back live from sandy beach resort, danang, vietnam! lol, weather here's pretty bad today. raining whole day sia. if not of my undying determination to blog a post, i prob will be snuggling in the bungalow under my blanket, reading yongbiao's 5 people you meet in heaven. up till now, all i can say, it's a greaaaaaaaaaaaat read. shall rush back to finish it up after blogging, if my siblings haven't all go zzz yet lol.

wah i damn hip sia, now typing this in the resort lobby while listening to my mp3 lol. hope later i dont accidentally sing out some lyrics or start shaking my head to the music. lol im kidding im kidding. anyway as i'm typing this, i'm filled with dread, cos like abt less than 15 min ago, there was a massive blackout siaaa. in the main building at least, i dunno abt the bungalow area where my family is haha. scarrrrry. later everything i typed gone or the draft not saved i can go jump building liao lol. actually im not exactly really surprised at the blackout lol, considering how much stuff they leave on 24hr! these computers for instance. i mean ya la, it's ok to leave the comp overnight, i do that real often. but imagine leaving it on say, for 1 mth? omg la. haha. dont forget tons of other lights in the lobby, as well as the bling bling decoration lights they have outside the resort on all the trees. i dunno is for xmas and new year, or whole yr round one lol.

ok enough abt the lights lol. on to today's itinery. well today was quite ok la, but the rain was quite a spoiler. left the resort with quite a lot of anticipation, cos we had this car all to ourselves, with a driver who can speak minimal english. so it's like a mini one-day roadtrip kinda thing. quite cool. then the tour was expected to last abt 11 hrs, so i was like, "wow, must be a lot of things to see!" only to find out the reason behind the tour taking 11hrs is cos the first destination is a 2.5 hrs drive away. omg. >.< but ok la, along the way, just zzz loh, since had to wake up early for this trip anyway. the driver not bad haha, actually stopped by some mountainside road for us to take rather nice pictures of the mountains and the seashores. quite a magnificent sight, albeit quite cloudy, thus blocking quite a bit of everything =(. then continued the loooooooooooong trip to this pagoda. ok sorry abt not being able to name anything haha, cos vietnamese is sooooo hard to remember how to pronounce. but in any case, today's trip is more of sightseeing and taking random pictures with nice ancient ruins and scenery, while totally not knowing anything abt it lol. cos my bro, when ordering for the tour, forgot abt the tour guide! haha. might as well la, considering we'll probably not understand half of what the tour guide will be saying anyway, and we're not exactly that keen on finding out everything behind those places we went. it's just, a little weird la, going for a whole day to these 3 different places, but ending up not knowing anything abt them haha. the only things we can remember from them are probably where are the nice places to take photos rofl. ok that sounded slightly bimbotic. after the pagoda, with this giant bell (nice photo spot), and this giant tortoise carrying some tablet (also not bad photo spot), i roughly gathered it's some spot for praying to deities one la, since got quite a few sculptures and stuff. anyway, went to the citadel of hue after that (ah i know the name for this, cos it's like the highlight of the trip. it looked quite magnificent from outside too, with a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong talllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll wall, and a big vietnamese flag high up waving in the wind. it's really quite impressive. from the outside that is. after going in, hmm, kinda disappointing loh. ok la, partly also cos we were kinda lazy to walk everything (it was so frigging big), we only went abt 40% of it before we got bored of it. well mainly, it's the ruins of some ancient castle, so got like all the imperial style architecture and artifacts. prob is, most of them are so destroyed there's only stone ruins with overgrowing weeds (which isnt too bad for photos, but totally has no link to the main aim which is to understand the history of the civillisation loh), or they are under massive reconstruction (like repainting, even probably rebuilding the walls and furniture) so much so that they now look so fake. then wad's the point loh, louis vuitton handbags if they are oh-so-nice-and-pristine, but totally cannot exemplify the actual history of the citidel. ok la, overall got the effect of its majestic feel, from its sheer size (it's really damn biggggg), the moat that surrounded the WHOLE castle wall (that's seriously damn long i can tell u), all the castle doors (there's this wu3 men2, which supposedly is the place being portrayed in all those ancient chinese drama serials the place where people get executed - wu3 men2 zhan3 shou3), and all the backyard gardens (lol i'm so directly translating - hou4 hua1 yuan2), which are probably the only places worth taking, cos the plants still look rather overgrown, and not so bad that the photo will turn out bad. so u get ur photogenic yet authentic moments with them lol. but if u're going for the details, then really nth much loh. cos either authentic ruins that have eroded and corroded until nth left, or super nice and pristine artifacts and palace rooms that have obviously been tampered with to get, which then totally loses its purpose. as what my bro said, liddat might as well go take photos in the chinese garden, why bother going all the way there to take photos like those. omg it just blackouted again. thank god for draft saving functions. if not i really need to go jump building liao >.< whewwww. ok i better type faster being it happens again =.= ok moving on, went for lunch at some restaurant which didnt really suit my appetite, mebbe i'm not that used to vietnamese dishes with rice. those noodle dishes and fried rice and appetitisers taste good, but their dishes with rice, like sweet and sour fish, is totally nth like what we were expecting lol. so was the salty braised pork and chicken with mushroom (in fact i hardly saw any chicken in it. nor mushrooms for that matter lol.) anyway after lunch it began to pour again (wad a suay suay day zzz). stopped at the last stop, some tomb of some vietnamese king or prince or smth (sorry la, no tour guide is liddat one, totally dunno what's going on haha). all i know is the crypt/tomb part was super nice la, first time i see not all golden and shiny, but in actual fact made from ceramic shards, which gives it an actually really good jewel feel, from the colourful and shiny reflections from the ceramic shards. the artist/sculptor was really zai too, knowing how to combine the different coloured ceramic shards to form different shapes, like bonsais, animals, and chinese characters. OMG it blackouted AGAIN. this is proving to be one of the hardest blog posts i ever typed. i better hurry hurry. yup too bad photos not out yet, if not i'm really quite impressed, cos from far it looks really really good, the up close u notice actually there are like pieces from those broken plates and bowls u have at home. ceramic and porcelain-y. oh yeah, had a taste of french bread here finally. but mebbe cos of the vague meaning of the vietnamese word for the subway sub-like thing i was looking for (banh mi), the driver brought us to some bakery to get french pastries. hmm they weren't too bad la, and cheap somemore. just that i was more looking forward to what i was looking for >.< hope i get to eat it tml! as for vietnamese coffee... hmm, i probably wont get the chance to taste in here in danang le i think. probably more common in hanoi or ho chi minh. still, i'm hoping! haha.

tml's gonna be a quite relaxed day i think. still dunno what to do in the morning yet, but afternoon definitely heading over to hoi an to collect our new tailor made clothes (pants for me), and im waiting for my banh mi! lol omg i just realised that the only vietnamese words i know are all food, like pho, com, com ga, com chien, and banh mi lol. that's not a good sign lol. but i can't avoid it anyway, i know it liao. i'm so getting fatterrrrrrr on this trip. ggfied man lol. keep eating non-stop sia.

whew finally come to the end of today. better send this before it blackout again lol. signing off from the 2nd computer from the left, lobby of sandy beach resort, danang, vietnam (didnt get my leftmost one cos some guy was using, but he left after the first blackout. hah, looks like i got the most determination here man! lol)!