Day 14

Today was our last day before Mike, Lee and I travel to Cambodia.
We had a full day at RMIT, it was going to be a productive day, but instead, it was more of a planning day. We had a really long meeting, and not much work got done, but we did plan what we are meant to do when we get back to Melbourne, etc.
After that, we headed to the Majestic hotel for our farewell dinner as we were all going to split our own different ways. The hotel was a fancy 5star which had 2 levels of rooftop sections to eat and drink. The top one is a small private section, the lower rooftop was public and had an open kitchen and grill. The top part was exclusively booked for us, we felt famous!
After drinks, photos and speeches, we went to the temple club for dinner, this was the "fanny" place I mentioned earlier.
This place was very fancy, and again, lots of staff. The toilets were what made me laugh. They look like big wardrobe doors on one side of the restaurant. If you don't get guided there by a staff member, I don't think you'd guess it was a toilet. Then, once you get in to the toilet, there is a 3/4 divider wall between the male and female rooms, and the actual cubicle for the toilet, looks like a towel cupboard! You open these 2 tiny doors to get in, and when you get out, it feels like your sneaking out of a cupboard.
It was weird, but looked cool.
We all kinda met up at a hotel room for a little, but I had to go to bed, I was feeling sick and I was really tired.

Day 13

Today was an easy day.
We did a little shopping and finally found a place that sells Midori!
Ever since we saw how cheap alcohol was, we have been looking for Midori to make QF's. We asked taxi drivers, liquor shops, markets, and randoms, but we couldn't find it anywhere, then we just happen to walk down a small street near our hotel and finally found it! I also got this 9lt water bottle with a little tap on it that worked really well.
That night we had a little drink up, but nothing compared to Day 11!

Day 12

Today I was feeling sick again.
We spent the majority of the day at RMIT.
I tried to take a photo of the uni, but the security guard told me off before I had a chance. Cant understand why, if anything its free advertising for them... I dont think they have a business course at this campus.
Nothing too exciting today except a bit of work on the project.
After uni, we headed back to the hotel then out for a night on the town.
We started heading towards this place called "lush", thinking it was a "fully sick club" - not really my cup of tea, but I followed anyway.
We got into a 7 seater taxi and fit 10 people in there! the taxi driver was having as much fun as us, so he didn't charge us the full amount, it was very funny tho.
We got to "lush" and decided to go get some dinner first. I felt sick, but the others got pizza at this place called the "feeling room". Apparently the pizza was good.
We then found out that "lush" is not a club so we went to this place called "volcano", which was a "fully sick club". It was a trance and RnB club, Robert, you would have loved it. It had cool lighting, lasers, etc. and plenty of staff.
There were people all over the place offering drinks, guiding you to and from the dance floor, door people and many more.
The club was called "Volcano" but the whole place was made to look like it was under snow. It was a good experience if anything, and a change from having to line up at the bar, they come to you instead!

Check out this quick video of the lasers here

Day 11

Today we went to the Mekong Delta, about two hours drive south of Saigon.
It is a much more tropical looking area, nothing like the Ho Chi Minh City.
Once we arrived to our location, we got onto a big boat and went for a cruise down the Mekong river. Then we stopped at a small platform (below) to get onto a smaller boat that held around 8-10 people. Then later we needed to get onto smaller boats, that only hold 4 people!



This boat took us to the first of four islands where our tour guide "Mr. Lovely" showed us how the Mekong people make coconut candy and banana wine (35% alc.). Coconuts are used for so many things from drinking the milk, eating it, making candy, tools and little gifts.

The next island we saw how the Mekong people extract the honey from bee hives. We sat at had honey lemon tea made from the bee's that were flying all around us. As we drank the tea, "Mr. Lovely" brought out a very large snake for us all to touch and hold. Poor Nina was terrified of snakes and everyone made her hold it.



The next island was for lunch where we got an included meal and had the option to buy the famous "Mekong River Elephant Ear fish" (see below). The fish wasnt included in the price, but we got one to try, and it was very nice, despite what it looks like on the outside.



