?! They took some scandalous pics…i gave them my email and i hope they dont bribe me with it. lol. Anyways, we ended the night with the buffet of food at BoLai’s Westin hotel.

In a few hours, i’ll be jumping onto a train and heading over to Beijing Olympic!! Here I come baby!

Last of Viet-Thai Days

Our exploration days in Vietnam and Thailand has come to an end. Yen and I have parted ways from Saigon on Aug 1.  It has been somewhat of a fetish for me to jump onto a back of a moped and ride out the streets of Saigon like a true brave soul.  A Vietnamese version of Benny Hill approached me to make the bike ride offer. Within a few bargain, I was strapped onto the moped like the astronauts on Apollo 13. Oh man! that ride was exhilarating. We were bobbing and weaving thru traffic like if we had a pregnant woman with her water broken. It was fucking awesome!! I even captured some part of the slower ride on movie for y’all. I stopped by a famous chain restaurant called Pho24 and had my Pho Dac Biet with a Soy milk drink. Yummy 🙂  With a few hours to spared, i opted to get a sexy massage…it was hardly sexy thou. It was somewhat painful since my body was stiffen up by the weeks of trekking and constantly on the move. I must admit, it was a good massage. I felt like every piece of my body was cracked and recracked. She did this one move where she was under me with her knees against my back and had me bended backward like the McDonald’s Arches. After all freshen up, did a lil shopping and headed back to the airport on another moped ride. Yes, i loved it that much!!

On my way from Saigon to Bangkok, i met two cool ass guys on the plane. Pete from Scottland and Tri from Saigon/Boston. We were just shooting the shit on the plane and had a great laughter. All 3 of us just happens to be heading to Kao Sand Rd so we decided to grab a Taxi to split 3 ways. We decided to had dinner together and pop a few Chang Beer since it was gonna be Me and Pete’s last night of Bangkok. Pete and I checked into KS Hostel for $5US a night for 2 beds. Then we hit up some Pat Thai Carts at Kao Sand Rd. They were amazing food. I also got my orgasm from my daily much needed watermelon shake. haha. Tri showed up with his gorgeous gf Natalie from London. We pound down a few Liter size Chang & Leo Beer while enjoy just plain great companies. We talked about everything and anything including details about Thailand’s Ping Pong Show to some of our past events from our travelings. Me and Natalie got so lid up that we challenged each other to a drunken race. With our brazillian slippers and Chang Beer’s generous alcohol percentage in our blood stream, we ran like sea biscuit down the crowded streets of Kao San Rd. It was absolutely the funniest thing that night. We had such a great time. I know for a fact that I will definitely see some of these new friends somewhere down the road. Next day, we decided to grab lunch together and said our goodbyes :,(  You didn’t think that i was gonna leave thailand without my last watermelon shake, no? lol.

My flight from Bangkok to Macau got delayed and my stupid phone didnt worked in Macau. I needed to call Carrie because she was going to meet up with me when i arrived. I swear..Carrie is the nicest and sweetest person ever. She waited for me since 9pm and my stupid ferry didnt get to HK until close to midnight. We greeted each other with a big tight hug and just know that we’ve greatly missed each other’s company. We didnt stayed out too late that night, but we had plans to see each other the following day to play catch up.  So today, i went to pickup my Hong Kong ID card 🙂 Yea, now i am officially Made in Hong Kong!! I also met up with my Aunt that i had not seen for 16yrs. She is such a cool aunt and we just talked and talked.  Her personality is so like my dad..kinda weird. We had Dim Sum for lunch and then parted ways. I met up with Carrie again tonite and she took me to a famous place where celebrity go to eat but no famous ppl showed up. She then took me to the pier and we stopped at a few places to have a drink and chat. We both had an amazing time together. It’s like everytime we go out, it’s just great company. Sometimes i tell everyone that i am just a simple man, a genuine good conversation is all i needed. I had that tonite. Thanks sweetie!!

I Love u “Ha Long” time

Our 3day/2nights tour of Ha Long Bay/Cat Ba Island has sadly come to an end and we are back in HaNoi for our last night. The tour was absolutely fun and relaxing. A minivan drove us about 3.5hrs from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay where we docked onto a viet boat. The boat has 3 floors bottom floor is our room where we spent a night on the boat, 2nd floor is for dinning and couches, and the top deck is for just enjoying the great view 360 degree around us. The sea in vietnam is really flat compared to the choppy water of South Florida. One complain was mainly our tour guide was not doing any guiding at all. Never told us what’s happening next unless u drill it to him. The boat is just a slow crawl along the open water and reach our first destination where we got to visit a tourist-ish cave. They put up way too much colorful lights into the cave and make it looked more like a gay pride parade. The 2nd portion of the cave was pretty amazing and we took most of the pics there. The first night we opted to sleep on the boat and those scammers wanted to charge us $10 to turned on the A/C. So i just crack open the cover and manually started it up. HA! free A/C biatch! Yen and I spent most of that night on the top deck just listening to mp3 and just relax to the sound of nothing. The view was just spectacular. There were about 2 dozen boat parked into the open cove. The slight cool wind blowing by us is just makes everything alright. Some of the spanish music on my phone made me miss home for a bit, but most of the time i just thought about nothing. We went to bed around 2am that night.

