This has been one of my fave hobbies for the past six months. Usually it’s oldie songs but once in awhile, it’s a hip Shania ditty….in any case, I kinda love it and it’s the only time I can wear boots in Saigon!

This is a song we dance to that has a shimmy, shimmy moment…I wouldn’t even call this country line dancing cuz we also do mambos, salsa etc….all I know is that tis da BOMB!

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One year ago, I was living in DN, a place that made me sad after one year and four months of seeing friends move down south to sunny Saigon.

Then it was my turn! Now I’m all sparkling with city life and friends and woo hoo I love, ummm, like EVERYTHING!

Despite the monster bugs (ants, spider nests, rats, geckos, giant moths, cockroaches etc.) and the noise and rain and MOLD, I love living in Vietnam, especially Saigon.

These days, one year after the rainy nights stuck like Rapunzel in my ratty (literally) office with no friends to hang out with, LIFE IS HIGH IN THE CLOUDS and I doubt there’s any reason not to be and chilax it!

Top ten (really just ten good things!)

1. Awesome studio complete with kitchen, toaster oven and balcony
2. Social activities galore (live music, cheap airplane travel, hip hop, NGO networking)
3. Friends I can count on (ppl to make me laugh, stylish chicas, ppl who like to eat!)
4. Skyping and its cheap options to stalk like EVERYONE!
5. Meaningful Christmas carols like JOy to the World and O Holy Night which speak truth dear to my heart
6. French and Vietnamese and Korean and all the other languages out there…sorry Anglophones!
7. Motorbikes and the impatient convenience of the cheap lil bike avec basket!
8. Working as a consultant who keeps crazy hours…..:)
9. Housemates who clean my messes w/o making me pay them
10. The elderly!

Thanks be to the Creator for this amazing journey of life that has ups and downs and things we cannot understand but if we seek, we will find marvelous glories that were intended for us in the first place.

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True that I’m back….

– In HCMC/Saigon/home in Vietnam, working at EMW etc.
– At my apartment with the best landlady in HCMC
– In true lazy Cathy form, not knowing where my keys, bank card, rent money, shoes etc. are!
– Eating and having to cook for myself (1st insect attack just occurred last nite which isn’t bad since it’s been 3 days….)
– On the phone, Skype, FB, etc. with all my friends outside of HCMC….miss u tons!

BUT I’M NOT BACK on my motorbike b/c I want to pretend that I’m a tourist here…if anyone has a car that they want to lend me (with chauffeur), I’m down HCMC is dirty and I am just not up to driving in this dusty, rainy, exhaust-pipe mania yet…..

TRAVELING: not overrated but less exciting when one has been on 26 trips in one year!
In the past 6 weeks, I’ve been to SFran/Oakland, USA; Vancouver and surroundings, British Columbia (my province), Canada; Hong Kong for a dim sum delight; and back to Vietnam. I won’t go anywhere for the next 1.5 months I think and then it’s off to the races w/a trip to grams in Nha Trang; work stuff in Danang, Tokyo for sushi, pocky, and friends; and oh CANADA for Christmas! I am blessed with flexibility in my job and so I am totally thankful…I AM NOT UNGRATEFUL.

CIAO for now and mucho smoochos! Pics to come peut-etre!

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I’m still tired. 2008 has been a crazy 8 year for me. So what happened in DN after all? I played house: I finally bot materials for my curtains and although I wanted a turquoise-ish colour, I ended up with a foam/sea green instead…..I’m so excited as I’ll receive the new curtain tomorrow afternoon Yipee!

AND I bot my lamps, all five of them! Now my room has lost its dingy, hospital green-yellow tone. It has ambiance!

When I go back to DN for work, I never get to do all that I hope for. I rarely go to the beach. I don’t eat all my fave snacks. But I always manage to slot a few Cathy-joys in.

This time, I had lunches/means with my fave peeps: Korean avec onhi Hye Jong, fruit shakes and yummy Vnese avec Amy W., Mediterranean in a new resto avec Marie-France, Cargo Club pastries avec Melissa and her mom by random meeting, and delicioso thit heo cuon banh trang avec Nam, my Vespa-driving colleague! I sat on the back of a bicycle with MF (wobbly and exciting) and crashed at my pals’ pads.

I love this girl:

I went to church at the DN International Fellowship which was uplifting and so welcoming and also bit sad as they said goodbye to some of my fave peeps who are leaving for the USA….and I would’ve had lunch and pool-time w/them as well if I hadn’t gotten s-i-c-k! Too much AC made fresh-breath spray an unlikely remedy. Good times were had as I was gladly back in Danang, a home in my past. And I was able to make plans to see my peeps again in a very short timespan. I’ll be having a mini-retreat in Mui Ne w/Amy and seeing my onhi off to Korea etc.

Visitors, vacations, random thoughts, and reports await…..in this blur of a year, I can hardly keep my head straight! Pics to come once I stop procrastinating!

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5:50 pm, Nha Trang at La Louisiane

Do I have to continue to shout it out: N.Trang is seriously one of the best spots in VN!

I’m going to attempt to write a short entry for once.

dark-ish, poolside, smoke n pasta vapours circulating around me…just had awesome fish n chips (minus the chips for a salad sans tomates !!!) and 6 raw oysters w/a soy-wasabi-lime sauce

foreigner to VN nationals ratio: 7:4 with a quick look around

stomach kinda sickish, due to smthg eaten yesterday, outfit cute and summery (yah HK!) but this is the coldest I’ve seen N.Trang in the past two years

Mom in the village; me attempting to work in NT
To combat Tết blues (it’s like hanging out at Christmas in a place where everyone knows each other and no one knows you), I brought a couple books and a flashlight and pretended I was reading at camp at 9pm when my family goes to bed. It worked: I read, thought, looked at my GRE book, and even skimmed my VNese lessons.