The last island was for fruit and music from the "Unicorn people". All the islands actually had names (i.e. unicorn island) but I couldnt make out what the names were over the speaker on the boat.

Finally, after a great day of sight seeing, we all headed back to Paco and my room for a bit of a party. Long story short, Alot of alcohol was consumed and my room was an absolute mess! Between spilt drinks, food and pistachio wars it was pretty bad. After we quieted down a bit, we managed to clean it quite well, the cleaners did the rest. Oh yea, and I need to mention that Mike got drunk enough to sleep Paco for the whole night... enough said... lol

Day 8

Today we paired up with a local RMIT student and did a "tresure hunt". This involved receiving an sms and then working out what it means, then going to that location and taking photo of it, once we have acquired that, sms back to get a new clue. It was fun and we got to know at least one local sudent pretty well.
My partner's name was "chop" and we spent from 2pm till dinner time together
First, we went to a park called "Cong Vien Van Hoa Park". It was very nice, and really green compared to home.



There was hedges of different animals everywhere including a cool elephant and dragon (see below).



There was alot of kids everywhere, a playground, and plenty of room for sports. There was a temple with a shrine for the first king of Vietnam (I think). There was a guy there who voluntarily stays there and maintains it. He showed us how to prey with insence and took some photos for us.




After that we did a couple more smaller items on the hunt like finding a particular place to eat, etc. After that, "chop" showed me where to get all the dvd's etc. But we were warned that these can be checked at customs, and there wasnt that much there anyway, then we headed off to the "Rex" hotel to take some photos and see how classy it is. It was a bit of a tease that we were going to stay there, but then it got changed at the last minute, but it was still good to see, very nice hotel.

Finally, we ordered (real) Pizza Hut and had a bit of a drinking session in Jess and Nina's room. I was still feling a bit sick, so I stayed out of it, but it was a great night anyway.

Too bad :(

Hello,

Its been a while since I've blogged, but I have decent reason, not completely laziness.
For a long period of time, ive been sick. Ive had colds and stomach problems for alot of the time, even now I still feel a bit sick.
Also, as of about the 8th of this month, windows on my laptop would not get on the internet at all! Linux would, and so would my phone, but not windows. I am using Picasa to blog, which is only available on windows. I could have used the web interface, but its easier from Picasa, and I felt sick and tired so I couldn't really be bothered.
Anyway, enough of my sooking, I have a couple of back dated blogs I wrote in text files to post, so ill upload a few more photos coming up.

Day 7

Today I was feeling very sick. Most people went to RMIT today to work and came back a little earlier than normal, except 4 people who stayed there till very late, a couple of others took the day off today and caught up on some rest, shopping and photography. I got to bed around 9:30ish last night, so today I stayed back at the hotel and slept in till about 9:15. I had breakfast (which finishes at 9:30) and went back to my room. At about 2:30 I was so hungry, so I went out to our usual lunch place with a few other people who were actually at the hotel rather than RMIT. The luch place is called Pho 2000 and I got one of my favourite meals, a nice and basic meal :) see below.

Chicken, flavoured rice, lettuce, cucumber, tomato, carrots, white carrots and one chili

From there, because I was actually up and about, I went for a walk with my group to the market. I did a little bit of shopping and then returned to the hotel just in time for the 6:30 meeting. After the long, but productive meeting, we went out to a fancy restaurant. A very nice place and they had the english word "fanny" everywhere, I thought it was the name of the restaurant, but was later informed that it was called "The Temple". The other thing about this place was they had a "western corner" on the menu. I was still feeling pretty sick, and I didnt have an appetite so I ordered "fish and chips" which was a small meal, and couldnt even eat 1/4 of it.

When we met up with the four people that stayed at RMIT (AB, Mike, Lee and Ralph) they informed us that they had basically cracked the problem of color and had written some great scripts to make things happen automatically. So although I didnt have a very productive day, alot of work got done today at uni.