Next morning woke up to the sound of banging door and itching scream of breakfast. The view from breakfast table was just amazing and it all came along with great weather. Oh and all along the sea are little floating villages kinda like that Kevin Costner movie ‘Waterworld’. They live in huts that are floating by lots of empty blue barrels. They have girls selling cookies, sweets, drinks on a boat…i think they call that the floating market or maybe a floating 7-eleven. Everything you see is unbelievable. The next day we landed on the shores of Cat Ba Island and met up with some pretty cool blokes from Ireland. Once again, those tour guide didnt gave us any type of warning that we’ll be doing a 2 hrs hike up a mountain. I MEAN MOUNTAIN, it wasnt a hump on the ground. That puppy must have been atleast 60 story high. I dunno…all i am saying is that i havent sweat in places that i knew was sweatable. Some dude said his eye balls are sweating after i said my comment. haha. But the reward was fabulous, we got to enjoy the view from mountain top and it was amazing. Sort of reminds me of the Piedra de Penol in Colombia, but way higher and harder. The local tour guide that took us up to the top of the mountain was a really cool dude. He’s like 4’5 tall and just like a primate. He would get these flowers and throw it at us and it would stick onto our shirt. Once we got down to the bottom of the mountain, most of us just drenched ourselves with buckets of water from a water well. One girl there accidentally dropped her ‘REAL’ Versace shades into the well and our tiny monkey man just jumped in there to save the probably knock off versace shades. haha. I remembered my dad used to tell me ppl falling into a well and they die. This just just voluntarily jumped into it and dived down like a freaking fish. hilarious. We went Kayaking that afternoon and it was amazing as well. We were guided to Lagoon that needed to go thru a tiny cave like opening…it was so cool.

That night, our new friends from Ireland decided to head over to a local bar and pound down some Tiger beer. They were 40 dong for 3 jumbo sized beers ~ thats about 3US bucks. Oh man, it was such a freaking great night!. We were joking and shooting the shit for hours. Then we met up with that same girl that had dropped her shades down the well. She happened to be from Ecuador and attending school in Japan. That is so freaking awesome. I love meeting ppl like that. Me and her were just kicking it. I guess i just miss my latin touch since all i see is asians here. Anyways, might meet up with her later after our water puppet show tonite. But all in all, it was absolutely a great freaking time. Reminds me of drinking at the groves back at home with my friends.

Forgot to mentioned about one of Yen’s friend’s uncle that took us out to eat at some great places in Hanoi. He’s very smart and sociable. And we both felt very honor for him to give us a little tour of HaNoi…afterall, he was the same tour guide when Clinton came over to visit Vietnam 🙂

I am a Saigon Stallion

From Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Saigon, Vietnam. The first thing u’ll notice about vietnam is the freaking mopeds everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE!! There’s no lanes, no street lights, just people on tiny bikes roaming in all kinds of directions. When i mean people, meaning there’s at a minimum of 2-5 ppl per moped. it’s crazy, but it’s just the norm here. We checked into the nicest hotel called Saigon Mini. It was clean, modern, and free breakfast 🙂 We’ve been bringing the rain to each place we visit and Saigon wasnt going to be an exception. For dinner, we met up with Yen’s friend Niki and her husband Alex at 3T restaurant. It was like a korean BBQ type of place where they have the hot pan in the middle and u do your own cooking. It was pretty nice experience. They serve u Saigon beer with ice which was kinda ironic, but then again it was better than warm beer.

The following day was a pretty upset stomach day. We visited the Vietnam War Museum and we saw way more than what our eyes had bargain for. It makes you think how sick war is and how are some of the things humanly possible for anyone to do. It’s just sad and unreal. Anyways, we took some pics and spent about 3hrs there reading the fine prints of pictures taken there. We had lunch at a nicer venue and i was a bit ballsy to try some of their new drinks there. What a mistake. lol. Ambrarella shake is like sour avocado green cocktail that’s not as exotic as it sounds. Their food was pretty good thou.

At night, we went to a outdoor-ish place to eat dinner. It was so cool. They had like 3 ladies sitting on the floor cooking everything but mostly egg pancakes. They had the best spring rolls ever!! and Alex agreed as well. It was raining like crazy and we just kept munching. After dinner and after a separate dessert venue, we went to this club that Yen had recommended is called “LUSH”. This place was pretty fancy and as to any Miami Standards…my flipflops and shorts attire wasnt gonna get even close to the door. Well, that’s atleast what i had expected to be a flat out rejection. Little do i know, they saw us and told us to skip the line and walked right in. Cost us about $100,000 Vietnam Dong ~ $6.50US and comes with free drinks. And their drinks was freaking strong too!! American serves u 80% ice and 20% alcohol and here is the complete reversal. It was awesome and the place was very nice too. Some of the girls there was pretty hot and their eyes was just wondering at this Saigon Stallion. lol. Felt like a reversal of roles compared to back at home. (Let’s just take it that now i know how chicks feels to be stared at like a piece of meat back at home)  The dance floor was kinda small so i just went around and chatter box with some gals. Cut the night short cuz our friends have an early exit the next day. I got sick the next day around 5am…like throw up sick and i think it might be from the veggies not being too clean 😦 Then we had to get on Jet Star plane which was tailored for vietnamese ppl. it was so freaking small and lack of leg room. It was such an uncomfortable ride for 2hrs. But eventually we are now in hanoi. We have been wondering the streets here and it’s not as pleasant as it were in Saigon. Stuff are really dirty here and makes u wonder about their food as well. But it’s all good, as long as i dont get so sick again then i am all good. Anyways, we have just booked our 3day/2night tour to Ha Long bay. Going to post back pics upon my return. ciao big hug!