Must have: EARPLUGS esp. in the village
tonight: going to Guava Bar although I don’t really no anyone but met the DJ and owner briefly (both from Vancouver randomly enough), looking forward to sleeping in a room w/o the snores and village raver music and church bells chiming at 4am

6pm: lanterns just went on round the pool
im taking pics w/my 2 megapixel cell camera and so we’ll see how the quality goes….

Being N.American, I can eat raw seafood then fried fish and then cake and then down it with beer and not think that it’s weird or gross….(I am not good w/choosing for food for soothing my stomach.)

OK bye for now. (Please excuse the bad grammar; I can do better!)

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OK obviously tardy! But I need to describe this for recordkeeping’s sake. Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse! Ummmm yeah rite, this is VN and it’s a noisy place even in the village.

From 430am to 7am, I would wake multiple times due to a variety of oh-so-wonderful sounds
–Early church bells
–Blaring coffee shop raver music at 6ish
–Auntie’s loud voice/snores/jingle jangle
–Mosquito terrors

No wonder I was cranky when I finally got out of bed at the obscenely late 8am…ok once I did sleep til 10…sue me!

Last Christmas, my fave gals were in town. This Christmas, I was among family, just not the ones I usually see at this time.
Here were the notables of the visit:

–Construction outside gram’s….of course they don’t use safety barriers so they were swinging that jaw-like contraption that breaks up dirt and scoops it away until I hollered that I needed to get in the house! (No alternate route to the ppl’s homes either)

–Midnight Mass, no, not really! It was at hmmmmmmmm 7ish til 11ish? It was loud and outdoors and the temperature was slightly warm with a cool periwinkle sky and stars to match…I noticed that many ppl were staring at me on this evening and I thought “ok, I’m obviously a foreigner but whatever.” Reasons: I was like the only person apart from a toddler wearing glasses, and I had on a delicate dress which didn’t fly with the fact that there were no benches and so everyone except me was sitting on their sandals…that was a bit painful! And yes, I’m a foreigner who thought we might have church inside the actual building.

It was a nice service with lots of storytelling and VNese dancing…

–Prices slashed down to zero! I don’t usually pay for much when I visit grams cuz auntie and all lo (take care) of me. This time around I also got a sweet haircut and nails painted for less than a buck! Sweet!

–Family! I hung out w/grams, 2 aunties and 1 cousin and parents’ friends etc. Highly notable: present from Daddy = cornichons, or should I say N.American style pickles, packed in a plastic jar and wrapped tightly to avoid leakage. Now, that’s a gift from s/o who loves ya!

All in all, not a bad way to spend Christmas away from home!

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Good day folks

As a family obligation, I spent my weekend in Nha Trang. I had to drag my bro down to visit Grams for the first time. So while he stays there and gets acquainted (in Cam Duc Hamlet by the airport actually), I had to scramble back to NT to catch my train back home.

But waiting for the train has never been so fun….I’m working by day poolside with a fast wifi connection and wondering why my regular office couldn’t be so pleasant.

Nha Trang, where my parents grew up, is, well, magical! It’s a hip n happening beach town with fabulous views, pools, beaches, people, seafood, and internet….all in all, definitely worth a stop while you’re in VN. And I am lucky that my parents are from here so I always have reason to come back.

I usually visit Grams then stay in my fave hotel in the city, the Sun Hotel, in the street perpendicular to the Sailing Club, and spend my mornings blowing bubbles in the clear, blue sea with the early rising fishies and my days eating raw oysters and doing facials or going to the mud baths. Night time is for cruising around on a motorbike or walking along the boardwalk….I don’t know why NT has it all, but it does

However, this time, I have to work so I’m online editing reports on compassion homes and water towers and writing speeches and cannot go to all my favourite haunts….I’m waiting for Junella:) But it’s still an amazingly pleasant, if somewhat short, escape.

Coincidently, it’s also the time for Festival Bien 2007 and so that means big outdoor concerts and ppl milling around cheering on Vietnamese celebrities…and they’re big! I only know two VNese singers and I’ve seen them both in Nha Trang, par hasard! Yesterday, I attended the nightly affair on until June 15th or so and My Tam, this young and quite beautiful VNese girl who’s also incredibly famous, from Danang of all places, was the final act. It was cool and the dances and music that I can’t understand were great fun. Wait til I post my photos. And the best part of it all is that I just stumbled across this beach party….I came to visit Grams and ended up seeing a swimsuit fashion show and some big time celebs. And this festival only takes place every 2 years so I AM LUCKY!

The other celeb, Quang Dung, and I first laid eyes on each other in December while I was singing BSB on the lovely beaches to my sisters. Quang Dung is quite good-looking and has a good, solid, soothing voice and well, he was sitting on the beach chairs just about a meter away from me and I didn’t recognize him cuz I only have seen him on CD covers….anyway, I did notice a well-dressed guy kinda staring at me and well, that was him. Can you imagine, a real singer having to listen to my hysterical renditions of BSB….I mean I don’t suck but still, kinda embarrassing. How did I find out he was there, my friend, Mimi, texted me to get my attention….I am truly in love with the BSB and don’t stop singing unless I have to…..at least next time I see QD, he may remember me from the beaches of Nha Trang.

YES I AM BLESSED (as we all are). AND I want to share with you….so come here anytime and I guarantee there’s a VN beach hot and waiting for you

take care

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