Day 6

Today we travelled to a place called "Cu Chi". This was the main area for the war.
It was about 90 KM away from where we are staying, and took a long time by bus, with fairly average air conditioning.
Half way, we stopped for a toilet break at this little place where they make pictures, bowls, ceramics, tiles and wood carvings.
The way they make the pictures is unreal, they use peices of egg shells to make a mosaic-like image and they look stunning at the end. After that we eventually got to Cu Chi in time to see what happens at the temples. This temple was huge and had very intricate work done around the whole thing.

Inside, everyone gathered around facing the front of the temple and there was music coming from a "band" at the back, top of the temple.
The whole ceremony was these people of different beliefs bowing and reciting words. The majority of the people were waring white, but there are others wearing blue, red, etc. where each color represented a difference culture and beleif.

After the temples, we headed out towards the Cu Chi tunnel area. This is where the Vietnamese soldiers in the war fought America. They used a complicated tunnel system of traps and bunkers to hide out. I could go on about this for ages, as it was so amazing, but the 3 main attractions here were all the history and displays of war remnants, the Cu Chi tunnels and the shooting range.

Thats right, the shooting range! They had all sorts of guns that you would only be able to shoot in computer games such as the AK47, M16, and the huge M60, and many more. It cost more than 1 US dollar a bullet, or 100,000 dong per 5 bullets. So I limited myself, plus I didnt have heaps of money on me. I shot the M16 - my favourite gun in computer games and it was fun. They had targets, not that you could tell how accurate your shots were.
Some people spent alot of money and tried everything from hand guns to the M60 (big mounted machine gun - very loud, see below).
Very fun indeed... ask Lee, he was the happiest of us all I think, closely followed by Doug :)

After the excitment of the shooting range, we headed to the tunnels.
You have to climb down into a bunker, then into a tunnel (see below) and you start off needing to walk bent over. Less than 100 meters into the tunnel there is an exit, or you can keep going. After crawling around on your knees and climbing up and down little passage ways, your legs get really tired. There is very little light, which is only there for tourist reasons, not for the war, and I sweated alot down there. I got to the second last exit before I got out because my legs were sore. Apparently the last stretch was very small!
In the war, the tunnels spanned for kilometers and it would take 3 hours to get from one side to the other, and they were probably smaller that the already small tunnels we were climbing through.

This was a very intersting and exhausting day, but well worth it. It would have been much better if I wasn't sick, but I still managed to see and do alot.

Day 5

Today we all went to RMIT again. We all worked fairly productively and planned out some future work.
At this stage for the project, the program is only black and white, so today, AB explained a strategy we could use to support color in the future so we can start working on and researching it.
Some of our group headed down to the student cafe area and set up our "photo booth" in the lobby which was a success.

There were alot of students who were interested in what we were doing and looking at our sample mosaics. We took a whole bunch of random photos home to process.

When we got back to the hotel, we all headed up to Paco and my hotel room to do a "batch processing session".
It was a really good night. We all helped each other get the software going and processing, and as it takes along time to actually process, we all just kicked back, ate pizza and drunk cheap booze.

Oh yea, and it rained! for about 30 seconds, we all crowded around the window to see this amazing sight. I walked away to get my camera, and by the time I got back, the rain had stopped, and there wasnt many people around the window, but you get the idea :)

Day 4

Today was the first real photo shoot day.
We went out to the reunification palace and the war museum.
The reunification palace was huge! It had lots of antiques and information about the history of Vietnam.
It was a mansion in the middle of a very large property that was well looked after and had all sorts of trees, flowers, statues and bonzai trees everywhere. One of the bonzai trees had a preying mantis in it. We spent quite a bit of time trying to take a good macro shot of that. There are alot of photos from this place, but im only going to post the front, otherwise you (and I) will be here for ever.

Scattered throughout the property were a couple of old US army vehicles. There was a helicopter on the roof, 2 tanks and a jet outside in the garden (see below)

After this, we went out to the war museum. Here was alot of army history, and alot of artifacts and vehicles too. Tanks, bombs, planes, prisons, torture chambers, you name it, it was here along with alot of reading. I bought a Vietnam "combat" hat, see below.

