Big King Kong at Vivo City

Its been a few weeks since my last post as I've not had anything to write about. That was until this morning.

Over the past week or so they have been building this enormous King Kong figure outside the shopping centre near my house. Its really big as the pictures will show. Its been built to advertise the launch of the new King Kong film this weekend.

I had planned to go along this weekend and picture it and blog about it but as it happens I didn't need to because it was all over the news this morning.

So, Thursday was launch night and they has some dancing and presenting on stage as the picture below shows.

As you can see there are men with fire sticks under Kong. When they were building this I noticed that the material look highly flammable... Highly flammable material and fire sticks... what could go wrong??

Yep, you guessed it, within a few minutes of the lady on stage talking the whole thing caught fire. The pictures below speak for themselves. 

Fortunately, no one died and it could have been worse since its only about 10 meters from the shopping centre.

I've been driving past it everyday and when I drove past this morning and noticed the charred remains, at the time I didn't know what happened but since then have seen the videos on youtube. Below are the picture my mate took this morning.

It is quite amazing living in a developing country, although they are trying to catch up with the west, they are behind in so many ways, at times like these, its hard not to laugh. Something like this would never have happened in the UK due to health and safety laws. But here, nothing like this really exists or if they do, they don't follow them. Fire-sticks under highly flammable structure!!?? At the same time its what makes living here an adventure.

Here is a link to the video of it burning down, not sure how long it will be up. It may get taken down and it will be claimed it never happened. The first 3 minutes are the best. Apparently, it all cost $50,000.

King Kong burning at Vivo City

 

Anyway, I'll be watching the film this weekend. Apparently it sucks but at least I won't have to take my own photos.

Impressive red sky across Phu My Hung

Not much to blog about and its back to work today after a nice, long TET break, so I thought I'd share this impressive red sky a while back.

We had an unexpected downpour of rain which when combined with the time of day and levels of air pollution, it created this impressive sky.

It's also pretty good when you consider I took this picture on a camera phone which didn't really do it justice.

TET 2017 - Wishing Wall display at my gym

For the third consecutive year, here is my annual blog for my 2017 TET 'Display at my gym' to go with the 'farming themed' display of 2016 and 'lucky money tree' display of 2015. For a refresher on those, please see the links below.

TET 2015 - Lucky money tree display at my gym

TET 2016 - Farming themed display at my gym

Below is this years display....... 'The TET wishing wall'

On its own, the 'TET wishing wall' is a pretty good idea except for the fact all they have done is recycle the Christmas wishing wall (see below).

The Christmas wishing wall - same, same but different

Instead of asking, 'what do you want for Christmas?', they are asking 'what do you want for TET?'. I'm not sure if there is any variation in requests.

The big 'Joy' with Christmas decor has been replace by a more TET themed display of flowers, watermelons and baskets.

At least they have replaced the Christmas wishes with TET wishes and the students get two changes to wish for stuff. 

Four days of work then I get 10 days off!!!!!

TET is coming - 2017

Not long now until TET holiday in Vietnam. This is great because it means there are 6 days of public holiday in a row and our University shuts for two weeks!!!! Below are the TET trees at my apartment complex. Comparing the photos with last year makes me think this is the same tree or at least from the same supplier.

I think I've decided not to go away at TET since I just got back from Taiwan. It means I'll have more holiday time to go on another trip later this year. Below are some photos form the local shopping centre. Not very good photos but I'll try and get some more over the next few weeks

 

Relaxing in Daan Park

We are going home tomorrow so my last post is of Daan Park.

Daan Park has its own metro stop and was a nice place to relax since we'd done so much walking and cycling in the past few day.

This is something that would be nice to have in Ho Chi Minh City but I doubt that will ever happen. Anyway, it was a nice afternoon before the flight back tomorrow.

I was planning on going on holiday at the end of January at TET but I'm not sure I will now as I feel pretty chilled after this trip.

Still love Taiwan. The flights are really cheap from HCMC but since I've been here twice in under 12 months I'm bot sure when I'll be back.

Taipei Zoo

So, today is our last day and since we've done pretty much everything in Taipei, we decided to go to Taipei Zoo. 

 

I'd heard that they have a very wide range of animals so it was somewhere I was interested to go and see. They had lots of animals that I'd not seen before. They had a Panda, some Hyenas and Kangaroos.

The Zoo has its own metro stop which makes it very convenient! 

 




 

Taiwan's High Speed Train

I know this is an odd thing to blog about but this as the first time I'd been on a High Speed Train. 

In order to get to Sun Moon Lake we needed to travel to a place called Tai-Chung. Tai-Chung is 106 miles from Taipei but we made the journey in 49 minutes!

This is because we took the High Speed Train which travels at 300km per hour. You could feel the speed as we were moving but it was still nice, smooth and relaxing. Its also very nice inside. It give you information on the back of the seat where you can find food and the toilets and also the sign at the front updates you on the speed of the train. Its tops speed on our journey that I was was 292km per hour.

This was a nice experience and meant we could get back early to drink beer!!!