We are always in airports! This is my favorite sign in any airport as of this month:
Using context clues: Airport Customs, waiting in a big line Big line; I thought that Wang-Wang might be the Filipino word(Tagalog is what us non-Filipinos call it I've learned) for "push to the front and if anyone you cut off, act surprised as if you had no idea there were other people in line."
I was incorrect.
Apparently it means no corruption or bribery and if I understand the use of a "no-zone" it means that there is an area where the mentioned behavior is allowed.
Manila was wonderful, the people were beyond friendly and to make everything super easy, everyone spoke English. We were in Manila to interview at ISM and see David Collett, my friend since I was 6. I had been to the old ISM campus to record with their orchestra (yes I did travel with my orchestra to join forces with other high school nerds and make a CD, I'm quite proud of it too). The new ISM campus is in a beautiful part of town that reminded me of the Plaza area of Kansas City. It would be a very easy and great place to live.
As you sit down on South China Airways you can hear the soft sound of instrumental Chinese music. After you take off, you get to hear a movie, any movie, even a few at the same time!
You may remember these from 1993 or before as the hollow rubber tubes that piped the audio from the arm-rest to your ear. Back in the days that these cost $1.50 on Delta, David (Wrensen) and I would tilt up the arm-rest and press our ears up against it to watch the movies. The movies were only 40-60% blocked by the seat in front if we were lucky! That may not make sense to those of you who have only been on the fancy planes that have a tiny TV just for you. We used to watch movies on a screen that rolled down loud enough to wake you up for the start of the movie if you were in the first two rows. The projector had three large bulbs - red, blue, green, and if the projector was old enough, it would be washed out. It was better than Christmas in those days to be on Singapore Airlines even for just a two hour flight. SingAir was the first place I encountered the in-seat TV and the remote to play games. It was heaven!
To finish what I was starting to talk about; our flight had many open seats who must have previously been occupied by people who had forgotten their hearing aids, they had turned the volume up to 11. The cacophony of action movies was agitating as it wafted machine gun blast by angry yells over the seats to my ears.
Then a few weeks later we went to Danang!
First we had Halloween at school on the 25th. This costume was awesome.
So, Danang, we spent a few days there at the start of our October break. We had driven through last year on the way to Hoi An. Last year means last school year to us, it was in 2013. There are grand plans to make Danang an international hub of fancy resorts, for now it is still on the low-key side. There are a few big projects going in right now, my favorite being the bridges.
One big 'ol dragon bridge and in the background one of the suspension bridges that I love, this one had the wires spread like a triangle rather than all in line.
We stayed a bit out of the city on the peninsula and our hotel seemed like the end of the road. It was a lovely, quiet villa with all the funny twists that you get in Vietnam.
We had a two story, two bedroom villa with our own little pool. Storm season had brought the prices down a little, and tossed sand into all of the ocean front villas. It rained a lot, but we had plenty of peace and quiet to relax. The only other guests were a family with two kids who go to our school so we got to say "Hi" every breakfast.
Danang has great seafood and a bunch of restaurants like this line the ocean front. Those are buckets full of live lobster, crab, shrimp and anything with a shell.
That little guy was making a
run crawl slow slide for freedom.
Biggest lobster I'd ever seen and then bigger again, but they were 1.75mil VND about 80 bucks, so I ordered everything else instead.
Don't know what these were, but click on the picture to enlarge one scary looking face!
I had no idea what these were, so I Googled all different types of descriptions of it. I still have no idea what these were, some kind of fish that looked like squid and was on a lot of plates.
You can also see the little sting-rays on the bottom left.
A KG of snout otter clams and four of the biggest prawns I've ever seen. Size of a chicken leg and thigh. I also had some really good clams, baseball sized ones.
A delicious crab as well. I had to take home half the clams and shrimp though.
The Cham museum in Danang was very interesting. It showed the spread of religion and stone temples from India through to Vietnam and China. Along with all of the old stone carvings, there was a 'virtual museum' - a series of info panels that showed the similar sites to the Cham's temples such as Angkor Wat. I may not be traveling with my mother anymore, but I just can't skip a good museum, especially if it has anything to do with a temple.
Other than that, there isn't much to do in Danang but relax.
Janet and I were a bit anxious at first. We were of the mindset that if we were paying for a plane ticket and hotel, we should be doing stuff, things that are fantastic and making the most of every minute. We learned to nap, stay up all night to watch Sunday Football (12:00 AM Monday, 3:15 and 7:45 AM are the game times so I miss them every week). float in the ocean, order room service and nap again. We are getting good at relaxing.
Funny things that happened on this trip that are to be expected in Vietnam:
Mid massage, Janet got part of her hair braided by another lady who was working there, but just hanging out in the spa, bored, wanted to do a partial braid on a stranger.
Half of the times we ordered room service they wanted to bring us the menu. After they would arrive, we would read our order off the menu and they had no problem taking our order face-to-face, but not on the phone.
In-villa kitchen. Pots? Pans? Plate? Nope. 2 knives, 3 chopsticks, a fork, and two big serving bowls were available. I made the mistake of bringing in fresh seafood before checking out the kitchen, so when I asked for a pot I was told "No, we will cook one time, next time you pay." Not sure why they bothered to have a kitchen unless people often travel with a suitcase full of kitchen supplies.
Checking in at the airport? Don't assume that the airport code that was typed in for your ticket was also applied to your bag. You may ask: "What, why wouldn't it auto-fill both pieces of data and check that they are the same?" I'd reply "Well, that may make sense, but there is no place for that at the Noi Bai airport!"
We caught the error and talked to the ground crew in Hanoi, so after our bags still went to Saigon (we had notified them of the error about 10 minutes after checking in, but it was too late apparently) theywere sent back up to Danang. So we are at 50-50 for bags arriving in or from Vietnam.
Pajama uniforms. I don't know what else to call it. All of the restaurant staff were in matching white outfits. Only odd thing was, they were half-flannel pajama style - half "t-shirt with a tux" type fancy and cotton and were pilling (those little rolled up balls of cotton that come off of old clothes). We were in a nice hotel that certainly could have done something different. Here though, it goes with the "silk-pajamas are an all day every day" style.
