At the Zoo

While in Saigon my friend Khai and I decided to check out the zoo. After about 20 minutes of walking around it began to rain. We hid out at a little snack shop under a big umbrella and drank some tea and coffee. "It should only last about 30 minutes", said Khai.
After about an hour, the water started getting high enough and coming down hard enough that we were getting really wet even under the umbrella. So we made a dash for the snack shop and spent the next hour or two waiting... and waiting... and waiting. Finally we gave up and had to make a run for the exit. Khai had a raincoat in his bike, I had to buy one off a lady on the street.
The sad thing is I brought two raincoats with me on the trip and didn't have either one with me at the time. Sigh. What good is being prepared if you're not prepared?
Then Khai and I went back to his place and had dinner with his wife Jackie. Then we hung out around his place for a little while and talked. I didn't see much of the zoo, but it's nice to spend time with friends.

At least we got to see it...

...before it was eaten to extinction.

New species of lizard "discovered" on Vietnamese menu.

"You could call it the surprise du jour: A popular food on Vietnamese menus has turned out to be a lizard previously unknown to science, scientists say."

Bob Esponja

Hola SpongeBob!

From Saturn Studio

Cambodia

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted anything. I guess things have settled into a bit of a routine. One good piece of news is that I finished my TEFL certificate, so now I can qualify for a work visa through the English Language Center I work for and not have to worry about my legal status or getting my visa renewed every 3 months.

However, since I just got the certificate and my visa expires in a couple days, I'm taking a trip out to Cambodia to renew it one more time. I'm going to fly from Hanoi down to Saigon and then take a bus over into Phnom Penh. The price of a flight from Hanoi to Cambodia was surprisingly expensive! While there I'll be able to catch up with my old friend Jason, which will be great. My new visa will be a six month work visa, so my hope is that I will be able to get my driver's license transferred over now without so much difficulty.

Driving in Vietnam... now that's a good subject for a blog post. Of course, it would be more of a rant. Haha!