Hi All,

Well, it’s been a pretty eventful two weeks for me!! On Wed 2nd Dec 2009 my time on the Coral Cay Marine Conservation project in the Philippines came to an end and I had to say goodbye to all the guys there to move onto my next volunteer project in Vietnam where I will be building homes for underprivileged families. But my last few days in the Philippines was great! My ear was better pretty much the next day after I noticed the pain and we managed to get some more surveys and mapping done during my last week as well! I have had a FANTASTIC time volunteering doing Marine Conservation in the Philippines with Coral Cay and all the people there were incredible!! I’m gonna miss everyone there as well as the 6am breakfast music call and the amazing marine conservation activities that we were privileged to have experienced and been a part of!! I have had such an AWESOME time!!

So, on Wednesday 2nd December I left the Coral Cay Marine Conservation site on a motorbike taxi and went to the bus stop for the bus to the airport. I had a lot of stuff with me (30+kg of luggage, as diving kit is not light!!) but it was pretty easy to use the public transport to get to the airport in Tacloban. From here I flew into Manila (capital of Philippines) where I stayed at a hotel for the evening before flying to Singapore on Thursday 3rd December 2009 ( My Birthday!!). Thanks to everyone for all of the great birthday messages!!

I was in transit at Singapore airport for most of my birthday, but that was fine as I had a chance to have my first Indian meal at one of the airport restaurants for the first time in 5 weeks! Yummy!!

I got into Vietnam around 7pm on Thursday 3rd December 2009 and arrived in Ho Chi Min city. There was someone from the i-to-i volunteer group to meet me at the airport and take me to the guest house all the volunteers were staying at in Ho Chi Min. The guest house was really nice (it had running water…. Whoo Hoo!!) and I found out that, as I arrived a day early I could help out at the orphanage the next day even though I was on the home building project!! This was great and we went to the orphanage the next day and as it was my birthday and another volunteer’s birthday in the last week we bought some birthday cake for the kids and they loved it!! I have never seen cake get eaten so quickly and one of the most amazing things that we saw was that all the little kids (around 4-5 years old) were so considerate to each other and they were even feeding each other from the same plates!! Normally, when kids get cake, the last thing on their minds is to share, so this was great to see at such a young age. We spent the rest of the day playing games with the kids and I even got a chance to do some magic tricks, but as they were so young I’m pretty sure they got bored with the tricks pretty quickly!! Then in the afternoon some of the older kids (12-16 years old) came back from school and we helped them to learn English. They were really good! It was great helping out at the orphanage and the kids there were incredible!!

The rest of the volunteers arrived that evening and most of us were either from the UK or Australia and we spent the weekend in Ho Chi Min City where we went on a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels where part of the Vietnam War was fought.

On Sunday 6th December 2009 we all went to the building site which was in a village called My Tho, around 3 hours away from Ho Chi Min city. Here we were staying in a guest house similar to the one in Ho Chi Min which was only a 10 min walk from the building site. I thought that we would be building bamboo houses but when we arrived at the site we found out that it was going to be a house made with bricks!! And the family that we were building the house for were living in a make shift temporary house made out of a few wooden fences and corrugated metal just next to the building site so they could see us all working and we had a chance to speak to them every day! This is great as it gives us the opportunity to get to know the family during the breaks and we know who will be living in the house once it is built. As none of us here have had any building experience, one of the local builders is always at the site, Bob, who is an absolute Legend!! He has taught us all how to make cement, lay bricks, construct the supports and build the house. The amazing thing is that he does not speak any English but he is still great at teaching us all!! I have to say that we are pretty good at speaking Vietnamese building phrases now!!

It is really hot here during the day but the house is coming along pretty well and we have almost finished building the walls so we just have to build the roof and finish off the plastering as well as add a few supports and the windows and doors and the house should be done!! It’s amazing how quickly the progress is going!! We have a great team of volunteers here! And there is even some activities in the evenings where we teach English at the evening classes!! So during our time here, we are kept pretty busy, which is great!

During this weekend we have organized a trip to the Mekong Delta which should be good to see as we can not work at the building site during the weekend.

Having a great time here in Vietnam and I can’t believe I have less than a week left in Vietnam before I head off to the next volunteer project where I’m doing Nature Conservation in Melbourne, Australia!! So I’ll be leaving Vietnam on Wed 16th December!! Hopefully we should have most of the house finished before I go which would be great as I would love to be here to see the family move into the house. They really deserve it!

Hope you all enjoyed the photos!! There is an internet café near our guest house which has pretty good internet connectivity so I will try and get the photos and video diaries from the Marine Conservation project in the Philippines as well as the ones for the Home Building Project here in Vietnam uploaded onto the blog, but as everything here shuts at 10pm and our schedule is pretty busy with lots of activities all the time I’m not sure when that will be, but keep posted!!

Hope you are all well and have a great weekend!!

Best wishes!!

Prashant