Anyway, I was supposed to update on the last day of my trip in Vietnam, but for some reason the WiFi connection was super slow in the hotel when I touched the 'Publish Post' option. This is what I typed on that day:

'Finally it's the last day of my OCIP trip. I'm right here blogging on my phone, sitting on the hotel's sofa that looks like bread. Facebook is banned here but if you're using an iPhone or an iPod Touch you can still access it through the FB app. Damn Apple products! Well I wanted to update my status on FB throughout the trip but from day 3 onwards, my account was unavailable. Anyway here's what happened in chronological order:'

It only took 2 flights in and out of Japan 2 years ago to prevent me from experiencing motion sickness. The food was alright, but the bun was awesome! It looked like any other, but I had to get 2 more! Landed on the beyond-my-expectation airport which was totally modern, yet technically monochrome. Got exposed to the real side of Vietnam the moment we traveled on the coach. Slums here and there with new buildings popping up amidst them. Stocked up on food at a mall called Citi Plaza (sounds familiar huh?) and we finally arrived at our first hotel at 7pm. I managed to cram 20 pages of market failure and an episode of Grey's Anatomy into the journey:) The food there was alright but since I was hesitant to eat it at first, I ate the 'chicken and rice' packet ration and it tasted horrible! The hotel rooms were alright but the corridors were a bit eerie since not all the lights were switched on. 'Channel-surfed' till I found Star World and all the other cable channels!

Ate a lot for breakfast, about 14 thick slices of baguettes. The baguettes were delicious and in my opinion, they better be since the French spent 90-odd years colonising Vietnam! Went to the orphanage and the hard labour commenced. We had to dig a drain in the ground to clear the area ,that is reserved for cementing, of water and then cover the area with sand. Then came the irritating part. Electricity was out, so the cement mixer can't be used and we had to make cement using pure human power! To produce one little blob of cement (which would cover about 2m by 3m) required about 15 minutes of mixing with the help of 5 others! As a result, there wasn't much progress for the first half of the day.

After lunch at the hotel (which also signaled to me not to eat anymore rations due to the equally-horrible pasta), we went back to the orphanage and finally, electricity was restored and all we needed to do was to pour sand, concrete and stones into the mixer. Thank God for machines! By the end of the day, our cement platform was one-thirds complete and those who did painting completed half of their tasks. Oh, I forgot to mention that we were divided into 3 groups, which are the 'cementers', painters and the 'players' (for interaction with the orphans).

I had enough of cementing so I joined the painting group instead. We had to paint the toilets and the staircase corridor of the girl's side of the orphanage. The walls looks damn dirty and some parts looked as if a murder happened ages ago since there were brownish-red stuff on them. There was like an extended family of lizards as well, and I fell on the staircase while chasing one of them away and had a scratch on my knee. A little more inches forward and my face would have landed into the paint tray.....We coated the walls with a cream colour and I even suggested painting the wooden shoe rack mounted onto one of the walls. After many hours and songs blasted from my phone later, our job was complete!

(I'll update more later!)