Table Mountain

(PICTURE: Me freezing my butt off on the top of Table Mountain.)

When you first arrive in Cape Town, you can't help but notice a bunch of really big mountains. One of the mountains is totally flat on the top, like a table. In fact, it looks so much like a table that it's called Table Mountain.

There are hundreds of different ways to hike Table Mountain. There are "easy" ways and very very very difficult ways. In fact, a couple of days before we hiked the mountain, a teenager died hiking with his parents. Hearing this, the guys and I decided to take one of the easier ways.

We started up the mountain pretty early in the morning and quickly realized that it was freaking freezing. Right before we started to climb, Dave and I met a few people from California who had been planning to hike the mountain but came completely ill equipped -- they were wearing shorts.

Dave, Chris and I made it to the top of the mountain in about an hour and ten minutes. Devin, made it up about ten minutes before us -- the dude was booking it. Some of the interesting things about the climb were:
a) It was really slippery.
b) Did I mention it was cold? It had actually snowed the night before and there were still patches of snow as we climbed.
c) The view was spectacular...until an extremely dense fog came in.

Actually, in regards to "c" above: Table Mountain is notorious for having fog envelop the mountain. They call this fog "The Table Cloth." Check out this picture:

(PICTURE: Moments before you could see the city of Cape Town. Not so much once the fog came in. Also, check out the snow on the ground.)

Cape Town vs. Johannesburg

(PICTURE: Leaving Jo'Burg...happily.)

Don't be fooled by the title of this blog entry -- there is no comparison between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Let me state this very clearly: Cape Town is awesome. Johannesburg sucks.

(PICTURE: A view of Cape Town while hiking Table Mountain.)

Cape Town is a beautiful city with lots of nature, good eats, cool things to do and places to visit. On top of that, it felt safe. The same can't be said for Johannesburg where every house has an eight foot wall with barbed wire and an attack dog in front of it. Evert story I heard of carjackings and robberies was in and around Jo'Burg. In comparison, Cape Town felt like Pleasantville. Actually, a Cape Town taxi driver summed it up best for me: "The problem with Cape Town is that tourists feel safe here so they're not scared to walk." Despite this particular taxi driver's bitterness at not making more money, he was a fair an honest driver. "Fair and honest" are two words I would never use to describe 90% of Jo'Burg taxi drivers who repeatedly tried to rip us off and on one occasion tried to intimidate us into paying an exorbitant amount of money.

Jo'Burg has some nice places but they're all basically malls and promenades. If I wanted to see malls and promenades I could have gone to Los Angeles. That said, if you're going to South Africa you should definitely stop in Jo'Burg. Let me draft an itinerary for you:

Morning: Fly into Jo'burg and go to the apartheid museum. The museum documents the history of apartheid and is a can't miss.

(PICTURE: The guys at the Apartheid Museum.)

Afternoon: Go to Soweto. There's a lot of history in Soweto and it's definitely worth a walk around.

Late Afternoon/Before Evening: Go back to the airport and fly to Cape Town or one of the other nicer cities in South Africa.

I hate to be so negative on Jo'Burg but without a doubt it is the least favorite city I have ever been to...except for maybe Detroit.

I had a great time in South Africa but there was one big problem -- we had to spend wayyyyy too much time in Jo'Burg since most of the games were in and around the city. If you're from Jo'Burg and reading this, I apologize if this offends you. Having lived in Los Angeles for seven years, I can't tell you how many times I annoyingly heard people obnoxiously say, "I could never live here." Well, it's my turn to be annoying and obnoxious: I could never live in Johannesburg.

Dancing With The Locals

The other highlight of our excursion was when we pulled up to a house with a bunch of goats in front of it. We all got out of our van and walked between the fenced in goats and a neighboring house. When we got to the neighboring house we immediately started to hear some whistles being blown. Before we knew it, four old ladies came dancing our way:



The ladies grabbed Devin and Chris and led our group around to the back of the house:



Behind the house was a local choir.



The choir sang some traditional songs to us and then began to dance. After they had shown off their moves, they grabbed all of the tourists and had us form a circle. They continued to sing as they pulled one tourist at a time into the middle where the attempted to teach us some local moves. Chris went first and infused some Buffalo hip-hop style into his South African booty shake:

Devin went next and attempted to do a little grinding:



Dave went next and showed off his moves:


The girl Dave danced with though didn't seem so impressed:


(PICTURE: Maybe my favorite photo ever.)

Of course I danced too. However, "engaged guy" must have been written on my face because I found myself being dragged into the middle of the circle by a dude.

Witch Doctor

(PICTURE: The local Witch Doctor.)

In Part 1 of my South Africa series, I'm gonna recount my trip to see an African Witch Doctor:

One of the cooler things we did during our safari was to take a trip to a local village. Sabi Sabi donates a lot of money to a village where the majority of their local workers are from. While visiting the village we went to a small hut and met with an African Witch Doctor.

To communicate with deceased ancestors, the Witch Doctor used a series of different items. Some items you might expect a Witch Doctor to use (lion/impala/rhino bones) and other items you wouldn't (dominoes and dice).