After this we went to a fancy resturaunt for lunch that was very popular and had fairly good food. Although my meat was covered in garlic, it wasnt too bad. It was very busy, and we met some aussies while waiting, which was a good reality check.
After this I went for a walk down to the postoffice with Paco, Lee and Mike. I got a sim card for 75,000 Dong, with 150,000 Dong of credit. A message to Australia is about 1300 Dong, with is about 9 cents, even though a message from Australia to Australia is 25 cents... go figure. On the way back, we thought we would be ok, but we got lost. Eventually we found our way back using a map and some help from the locals. We asked one guy and he was so happy to help us "foreigners" with Vietnam hats and t-shirts on and had this huge smail on hos face, he gave us directions, then after we eventually got back to the nearby market, we saw him ride past on his bike and yelling something along the lines of "you found the market" with the same big grin. The locals here are very friendly, or at least the best they can be with the language barrier. We bought some more water and headed back to the hotel.
To top off the night we went for a walk to the shops and went to the bakery and diamond plaza. Outside the plaza we ate "Pho 2000" for dinner. I also replaced Dad's old style money with new usable notes with Nina. I had been carrying around this useless 100,000 Dong all this time, and Nina said she would swap it in her own time. We think she's using it on the black market, but that another story ;) I also saw these sugar cane juice bags that Khanh was really enthusiastic about, they seemed really nice, but they were from a street vendor and had lots of ice, which could possibly be contaminated water.. so that scared me off trying it.
We got back to the hotel and... you'll never guess it... had a LAN party! Mike got his wireless router going and Paco, Lee, Mike, Doug, Khan, and myself all player Unreal Tournament on our laptops till 1:30 a.m. not too good as we needed to get up warly to go to uni the next day, but well worth it!

Tomorrow is another RMIT day, which means another early morning...

Day 3

Today we went to RMIT for the first time.
The campus is really nice and very modern. It has 3 levels, with a big food court on the bottom floor. The food court had one place called "Lygon street", so that was interesting, then on the second floor, a cafe called "Lygon cafe" where we went for lunch. I got to have a more western meal - ham, cheese and lettuce wrap, very nice. It was good to bring a taste of Melbourne's RMIT campus here, they even use similar terminals in the labs.

We headed out after breakfast by bus and got some log-ins for the system and had a couple of meeting about our project.
We stayed at RMIT until about 4, and headed back, and we decided to go to the market to get some snacks and water. We walked around for a little and headed back home without the water... sold out. As we approached the hotel, we thought we'de try the "polobar". Knocked down a couple of drinks and headed home only to go back out again.

For dinner we went to KFC! It was a pretty good way to finish our already western-ised day out. One thing we noticed at all these places, is they have alot of staff. Back home, this many staff would send a business bankrupt, but here theres people behind the bench, people to open the door for you, people to carry your food... its great!

Apart from showing us what the RMIT campus is like, today was also a good day for our project. We managed to add a fair amount of structure to the team, and assigned roles. All-in-all a good productive day.
I am lacking photos from RMIT, but I will try to upload some as soon as I can.

This is a big model of the future RMIT campus, it looks like in the future this campus is going to be a very elaborate place with pools and tennis courts, etc.

Tomorrow is our first real "photo-shoot" day, so hopefully, if all goes well there should be some good photos in the next post.
BTW, sorry about the delayed post, internet at this hotel is... well, BAD.

Day 2

Yesterday for dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant, where, believe it or not I ate "fried frogs legs"! Thats right, I hardly believed it, but it just tastes like chicken with alot of tendons. That dish, 2 chicken dishes, and a duck dish were served out with a large rice bowl, and we were given small bowls and served ourselves.

