Bitten by a Bug

Good evening Mdm President and fellow toastmasters. Recently I have been terribly bitten by a bug and it was bad! I had to spend tons of money to treat it. However, I considered my money well spent since it was none other than the travel bug that bit me.

Tonight, allow me to share with you my latest adventure in Ho Chi Minh City, a city I visited 2 weeks ago with a girlfriend of mine. This was the second time to the same city which I visited also a year ago with my mum. So you can imagine the charm this city has on me.

HCM is the new Saigon and when we think of Saigon, we recall the cruel Vietnam war; a nation that weathered history and of course, the beautifully sad story of miss Saigon.  The famous Cu Chi tunnel is now a very well-run museum about the Vietnam War; with its intertwined underground tunnels and graphical presentation of the life of the Vietnamese during the war. I had the opportunity to crawl through a section of the narrow tunnel, something that all tourists would do when they visit the site. The crawl took barely a grand total of 20 mins but in the dark narrow passageway you can imagine the terror, the hardship and the undying endurance of the Vietnamese people. Their indigenous ways of survival and brilliant defense tactic against their enemies would move me and my mum deeply as we relived the life of a Vietnamese, even if it was for the moment.

Let me share with you a secret which I did not even share with my mum, it took me tremendous amount of courage to agree to crawl through the tunnel.  This may sound really innocent, but it was a horrible 20 mins for me. I am claustrophobic, that is I have the fear for small confined space. At some part of the tunnel I had to bend down to crawl through it, worst still, it was pitch dark! It took me every ounce of strength in my body to prevent myself from screaming my head off! So I did that crawl with my heart in my mouth and completed the longest 20 mins journey of my life! My mum even asked me why I looked a little green after the crawl. I was thankful that I wasn't looking white as a ghost after that episode!

Walking along the streets of the city, I was amazed that none of the war torn effects could be visibly seen. The city is neatly restored with beautifully landscaped roundabouts, a legacy of the French culture as a result of being a French colony of 80 years in the past. The streets are neat and clean, everywhere you can see the bustling of the economically vibrant city.  One particularly memorial street sight for me is the roads. The many narrow roads cutting through the city and even the broad new ones are filled with hordes of motorcycles, tricycles, mobile stalls and of course cars coming and going in all directions.  I think while they are already pretty modern, the government may not have discovered the many uses of a traffic light!  These are far and few in the city, and they don't command the same respect as our traffic lights do in Singapore! You can imagine how hard this is for a law abiding, rules compliant Singaporean like me? How was I ever going to cross the road?

As with all tourists, on this trip one of our key mission is to hunt down the famous local delicacy - the noodle soup. Pho as the locals call it. We refuse to compromise with those commercial versions sold in high class restaurants. We want the authentic one that locals would go for. So we went in search for a place called Pho Hoa, a well-kept secret eatery of the locals that is touted to serve the most deliciously authentic pho. I recall it was raining quite heavily during the lunchtime on the Saturday we were there. We were scrutinizing the map, trying to locate the place when it started pouring, and we had to buy ponchos so that we could continue our walk in the rain. And so, braving the rain and getting our shoes entirely soaked through, we finally found the place and were so hungry that we could eat a cow! And we got our wish - there was pho with beef brisket, pho with beef tendon, beef flank, beef tripe, mixed beef and even beef meatballs. So it was everything beef, it was also everything pho, and truly everything Vietnamese. The hot steaming tasty bowl of pho was heavenly and we were fully rewarded with our hard work and perseverance. Mission accomplished!

Now that we have satisfied our groaning stomach, how should we pamper our tired legs? What best to get a foot message? So we checked ourselves into a local foot message place besides our hotel, truly innocently thinking that we are going for just a foot message. Deliriously happy with our successful pho mission, we did not check on the price, nor did we ask how long it would take. The first alarm was the change of clothes. Why do we need to change clothes when it is only a foot message? We came to understand after all the sign languages that it was because the message will cover the upper thighs as well. So ok, in order not to offend them we changed into the clothes that they provided. Our masseurs were 2 men, but we think nothing of it. It was supposed to be a foot message only!   We were led to a rather big room with other people getting their messages, so we felt a little safer. Halfway through the message, danger came!  We were told to lie face down and they started giving us a back message, which we initially thought was well and good, value for money! But then, the started to take off our top, and we jumped! Gone was any kind of niceties. We firmly told them “no”, and thank God that “no” is still the world’s universal language. They understood and let go of our top. Afterwards we came to realize that they wanted to put hot stones on our back, which they did with our clothes on. It was so warm and soothing that this turned out to be the best part of the whole procedure that lasted nearly 2 hours. So all's well that ends well. We were safe, and we got our foot message, and a unique experience that we live to tell others another time.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I have given you enough reason to visit HCM. There are many more I could share with you tonight, but nothing beats you experiencing it yourself. So why not let the travel bug bite you just this once and visit this charming and amazing city that offers a lot more than you can imagine.

Project Evaluation - Too long, and could not manage within the stipulated time, as such, having to quickly end the speech with a weak closing. Keep to 3 points for comfortable content and time management.