(PICTURE: The Witch Doctor throwing all of his future telling items.)
(PICTURE: The domino has spoken.)

The Witch Doctor would do his thing and begin to explain what the spirits told him. This was translated to us by the Sabi Sabi worker who was in charge of bringing guests to the village. The translator told us that the first thing the Witch Doctor was going to find out was what the score of the South Africa and Mexico game was going to be (remember, we went on this safari before the World Cup began). Well, the Witch Doctor did some chanting and dropped the bones/dice/dominoes on the floor. He quickly glanced over what his ancestors were telling him and decided he didn't like the outcome of the game...so he chanted again and dropped the items once more. Well, the ancestors were stubborn and were still predicting a Mexican win. The Witch Doctor -- clearly a soccer fan -- wasn't ready to accept this and once again dropped the bones/dice/dominoes. The third time was the charm and the spirits predicted a draw between South Africa and Mexico. Personally I'm not a believer in astrology or fortune telling but a couple of days later Bafana Bafana tied Mexico 1-1.

University Entrance Exams II

After writing yesterday's post, I found this 2007 Time article about Vietnamese entrance exams:

The Stresses of Vietnam's Exam Season

By Kay Johnson Thursday, Jul. 12, 2007

A visitor to Hanoi University this month might be forgiven for thinking the tree-shaded campus was preparing for a riot. Moments after a school bell rings out, there is a grating sound as a tall, metal barricade is rolled into place. Dozens of police and uniformed security officials assume positions guarding the entrances to the campus, and students are searched for mobile phones and other forbidden objects as they enter classroom.

The reason for this heightened security on campus? It's exam time, and the authorities are taking extraordinary measures to guard against cheating on high-stakes university-entrance exams. When the testing concludes July 16, a total of 1.8 million would-be scholars will have taken the entry exam in the hope of landing one of only 300,000 spots in colleges nationwide. That pressure gives students an incentive to seek any edge they can. Hanoi's 940-year-old Temple of Literature has been jammed this month with exam-takers burning incense for good luck. Some students eat "lucky meals" of green beans for breakfast on the big day. (The word for bean also means "passing" in Vietnamese.)

Other students, though, seek help from more than green beans: In recent years, entrance-exam fraud has been highly publicized in local media. Last year, two dozen students were caught being fed answers through Bluetooth headsets concealed under wigs. Earlier this month, police busted a ring issuing fake IDs to university students who were to take the test for struggling prospective scholars. The price? $2,500 — more than twice Vietnam's average annual wage. In response to concerns over cheating, authorities have beefed up security, calling in local police and even the Public Security ministry to guard exam sites.

The lengths to which some students have gone to cheat their way into college reflect a wider crisis in Vietnam's higher education system, which hasn't grown fast enough to meet demand from students eager to get ahead in Asia's second-fastest-growing economy.

Nguyen Thu Phuong, 18, has been studying for more than a year for the exams, and was poring over a few last-minute math equations on a bench shortly before testing began. Her mother, anxiously fanning the girl as she studied, once fought for the communist side in the Vietnam War and had recently retired from a state-run factory, but she dreams her daughter can someday work in banking or finance. "It's not like the old days," she said. "If children don't have a university degree, it's really difficult to get a good job."

But relatively few Vietnamese can fulfill the dream of a higher education, which is bad news for its economy. Vietnam currently attracts foreign investment at a rate of nearly $1 billion per month, with investors looking to take advantage both of its low-wage levels and its young and highly literate population. But only 10% of Vietnamese college-aged youths are enrolled in higher education, lagging behind India and China, and less than a quarter of the figure for Thailand. Those numbers don't bode well for Vietnam's ambitions to move into higher-end electronics and outsourcing.

Tom Vallely, director of the Vietnam program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, says the country's universities aren't churning out enough qualified engineers, IT workers and managers. "You are already seeing a skilled-worker shortage," he says.

Even the elite who make it into university find that the centrally controlled curriculum is steeped in "Ho Chi Minh Thought," and lags far behind other schools in Asia. The reforms that have seen a mushrooming of private enterprise in the communist-controlled society have yet to reach its more than 300 universities. Professors' pay and promotion is based on seniority, not merit, and they rarely publish in international journals.

"Vietnam drastically needs education reform," says Adam Sitkoff, director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam. "If you want to compete in the IT sector and you want to attract high-wage, high-growth jobs, you need to have a smart, well-educated workforce."

Vallely, who was recently part of a delegation of U.S. educators that met with Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Trietalong to promote reform, says Vietnam needs a world-class flagship school — the equivalent of India's Institutes of Technology or Tsinghua University in China. Existing schools, he says, need autonomy to build their own curriculum and compete for students. "These kids who do make the cut and go to school are very smart," Vallely says. "They're just not getting much of an education when they get there." And if that doesn't change, Vietnam may only be cheating itself.

University Entrance Exams

(PICTURE: Here's an entrance exam in English. I have no idea when this one is from. However, I looked over Su's and can guarantee that I would have gotten zero correct.)
Vietnamese readers, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this post.

