Vietnam Technology Conference in Ho Chi Minh Last Weekend

Hue and Hoi An posts will have to wait.

VinTech was great.  SSIS in Ho Chi Minh and UNIS Hanoi set it all up.  One day of sessions, and a day of un-conferencing and speed-geeking.  I presented a speed-geeking talk on IWBs in the morning routine and how to do a cheap green screen.

We got a lot of great ideas.  One or so that we can use currently.  If we can get tablets or computers in the room, we'll have a ton of ideas to apply.  Presenters were other teachers from Vietnam rather than hired speakers.  It was a great way to get ideas from people who used them that week.
I've also decided to jump into Linux - Unbuntu.  The open source stuff that I learned about this weekend has hooked me.  Free, open source powerful video editors and word-like suite.

At the end of the conference they gave away prizes: 5, 16gb thumb drives, 500g external drive, blue tooth keyboard, 2 ipods and 1 ipad mini.  As people drew names out, the smaller gifts were given away.  The basket came to our table just in time for the last prize.  I reached up over my head and pulled a piece of paper out.  I handed it to the organizers and they read it.....Jeffrey Wrensen!!!!!  I won the iPad!  So now I've got every OS there is currently in my living room.  To be fair, it isn't a normal MacOS, but I'm on my way to being current with all of this technology.

One place you wouldn't expect to see frozen fish.....the airport. Enjoy this little gem as we took no other pictures this weekend.

This picture was taken in the Domestic area, after check-in. The only way to get this fish home is to store it in the overhead compartment. Now it is vietjet so every flight is 20mins to 3hrs late. For an 8:30 flight, needless to say, we boarded at 10pm.  Is this a situation where you want to have 2 kilos of fish thawing, then 2 hours on the plane, then deal with baggage claim?  NO! Especially when they let you bring knives on board... But that is a different true story of our time in Hanoi.


Overall. We are glad to be home here in Hanoi. Or as Evan calls it, HHaaannnOiii.

Delivery? Of course...

So to bridge the language barrier, there is a wonderful website here in Vietnam.  eat.vn.  It is a great way to get everything delivered.  Mexican food, sushi, pizza, beer.  Yes, beer.  At first we thought that maybe they had just uploaded the entire menu but wouldn't actually deliver beer.

Yes, they delivered beer.  Of course everything else comes in it's own little cup.

Their Spanish rice is awesome and the flautas are the best chimichungas I've ever had.

So when we ordered again, we explored their drink menu.  There was an html error when we tried to order a shot, so we just stuck with this:

A margarita in a plastic cup with a straw!   They really have a 'can do' attitude and make it happen.  If you order it, they will deliver it.  If you imagine it, it can be delivered, margaritas to Spider Monkeys, it is all just a phone call away.

Road Trip...Vietnam Style

Last Saturday, we got out of Hanoi for a trip to a sacred site for Buddhists.  The Perfume Pagoda.  In order to get there we had to take a motorbike, bus and these lovely metal/plastic boats. The bus ride was two hours and the boat ride was an hour.  These boats were rowed by ladies.  Speculations were made in the boat as to why the men weren't rowing.  A general consensus was the men were drinking Bia Hoi leaving the hard work up to the ladies.  Par for the course here in Vietnam.  On the river and out of the noise of Hanoi was lovely.  Here are some scenes:

After about an hour and 50 boat hawkers later, we arrived at the first pagoda.  Here we learned the difference between pagodas and temples.  What is the difference you ask?  Pagodas are reserved for worshiping Buddha and temples are for all other forms of worship such as ancestor worship and asking for non-vegetarian foods.  At this point, we were still about an hour walk from the Perfume Pagoda.  We had two options, walk up the stairs and run the gauntlet of persistent hawkers or take the gondola up and skip most of the hawkers.  Jeff and I chose the gondola for a few reasons: 1. It was way too hot to walk for an hour up hill. (for us at least)  2. There was nothing to see during the walk up the hill except shanty booths trying to sell you lucky incense.

Anyway, we took the scenic gondola ride up. It was a gondola ride.  Terrified me and the little girl who was riding with us.  Luckily she screamed louder than me.

It was beautiful but I can see why there were so many bad reviews on www.tripadvisor.com.  I cannot imagine coming during Tet. During the months of January-April millions of people are clamoring up this mountain.  I can only imagine how terrible it would be.  I know many tourists visited and posted to Trip Advisor's website because of their bad experience.  Also, it is a pretty involved trip.  If you were in Hanoi for a week, I wouldn't recommend visiting the Perfume Pagoda.  If you have a month or more to spend in northern Vietnam, then see the Perfume Pagoda.  If  you are backpacking through Vietnam, skip it.  Luckily for us, we moved here and really enjoyed our time at the Perfume Pagoda.
-Janet

 

The Huong Tich cave and our ultimate destination on this expedition.