Christmas Season in Ho Chi Minh City 2017

Its Christmas time in Vietnam. As Vietnam is not a christian country they don't celebrate it as a national holiday however, our school does close for Christmas on Monday. Sadly I do have to work at 8 am on boxing day. 

As the country changes and they get more influenced by western culture, our holidays do start to appear and Christmas, along with Halloween are getting adopted in Asia. There are lots of decorations and present giving, even if they do all go to work on the 25th. As a result of these changes, we have had lots of Christmas parties and events with the students in the past week. Below are some photos of my class having a party and some of me with my mate dressed as Santa.

The decorations in the gym at work 2017

I posted about the decorations at my gym last year. You may remember the had a 'Christmas wishing wall' which alter turned into a 'TET wishing wall'. Below is the post.

Christmas 2016 post of decorations at the gym

So, this year here are the decorations!!! Its just a big, christmassy RMIT thing.

In the gym, its the same tree as last year.... I don't mind that. It would be a waste getting a new tree every year.

Its cold in HCMC!!!

Just an update, the past few mornings its been cold in HCMC! So much so that I checked the weather....It's fallen to 21 degrees! The motorbike ride into work is a bit nippy but I still don't need a jacket. I feels a little bit Christmassy with the chill in the air! The drive to work is hte coldest I can remember in HCMC since I've been here.

RMIT X-Run 2017

This past weekend, I took part in the annual RMIT X-run. Last year I entered a team and we won. This year, I just wanted to go and enjoy it so entered the singles. The X-run is an assault course set up on the sports field at RMIT. Its free for staff and students and is great fun. Below are some pictures of me in action taken by the course photographer.

It was tiring but great fun. There were about 20 different obstacles in total, including a tyre pull, tyre flip, mud bath and ice bath. I did okay overall and got a nice medal at the end. Below are more pictures of the various obstacles on the course.

Saigon Heat, Seasons tickets

The new International Basketball league started this weekend and I bought season tickets for Saigon Heat. This is the International competition where they play teams from Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and other places is South East Asia. The season tickets is very reasonable ans it works out about three quid a match. There are 10 matches in the season.

In the first match they played a team from Taiwan. It was a good match and it was all going well but somehow Saigon managed to blow a 15 point lead and lose by 5 points. 

Starwars - Gold class

I went to see the new star wars film this past weekend. I went to the CGV  and as usually they had some good advertising.

Whilst this may not seen like news. I splashed out and went in 'gold class'. This is something I've always wanted to try but wanted to wait for the right film to come along. In gold class you get a really comfortable, reclining seat and there are only about 50 seats available and they serve you alcoholic beverages. Normally the cinema in Vietnam is about three pounds, gold class is a tenner. Below are some photos from the website.

 

Getting my darts trophy

This past weekend we had out end of season darts party. I was held at this really posh hotel in Saigon called 'The Reverie'. The ball room looked amazing.

I wish I'd taken some more pictures around the hotel, they had people dressed in funny uniforms opening doors for you. The food was awesome too. Importantly, I did take one of my trophy that I got for winning the doubles tournament with my mate Neil earlier in the year.

 

I did get a picture of me with my trophy in a box. I really should have taken it out of the box. 

 

Nha Trang again!!

Back in Nha Trang again for the second time this year. In recent weeks Nha Trang has been battered by storms so we we're expecting the best weather... and we were right.

It pretty much rained the whole time we were there. It was like a British summer holiday, but warmer. Anyway, we still had a good time and got to do some swimming, below are the token pictures of the beach.

 

The bus journey from Dalat to Nha Trang

We've finished out trip in Dalat so now we off to the beach in Nha Trang. The road between Dalat and Nha Trang is supposed to be stunning as you are descending out of the mountains. We originally wanted to motorbike it but were warned against it due to the bad weather so we took the bus. I'm very glad we did.

The weather was  rally bad on the journey and most of the mountain part we were in the clouds.  

This wasn't fun as we were going around mountain roads. The bus drivers are terrible and don't really know how to drive. The drive didn't slow down. I really feared we wouldn't make it.

During the journey, all the traffic stopped as there was an accident (surprise, surprise). I did get a chance to get out the bus for a bit and fortunately we didn't get held up for too long.

Anyway, we survived and did get to see some of the view. Its the sort of trip that I might like to do on a bike when the weather is better. When we did descend from the mountain, we stopped at a nice place for some food and there was a nice river to look at.