I hope everyone had a good Halloween. They don’t really do Halloween here except maybe the expats. I didn’t do anything special as I was having a bad day with shoes. Yes those lovely inexpensive shoes purchased here in Singapore… hurt your feet after a few hours of standing. I had a good day otherwise and am feeling a bit better each day at work.

Happy Halloween!

Boy am I pooped.

Today we arrived back to Singapore around 1:15am but didn’t get home until after 2am and after settling in to sleep, it was prob around 3am. I woke up at 7am in order to be at work by 8:30am. I think it was good I slept on the plane a bit but was still a bit tired.

I went first to pick up my ID and white coats then headed to the pharmacy for some orientation. I’m assigned to the Cancer Center Pharmacy at NUH. They have two pharmacies, one of Level 4 and the other on Level 8 of the Kent Ridge Wing at NUH. I’ll likely be staying on Level 4 for most of the time. It services all subsidized outpatients and inpatients receiving chemotherapy.

I observed the work flow and learned a bit about their procedures. We went through my training manual and also all the standard operating procedures (SOPs) of the department.

I’m doing something called “pre-registration training” which will last for 3 months. I’m required by the Singapore Pharmacy Board to comnplete these 3 months of training along with passing their forensic exam which will be on December 1st. This training will be good for me to learn about the practice of pharmacy in Singapore.

I learned today about how controlled drug prescriptions are written here and also that they seem to have limited variety of controlled drugs here. For example, in US we have this drug called OxyContin in 10, 20, 40, 80, and 160 milligram dosage strengths. In Singapore, they seem to only carry 10 miligram. Possibly because there is less opiod use or else they have other substances to use. There’s lots of learning to be done here.

I also had Mandarin class today but almost wasn’t going to go as I was tired and there was a solemn feeling everywhere around today. During the recent break, 2 students passed away unexpectedly and there was a moment of silence held at the first day at INSEAD today. Ron said it was a sad day as everyone was in shock and in disbelief. You could feel everyone’s sadness in the air today. The weekend and the week has been a difficult time for lots of people and after a period of mourning… I believe that life will go on.

I’ve finally uploaded all our Vietnam trip pics so I’m almost back on track on our blog but this’ll still be short and sweet. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Early this morning we were awakened by the boat’s generator as they prepared our breakfast and lunch. It was good though so that we woke up and took a shower and were up for breakfast at 7:30. We didn’t have alarm clocks so I’m thinking they may have done it on purpose.

After a simple Western breakfast, we boarded a small boat to head into the grotto nearby. We saw some birds and a couple of monkeys checking us out. We just took a short cruise around the grotto then back out. The junk then took us to another place so the guys could go for a swim. Only three of the guys decided to dive in for some swimming. The water was very salty according to Ron and it was easy to float.

When they were done splashing around, we checked out of our rooms and I wrote some postcards before we had lunch. As we finished up our lunch, we arrived back at the harbor and it was so crowded that we had to climb across five other boats to get to the dock. Our driver was waiting for us there so we drove back to Hanoi.

In Hanoi, it was still early so we visited the oldest pagoda in Hanoi then we took a rest at Sofitel The Plaza hotel. We had some drinks and snacks then our tour guide took us to a place for dinner. We were craving some authentic PHO so we ended up at PHO 24 which is open 24 hours a day. In US, I always order “#1” which is combo everything so some of us wanted that same thing in Vietnam. The menu wasn’t labeled that way but when we asked for the combo pho, our tour guide said just to ask for “#1”. So it ends up being the same thing… but about half the price, I think 2USD a bowl.

We had our fill of PHO before heading to the airport which took about an hour. Once there we also searched for “weasel coffee”, aka CHON coffee. It’s famous here apparently as these weasels only eat the best coffee beans and when they poop out these beans, they’ve also been fermented a bit. The beans are cleaned, roasted, then ground up. If you brew it, it’s supposed to be a really good cup of coffee. Anyways, we did find it in the airport and are going to try to brew it when we get home.

Our flight departed a bit late so we’re set to arrive back in Singapore around 1:30AM. It’s my (Jen’s) first day at work tomorrow so hopefully I won’t be too tired.

To check out our pics, click HERE!

I’m still getting caught up with our blog so this’ll be short and sweet with lots of captioned pictures 😀

Today we left our hotel after breakfast and headed to Ha Long Bay. It’s approximately a 3 hour drive so since we left around 8:30, we were to have lunch on the boat. The drive itself wasn’t very exciting, quite a bit of countryside with corn fields and banana tree groves.

When we arrived to the harbor, it was packed full of people and other ships returning from their journeys. We had to climb across 2 other boats in order to reach our boat since it got stuck near the back rather than near the dock. We settled into our rooms and set sail before we had lunch. The cabin rooms were actually very nice with wood paneling and complete with your own bathroom and AC unit. Even though the AC didn’t work, it was nice to have a fan and electrical outlets for recharging batteries.

We had a nice lunch on the middle deck, including lots of fresh seafood. After lunch we all went on top deck to relax and bit and take in the sights. We saw the famous “kissing chicks” rocks. We were headed towards some caves which were discovered I believe by the French. It was a trek upwards then into the caves then back down. There were very interesting rock formations.

We headed quickly to a floating fish farm to check out their fresh seafood: fish, crabs, shrimp, and squid! Then we rushed to a site called Titop which is considered one of the most beautiful places to take a picture of Ha Long Bay. It was a steep and difficult climb up those stairs but it was worth it for the view and cool breeze.

The sun had already set so we headed back to the boat for dinner. Again, wonderful seafood for dinner. Since we were docked for the evening we decided to try some night fishing. We were actually trying to fish for squid using these special squid hooks, the have 6 prongs. The squid are attracted to your boat by a bright light that shines underneath the water and once the squid swims by, you’re supposed to yank the hook to catch them…

Unfortunately, none of us were successful but at least we tried. The moon was beautiful as it was recently the full moon but there were few stars out in the evening.

In the morning we would be heading back to Hanoi and then leaving for Singapore. It was so peaceful being out in Ha Long Bay, it’s hard to leave.

For our online album, click here!