oep @ vietnam |day 3|
Friday, February 22
ok, i'm putting a bit of day 2 under here, cos technically since it was in the wee hours of the morning, it's considered the next day. but the actual organising of the following event was done on day 2, so its still related.
on the night of day 2, as you would have read, we played cards. the problem was, there wasn't much time, so card playing was reduced to a low. wanting to play more, sam, jon, ajj and i agreed to wake up earlier just so we could play bridge in sam's room. after all, the bus journey was supposed to take 8 hours, so we could very well sleep during the journey.
so i woke up at 4:20am by my phone alarm, and i think it woke up my roommate too :P so i lay still in bed for 10min so that my roommate would actually be asleep when i left the room. at 4:30am, i finally left my room, and went to sam's room, which was 2 floors below, and directly below mine (mine was 528, his was 328). i brought along my camera charger so that i could take back my handphone and charge the camera too.
when i got there, i was the only one there... so sam called jie jun and jonathan via the hotel phone, and they finally arrived. to make sure that we didn't disturb je sern, we turned on the corridor lights and played in the corridor! hahaha. the corridor as in the small hallway that all hotels have just after you open the door. in the room of course. it was such fun playing bridge, its such a good game. if you dont know how to play it, you should learn :P so as we were playing, we were talking in whispers and hissing at each other. all this eventually woke up je sern who was bewildered to see 4 people playing cards at the room entryway. if i were him i would be super amazed too XD hahahahaha. then he asked us what time it was (5:00am) and then went back to sleep.
at 5:30am, i decided to go back to my room, incase my roommate woke up early and found me missing. so i left my camera battery charging in sam's room, and since you need 4 players for bridge, jie jun and jonathan also left. what a fruitful morning. then i got back to my room and lay in bed till 6:00am, where the morning call was given by the hotel.
oh right, you're probably wondering how i got in without asking my roommate to wake up. well, the hotel doors there worked in the primitive way, which was a lock. so you had to lock the room from the inside of the door, then come out and close the door when you wanted to leave. so all i had to do was leave the door unlocked and i could go in and out easily :P of coursed i closed the door, and i doubt anyone would go door to door trying to see if the doors are locked just to steal stuff... and no, i couldn't have taken the key with me, cos you needed the key to keep the electricity running. you couldn't just slot in any random sheet of paper, cos i think it reads something in the tag that the key is attached to. don't worry, no harm befell my roommate.
in the morning, my roommate and i went down for breakfast at the time set by our class teachers. but when we reached there, mr tan started scolded us for being 'late', as we needed 30minutes to check out. even by his timing, we were only 3minutes late... like that also want to scold. of course i didn't answer back, cos answering back always just makes things worse, and makes the teacher drone on even more about respect and stuff like that.
so i went to the breakfast area, and only saw 6 people from my class there... so i asked them where the others were, and turns out they were all still upstairs, following the schedule that ms ong had given us, which was actually half an hour later than what mr tan expected of us. so 15minutes later, i saw a whole group of people from our class getting scolded by mr tan. how ridiculous.
so when i went back up to my room, i just jogged a bit cos, you should know if you know me well, i hate walking slowly. also cos i needed to go to the toilet XD then just my luck, i met mr tan along the corridor. then he gave me a self-satisfied smile and asked me, "rushing to pack your bags?" so obviously i wasn't going to let myself be shot down like that, and replied, "no, i packed last night already. i just need to go to the toilet." then he was sorta like disappointed that he hadn't caught a student who was rushing for time... so he tried to once again to find fault and asked, "did you buy anything from the mini-bar?" and i said no, obviously, and his face fell once more. "oh... if you didnt buy anything then the check out should be very fast." duh... as if i didnt know that. and the whole class even managed to get checked out before his time frame. so we all got scolded for nothing...
so we set off on our long journey to dalat, and played cards secretly :P after playing a LOT of games, i got tired of looking at the cards on the moving bus, so i stopped playing, and went to sleep. we also saw some cambodian floating village along the way. kinda ironic, since we're in vietnam... so what on earth are they doing there.
midway, we stopped for lunch at some restaurant, which was next to a coffee shop. in the restaurant, the tables were all so small, so the space was very cram, and the food all came very fast, which only made it harder to fit everything in. so as i was lifting up my bowl of rice to eat properly, instead of leaning forward, the next dish came, and the waiter just put it in front of me... so eugene said, "yati, can scoop vege for me?" and just that silly statement cause a whole discussion about maids, then some people started immitating maids, saying, "no mum, please don't send me back to indonesia mum, i dont want balik kampon mum." but the worst part of all was that people started calling my yati... so i joined the ranks of qin xiang, who was sometimes called siti last year.
after that, we went to the coffee shop, and bought a few bags of coffee for the charity bazaar. i was quite amazed we were the only class that did that. the other classes just looked around.
so after that, we were back on our journey to dalat, but we didnt go far before we stopped at a tea and coffee plantation, called tam chau. it was really really very scenic, so i was expecting something nice. but then what we did was walk to a factory at the top of the hill, where they were drying oolong leaves for oolong tea. the guide was doing all the explaning in vietnamese, and the tour guide of another class was translating with a megaphone, but the megaphone was so lousy that we couldn't hear anything. oh well... and ryan's camera also ran out of battery when the camera was still open, so he had to leave it in that vulnerable state before finally getting back to the bus and changing the batteries XD
back on the bus, we did what we knew best: sleep. only after a while, everyone had enough of sleep from the morning till then, so we started playing games. the back of the bus was playing "polar bear", which has rules that i shall not bother to explain, since its very long. it can hold an unlimited number of players, so lots of people joined in. even mr jason chan joined in. so we played that many rounds, before night fell and it was hard to play with such dim lighting. at least by then we had already reached dalat.
the teachers all started asking us to wear our jackets before going out of the bus, as if the place was so cold. so we all took their word for it, and put on our jackets. but when we went out, it just felt like natural air-con... not like a western country... heh, we didnt need our jackets at all.
the hotel was MUCH better than the one in ho chi minh city, and actually looked nice. and this time, my room was only 1 level above the rest of the class, so now i was much more connected to the class :D how fun! after we put our stuff in the hotel, we had to go for dinner, so we waited in the lobby, talking about our rooms. the view that my room look onto was the lake, which was at the front of the hotel. but on the other side of the hotel, there was a building that had a room that had the letters “XX” lighted up. qin xiang’s room was facing that side, and he freaked out and was super scared, because he thought it was a brothel. we all laughed at him and said it was nothing to worry about.
we went for dinner at a nearby restaurant, and the food there was much better than the food in
saigon (hcmh). when we were all done, we got up so that we could go outside the restaurant and look around and enjoy the cool weather. but the teachers, who were still eating, got up and told us to go back to our seats, as they had not finished yet. so we were kept there till the teachers had finished eating, only then could we leave. it was a total waste of time sitting around there, so we just took pictures of each other, and a classic one was taken for qin xiang! what a candid shot XD kudos to nick for taking it at the perfect moment :P
back in the hotel, we played a few card games before turning in, and waited for the room check which never happened in the end. so we stayed up so long for nothing, and the time could have been better spent playing cards!
AMEN;
4:57 pm