Today was pretty relaxing, after the provided breakfast of cereal, toast, rice, egg, bacon, pork, and more, we headed back to our rooms and just did some light work. Then out for lunch to the same place we did yesterday, Pho 2000 and back to the hotel again. The excitement of the day came from dinner time. We went to the market for dinner and some shopping. Michael was feeling sick, so he struggled to eat then went back home. For basically the whole trip so far, he has had a croaky voice.
Anyway, the menu had some strange things, such as chicken feet and snails.I got a pork steak (not like an aussie snake). The place we ate was out in the middle of the market, and had a nice atmosphere with lanterns and fancy lighting.

After that we walked around the market for a bit, I bought a "good morning Vietnam" t-shirt, and AB got offered a "massage and some boom-boom from a pretty girl"... you can probably guess what "boom-boom" is.
After that we went to the top floor of our hotel to try to capture some motion blur shots of the huge round-about nearby, see photos below.

The only other significant event was the American in the elevator back at the hotel, we was wasted! Trying to alk to us, all he could say was "Im so wasted man... my brain is f***ed man..." was rather funny, the first proper english we heard was mainly just drunked slurs. Tomorrow we are going to the Saigon RMIT campus.

Day 1

From waking up on the 30th of November, rushing around getting last minute things and packing, then going to the airport to catch a 12:45 a.m plane (techinically Saturday) then an 8 hour flight from Melbourne to KL, then a 4 hour break, and another 2 hours to Saigon, I am really tired right now!
We arrived in Saigon in the morning, and due to the lack of sleep on the plane, this day has gone forever.
As soon as we stepped foot out of the airport, there was people everywhere, we all felt like celebrities. The weather is pretty hot and humid, but so far, barable.
From the airport we got a bus to take us to the hotel, and what a journey that was!
I have never seen so many close calls in one bus ride. There are motorbikes, push bikes, cyclo's, vans and buses EVERYWHERE! cutting each other off on the road and driving extremely close to each other. The sound of horns honking is non-stop, so everyone knows when there is someone nearby, which is a little annoying during the night.
Also, I needed to learn how to cross the road, yea, its nothing like Melbourne. At first I feared for my life, but in no time, I was jumping in front of traffic like a local, which sounds bad, but is actually quite normal. You basically walk across at a constant speed, and traffic just goes around you, because there is no hope for a break in traffic!
We arrived at the hotel around lunch time and had an hour to go settle into our rooms, then at 12:45 meeting for lunch. In that hour, whilst flicking through the tv channels, I somehow managed to fall asleep for a good half hour, only to wake up with 5 minutes to get down stairs and the tv remote on the floor.
For lunch, Phuong took us to a nearby resturant. For 45,000 Dong I got a rice and chicken meal with a can of coke, which works out to be about $3 Australian. The food here is all very fresh, and full of flavor. The taste of my meal is still lingering in my mouth, although probably not as much as some other membes of the group, who ate whole chilli's.... too extreme for me.
After that we took a walk around the market. Sales people are everywhere, they literally grab you'r arm and shove some sort of product in your face trying to make a sale. The only thing I spent money on there was spliting a slab of water with my room-mate Paco. Twelve 1.5 litre bottles of water cost us 60,000 Dong (30,000 each) which equates to about $2 each... for 9 litres of water each!

What a first day, a big culture shock. Very big differences compared to Melbourne, and a very interesting change of scenery.
Looking forward to seeing more of this very different and diverse place.
Unfortunely, I didnt bring my camera out today, but ill try to post more photos soon, you just have to see some of this traffic!

The beginning

On Friday I'm going to Vietnam!!!
I thought I'd try to keep a blog going for this trip, its never worked for me in the past, but I thought Id give it ago.
In this blog im going to try to post as many photos as I can, providing this site lets me :)

Anyway, to kick things off, this is the group im going with (except one absent member, Nina) :

On the trip ill be working on an "evolutionary art project". For us, this means programming and photography.
Our project is based on an existing "mosaic program" and our goal is to use this is to do creative things.
For us programmers, our main goal is to extend the code, make it more efficient, more features, a user interface, etc.

Here is an example of the end product (printed as a poster, photo taken by my camera phone):

To accomplish this, the program needs a target image and a tileset (shown above).

Anyway, this is just a sneak preview for more to come.
Stay tuned!