Hoi An

Sorry this took ages to upload! We have just spent 2 days in Nha Trang where we went to the mud pools and some of us went on a street food tour. Great organising from the team! We are off to da lat today to start our trek tomorrow. Happy new year!! 

Hi everyone, 

We are currently on a sleeper train to Nha Trang so thought it might be a good time to give a little update of what has been happening. 

Christmas Day was certainly different this year and all the students enjoyed playing with the children and giving them gifts. We started the day with Santa hats filled with lollies left at our hotel doors, had lunch at the centre and played with the children. We had games of badminton, threw balls, played chess and had games of monopoly going. We also finished off all our painting. After our goodbyes, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach. We then booked a nice restaurant by the river for dinner and invited our translators out too. After dinner we did secret santa which was fun - some of the team got dried sardines! 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boxing Day we started our journey to Hoi An. Hoi An is a short 30min bus ride from Da Nang so we spent the morning back at the beach. 

 

On arrival to Hoi An, we found some food and then straight to the tailors to be fitted for suits and dresses.

 

Some of us may have got carried away (Miss Paulin) and now need to lug around two winter coats in the humid south of Vietnam. Totally worth it though!!! 

A couple of us even got some tailored leather shoes. It is such a fun town and definitely somewhere where we would have liked to have had more time. (Or at least Miss Paulin would have liked to spend more time at the tailors..) 

 

One of the local dishes from Hoi An is called Cao Lao - it is a noodle dish with pork and croutons and is very delicious. Most of us have had it for dinner every night. 

 

 

The next day, we went on a tour of My Son which are some ancient ruins. We took a bus there and then came back on a boat where we ended up in the old town of Hoi An. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          

We had an explore around the old town which is really

cute and then we all had fittings at different tailors. Today was much the same with final fittings and looking around the town 

 

We spent some of the afternoon with team 1, who have been working with homeless and disabled people. It was quite a shock to see but nice to see familiar faces from the other team. Sorry I didn't manage to get a photo of the two teams together but this dude was so cool. 

 

Back onto the bus to Da Nang after dinner to catch our train. Left at 10.47pm, a few rounds of cards and then all off to sleep. We are on here for about 8 hours and end up in Nha Trang where we will spend a couple more days relaxing before starting our next trek on New Years' Eve. 

Much love to everyone at home. I'm off to get some shut eye - a few snoring beauties in our sleeper cabin of 6 here! 

Pip 

Danang Project

Hey fam, Larissa here (aka Larry), we are currently in Danang doing our project with a local childcare home.

We have been working the last two days on repairing bikes and painting hand railings for them as they couldn't afford to themselves, they enjoyed pitching in and helping us do this for them. We have been eating lunch with them daily and learning about them and who they are. A few of us weasels then played soccer with the children and they were (to be completely honest) a lot better than us! Our translators are also great people, very funny 😂. We are all looking forward to spending Christmas Day with the children and seeing their expressions when they get their suprise gifts, although I'll be missing the Christmas turkey at home a lot.

The team also went and saw the famous love bridge and dragon bridge, getting soaked during our walk. See you in 19 days!!

 

Scoop Scoop ~ Ralissa 

 

 

 

 

Trekking and training

Hi everyone, 

Sorry for the lack of updates we have been having a great time trekking around Mai Chau and exploring Ha Long Bay. 

Last time we updated, we were on the bus heading to Mai Chau. It took about 4 hours to drive 150km because of the road conditions here. We had lunch at a local home stay and then started our walk. We walked 8km the first day in the rain to get to our home stay where we all slept in the same room and had fun playing games. The next day we walked 23km through the mountains and villages - we were very thankful that they offered foot baths for us at the homestay we stayed at that night. Pip and Thom were dressed up in traditional Hmong dress as well. The local people that live in these villages are from the Hmong tribes which originally came from Thailand, Laos and South China. 

Our last day we had about 5km walking back to where we had lunch on the first day and then another lunch then another 4 hour journey back to "home" aka the bamboo hotel in Hanoi. We had an awesome tour guide called Viet whom the kids just loved. 

 

 

           

 

   

 

  

Back in Hanoi we confirmed our trip to Ha Long Bay. The next day we were picked up from the hotel and headed for another 4 hour journey in the bus out to Ha Long Bay. We stayed in a 4 star hotel which was a welcome treat and enjoyed a six hour cruise out into the bay and also some kayaking. Some of us went to the night markets and picked up some more bargains and then we went to some more markets in the morning. Interesting and shocking to see how some of the animals are treated - you can buy your chicken so fresh here it is still clucking... lots of live chickens wrapped up in plastic bags being taken home! Ha Long Bay is just beautiful though. 

 

 
  

 

 

 

Surprise, surprise we went back to Hanoi for a final night before catching our 16 hour overnight train to Danang. We had a bit of an administration day where Tyler was very successful in scoring some sweet accommodation in Danang for us. Some of us went out to try an egg coffee in the morning - delicious!! It is like an uncooked meringue mix on top of coffee or you could have it on hot chocolate. We also went to check out Hao Lo prison which was set up by the French when they invaded Vietnam. Much to our delight, in a city of 10million, Viet was showing another New Zealand family around the prison.  

 

Sourced transport to the train station and we left at 8.10pm . We were in carriages with six people each and bunks stacked three high. Lots of card games and experiences meeting cockroaches! 

 

     When we arrived in Danang we met our translator, checked into our hotel and spent the afternoon being orientated with the street child care centre we will be working at for the next four days. We are going to be painting rooms, stair wells, fixing bikes and helping out with the cooking. Viet told us that Danang is the most liveable city in Vietnam and so far it has been a nice reprise from the hustle and bustle of Hanoi! 

Off to the centre at 9am tomorrow - have just been out for dinner and now just having some down time at the hotel before a much more comfortable sleep. 

Weather is definitely a lot warmer! Meant to be 80% humidity tomorrow.. we will see how we cope! 

Chau, 

Pip and Brendan