Looking back the calendar, and it's about a year since I've started blogging. It's about this time that exams are nearing and i'm sitting in front of my PC ... blogging. I've learnt a great meaningful fact today. Which explains the word 'Photography'. It's derived from 2 Greek words, Phos and Graphein. Phos means Light and Graphein means Writing. Means when you take a picture, it tells a thousand words. Meaningful huh ?  It's been some time since I've posted something in here. Time had been limited.
No time to waste, gonna post some updates on myself here as requested by some of my friends who are 'far away', and the long waited Day 4. Exams coming soon, and i'm GOING TO bury my head in the book. Classmates had already started studying quite some time ago and i'm still editing pictures, computers and cameras every day. How would I not fail my exams? I'm thinking of switching courses, got fed up with law already. I don't wanna complain about the programme factor, no point. If I can't afford it, then my brain has to smart enough for UOL. To be frank, OBU and UTAS is much much easier than UOL, but some of them actually denies that. They claim that it's all the same.
*Ello, how could it be the same when ur script is being marked by ur tutor and ours being marked in England?* Recently, my best companion, my PC suffered from myocardium infarction (heart attack in a rather posh way), and it had undergone some serious operations. I added in a trigger for the heart to pump faster (DDR400 512mb ram), and due to the old age, the visual acquity had given way. Then 2 days later, I bought a 2nd hand retina (Nvidia 5900XT) and replaced the current one. It's almost as good as new now, just that it's a little slow. *haiya, old adi mar* . It was then complaining about problems of communicating with others, hence I finally changed the old faithful, 17 inch CRT monitor into a 22 inch Viewsonic. This marks the legend of Pentium 4, 2.6ghz, aged half a decade.  
DAY 4 Rise and shine.
Life starts early in Vietnam. Most of them wakes up at the time of 4am in the morning. (that's the time I sleep when i'm not studying for exams). Walking around in Ho Chi Minh is quite fun, but to cross a road is not a fun thing to do. The traffic is indescribable. Don't ever attempt to cross a road without a professional guidance! FOOD! Is the thing that I can recall when you talk about Ho Chi Minh, or Vietnam at large. Early in the morning, there will be stalls everywhere selling food along the streets. It'll be such a waste if someone's afraid of getting food poisoning and not trying out the food.
These places mights look dodgy, creepy, dirty, filthy and whatever negative description you might think of, but the food served are delicious. Food served in Vietnam are Caramel (Oh Tao Yiu) free, less sweet and less salty. Which I categorise as healthy food. 
To get the taste of Vietnam, you gotta squat by the roadsides and enjoy the meal. Don't act posh and start asking for higher chairs and tables. Squatting is a 'Vietnamese thing', so enjoy it while you're there cuz you won't be able to experience it back in Malaysia or any other countries. 
After enjoying the meal, head back to the tour agency. We went back to Sinh Cafe (it doesn't bring you around to SINFUL places), and wait for the trip to Cu Chi Tunnel (read as Ku Chi Tunnel). Cu Chi Tunnel is a tunnel. Nothing other than a tunnel. Personally, I don't really like tunnels, unless you're talking about Tunnel Boring Machine, which is not a boring machine, it's exciting. 
Cu Chi Tunnel is interesting when you look into the facts and history on why did they build tunnel. It's not so much as being a great architecture, but this shows how humans can think of ways to survive when their lives are being threatened. 
Imagine, someone's running at you with a gun while you're hilding a knife only. The US military is using a state-of-the-art weapons, airplanes, and bombs while these Viet Congs only have some machine guns, pistols. The only thing that they can do is to set booby traps and to fight in the jungle is their best startegy. Yes, indeed, with the statistics, US won the war, but compare it in context, I would say that Vietnamese had actually won the war. US declared that area as Free Strike Zone, it rained mortar shells in the area of Cu Chi Tunnel. 
One question that the US should ponder upon. Why wouldn't you learn from your own mistakes? You've lost the damned war in Vietnam and now you're doing it again in Iraq? You can't win, it's their soil and they know how to fight their way. It doesn't mean that when you own high technology toys, and you can win. And when you're losing, you use E=MC2 to pacify everything. As you can see the pictures above, showing people doing art works with egg shells, they are all victims of the war. Victims that are not fortunate, and they survived the war, giving birth to children with cacated anatomy. Hands and legs are deformed and body structure and brain functionality being compromised. The tour to Cu Chi Tunnel will take only about half a day, and we were back by 1pm. HCMC is a great place to walk about and to find good food. We walked around town for street foods. There was a stall selling Spring Rolls a.k.a PoPiah ala Vietnam. These rolls are not made out of normal flour, these rolls are made out of rice paper. Hence, it's healthier and crispier, hence it's tastier. Again, squat like the Vietnamese to get the taste of it. 
We walked quite a distance from the Sinh Cafe to the market area. On the way, we saw an old man selling Dorayaki cakes. It's the red bean cake that Doraemon loves to eat. Then I realised that it had some 'Kaya' and was quite curious how 'Kaya' tastes like in Vietnam, so we ordered. After a few minutes, he wrapped them up and handed it to me, and I found out that there's no 'Kaya' in between the 2 cakes. So I asked him, thinking that it needed extra consideration in order to get the 'Kaya'. Mana tau, the brown thingie was the batter for the cake. This was all geisha's fault, being as an established pharmacist also dunno how to differentiate 'Kaya' and batter.  
Near the market, we saw people selling TaufooFah and I don't know what is it called in english. Literal translation is Tofu Flower, or Soya Bean Extract Solidified. Whatever it is, it's a nice delicacy of chinese. I forgot how it tastes like cuz I was busy talking to the old couple we met at the stall.
In their point of view : They saw a bunch of people that looked like chinese, and they didn't hear anything that we spoke sounds like mandarin (5 bananas), and being a good auntie, she came forth and said "Hao Chi" which means 'Delicious'.
Then I replied in Mandarin, and sent her into a state of nervous shock. Then the conversation started.
They were seasoned travellers from Taiwan, and I believe that they are freaking rich. They had been in Japan for the past 2 months, and now in Vietnam before going back to Taiwan.  After that, walk around HCMC until night falls, and get ready for the train ride to Hue at 10:30pm. At the mean time, try getting yourself a guest house to bathe and prepare yourself before getting into the train. Cuz it's gonna be 17 hours without a chance to take a shower. Haha! 
You will find extraordinary things happening in Vietnam which you don't see them in other places. Like a good example I have here. You think you can ride a motorcycle like a Mat Rempit and it's damn great? Try delivering a REFRIGERATOR with your motorcycle! 
Talking about guest houses to rent, don't get freaked out by those dodgy dodgy streets in Vietnam. They offer good room rates with clean environment and also good food! Just like the one in this picture. They have 2 kids that can entertain you with their cam-whoring skills. They are not that fortunate as use to have a camera at home, hence a camera is like a MacBook Pro when I put myself in their shoes. Lepak around until 10:00 and grab a taxi to the train station. One of the churches was having their Christmas celebrations. At that very moment, Michael Buble's song came to mind, "I wanna go home" ~ for Christmas. Other than that, Vietnam was a beautiful place to travel and to know the culture. Board the train and enjoy sleeping with roaches and a bed with water underneath. 
ENJOY !!!! Bon voyage ! | 