The past two weekends Hanoi has been swarmed with 18-year-old high school students who are hoping to attend university the fall. In order to get into a university, students must take university entrance exams. From what I've gathered, these exams are like the SATs on crack. Unlike in the USA where you have an elaborate application process -- for example a student who scores a 1200 on the SATs could get into a university over someone who scores a 1400 because the 1200 applicant was the President of Key Club or something -- here it all comes down to the score.

Let me point out a few things:
1. There are multiple tests you can take. Su took a two day test that covered three subjects: Physics, Chemistry and Math...or as I like to call them, the subjects I would fail the easiest. Tomorrow is the second round of testing which I believe is Literature, History and Math. Students usually only take one test. Depending on the university they are applying to, certain test are accepted.

2. Students can only take a test for one university during round 1. This is where the pressure really starts. Say a student wants to go to Huyen's university -- Foreign Trade University -- well, they're gonna need to get higher than that year's threshold on the test. FTU, is the hardest university in Vietnam to get into, and last year had a bottom score of 28 (to put it into perspective, the university Su is applying to had a bottom score of 17). If a student doesn't get above the threshold then most likely they will NOT GET INTO A UNIVERSITY. Let me repeat that, if a student doesn't get a good enough score then they're probably gonna have to take a year off before they can go to university. (Note: There is a second round of acceptances but I've been told this is a very difficult way to get into a school).

3. Because of #2, students must strategically plan which school to apply to. For example, Su applied to the Transportation University. I'm pretty sure Su has no interest in transportation. However, the school he really wants to go to is highly competitive and hard to get into. I've argued with Huyen that it doesn't make sense for him to aim lower if he has no interest in a career in what a particular school teaches. However, Huyen has told me that it is better to just get into one of the universities and that people can work in an field once they graduate. I guess that is true in America too.

4. Have I mentioned the pressure? The students here are under crazy pressure from their parents to pass the test the first time they take it. As soon as the test was over, someone took their test and published it online. Within an hour all the answers were online and basically every student in the city was comparing their answers to the key online. Huyen, Huyen's sister and seemingly everyone else related to Su knew his score at the same time as he did.

5. Students are not told if the qualified for the school for one month. Su scored an 18 on his test which was higher than the threshold for his school last year. However, Huyen said that often the threshold is raised every year. There's a lot of people biting their fingers in the Nguyen family...actually in probably every Nguyen family around the country.

On a funny note, I dropped off and picked up Su at his test almost every time. Every student was being dropped off and picked up by seemingly their parents. I felt like a) a parent b) everyone was starting at Su wondering why a foreigner was dropping him off at his entrance exam. Okay, maybe it's a had to be there moment.

Su's in town!

(PICTURE: Going up! Su's first elevator ride!)

This past week, Huyen's brother Su (AKA: My future brother-in-law) stayed with me. Su was in Hanoi to take his university entrance exam which I'll blog about tomorrow.

Despite having to share my bed, it was great having Su in town and I imagine for him it was the trip of a lifetime. Imagine if you've been living out in the countryside with no AC, no internet, no ____ and then got to crash at a place in the big city for the first time in your life. In no particular order, here are some of the highlights I imagine Su is telling his friends about right now:

1. Air Conditioning. As I wrote the other day, it is HOT right now. Su would constantly come into my bedroom and beeline for the air-conditioning remote. He would quickly put the AC on at 25 degrees Celsius and usually blast it full power. One afternoon we had a power outage and I could see the flashback to an air-conditionless life in Su's eyes. Thankfully the power came back on within an hour.

2. The Food. For every meal except one, Su got to choose what we ate. Think back to when you were a kid and how awesome it was when you'd get to choose your birthday meal. Well, at least for me it was awesome because I'd always drag my family to places we usually wouldn't eat (Indian food, Sushi, etc.). Su wasn't quite as adventurous as me but he did seem very happy getting to choose whatever he wanted to eat.

3. Watching World Cup. If Su doesn't get into university I'm gonna feel bad about this one. Basically Su loves soccer but hasn't been allowed to watch any of the World Cup because he was studying for his university entrance exams. I made a deal with Su that if he studied all day, we could watch the World Cup at night. He hit the books hard and we got to watch a couple of games together.

4. Su's first massage. Huyen and I took Su to a local foot massage place that we like. Clearly Su had never been pampered like that before.

5. Shopping. We took Su to the supermarket so he could choose a bunch of snack food. While there, he ended up doing some clothes shopping too. I purchased him some hot new threads.

6. Su's first elevator ride. Check out the picture above. The first ride was kind of anti-climatic because it was a windowless elevator. For Su's second ride we took a glass elevator which he seemed to really enjoy.

7. Su's FIRST MOVIE! We took Su to see Toy Story 3. We had our choice to see it in 2-D or 3-D and I choose 2-D. Frankly, I'm not into the whole 3-D thing and I thought he should enjoy a movie like the rest of us have been for the last eight decades. On a side note, Toy Story 3 is AMAZING!


(PICTURE: Huyen and Su at the theatre. There was no backdrop for Toy Story 3 so we used this one for the Twilight film.)

It was great to have Su in town. Although, I did have a little bit of a nervous moment when I asked Su, "Where will you live in the fall when you begin university?" Su's answer, "I will live with you until you are married."