Vietnam

            On March 19, we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam for five days.  The first day, I went with SAS to the Cu Chi Tunnels, about an hour and a half from Saigon.  We stopped for lunch, where I learned that Vietnamese food was a lot of seafood.  I tried it all, but I was not too impressed.  I’ve never been a seafood person, but I tried everything with an open mind.  The tunnels are a system of underground tunnels built by the Vietnamese in 1920.  They took twenty years to complete, but they served as a secret network for the army during their wars with France and in the Vietnam War.  The Americans had no idea and even built an army base right over one of the tunnel systems.  Our tour guide took us to a patch of dirt, which turned out to be a cover for a board.  I got to take out the dirt and leaf covered board and climb in the tunnel inside, covering my tracks behind me.  It was dark and squishy at the bottom, but bigger than I had expected.  A lot of the tunnels had to be expanded for American tourists to fit though.  We spent the next hour seeing all the different traps and weapons used by the Vietnamese army.  I was amazed they could build the whole tunnel system by hand and came up with subtle, yet affective traps.  We got to crawl through a tunnel for a little while, which was fun, but I couldn’t imagine doing it in total darkness during war time.  I went with friends for sushi that night to celebrate Kristin’s twenty first birthdays.  The restaurant was tricky because there was a bigger language barrier than in any other country we’ve been in so far.  It took forever for us to get our food.  However, I tried sushi for the first time.  I had something called a heart attack role, which was just spicy tuna with sesame seeds.  It was a lot better than I thought it would be, but I still hate seafood.  We then went out for a quick drink at a bar.  Dinner and drinks were only about 170,000 dong, or *.50 USD, and we didn’t even leave the pier. 

            The next morning, I got up early to fly out to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, though Saigon is the biggest city.  I went with a tour company advertised on FaceBook so everything was all arranged for us already.  Once we got to the city, we went out for lunch, which again hard because of the language barrier, and arrived at the Friendship village, a community for those affected by Agent Orange.  Our group arrived late and the other group of Semester at Sea students were already playing games and singing songs with the kids.  We toured the classrooms, where volunteers tried to teach the kids basic life skills, like washing their hands.  The kids all have severe mental and physical disabilities so teaching them how to wash their hands can take up to five months.  However, they have learned how to make beautiful crafts, where all the proceeds went to the village.  After touring the classrooms, we went to a conference room where someone was supposed to talk to us about Agent Orange.  However, his translator was horrible and no one could understand what she said.  The village was excited that we came and had reporters from local news channels there so some SAS students may be on Vietnamese TV.  I wasn’t interviewed, but I may be in some group shots.  After leaving the village, we checked into our hotels and had the night free.  I went to dinner with Russ and his roommate, David, took a rickshaw to a night market, and came back to the hotel to chill out for the night.  Our hotel had free internet so I just used its computers to research classes for next semester, not very exciting.

             The next morning, I got up early for a three hour drive to Ha Long Bay, one of the natural wonders of the world.  The drive there was kind of rough, a good number of the people in the back were more concerned with getting drunk at 9 in the morning while the rest of us were really annoyed with them.  The tour company we booked with was also kind of disorganized; they wouldn’t let us pick our groups for the hotels and they wouldn’t let us pick who we wanted on our boats for the cruise along Ha Long Bay.  All that aside, once we reached the town of Ha Long, we boarded a ferry for our junkboat cruise.  I’m not sure why they are called junkboats because they are so nice; they remind me of luxurious pirate ships.  There was a nice dining room and the cabins were bigger than the ones we have on the ship.  Even though I didn’t pick my boat, I still knew more than half of the people on it, one of the good things about doing SAS for two months.  We were served a seafood lunch by the crew and then explored some caves.  I expected this to be a quick tour of some private caves, but these caves were more like caverns and there were tourists from all over the world walking through them.  Ha Long means “descending dragon” and the whole bay is dotted with tiny, mountainous, islands resembling a dragon.  We walked through the caves, took what was probably an illegal short cut through one of the tunnels, and after an hour, we went kayaking on the bay.  David and I were a pretty good team, even though David was sick all trip with food poisoning.  We went back on our junkboat where we could go swimming in the bay.  Some people jumped off the top of the boat into the water, about twenty feet, but I hate the feeling of free falling so I just jumped in off the side of the boat.  The water is clear, but really, really, cold and also salty.  It’s also apparently pretty dirty so I probably got some sort of parasite, but it was all worth it.  The crew kept making me jump back in and do tricks in the air.  We started to cruise around the bay, and we all ate dinner, followed by karaoke and dancing for the rest of the evening. There was some thick fog covering the bay.  I’ve never seen anything like it before.  My vision has never been so obscured in the outside before; it was pretty eerie, but really cool. 

            The next day, we ate breakfast, and saw some more sites along the bay, including a floating school.  The bay was beautiful in the daylight.  With all the fog surrounding he rock islands, it reminded people of the planet in Avatar, but I don’t remember why.  Around 11, we left Ha Long Bay, went for another seafood lunch, and drove back to Hanoi for our flight back to Saigon.  I hung out with Russ, David, and Allie in the airport, where we ate some “instant noodles” that turned out to be Ramen with sketchy pikes of meat.  Our flight was delayed, which was bad because the same bunch of people that had been annoying everyone all trip by being loud and drunk were worse on the plane.  They bought so much alcohol on the plane, they were horrible.  They were loud and disrespectful to everyone.  I ended up switching seats with someone because I couldn’t sit near them anymore.  I have no idea how they didn’t get kicked off the plane.  Allie says flying is still considered pretty luxurious in some countries, and their actions were just disrespectful and probably freaked some passengers out.  If those people acted like that in the US, it would not fly with anyone.  The rest of us were just embarrassed and tried to ignore the ten percent of the ship that Dean Dan says “don’t get it.”  We got back on the ship around 11:30, but Russ, Allie, and I were hungry from not really eating dinner so we took a taxi around midnight for some Korean food because that was the only place close by that was still open.  We hung out until two eating pork buns, beef and pineapple fried rice, and chicken and rice.  It was a pretty great end to the evening.

            The next morning, I went out to the market with Russ and David for souvenir shopping.  I think my bargaining skills have gotten pretty sharp on this voyage; bargaining is really fun for me and I wish we could do it more in the US.  DVDs were so cheap here too.  I bought all of the seasons of 30 Rock, Scrubs, and How I Met Your Mother for $30.00 USD in total.  I also bought eleven DVDs for seven dollars.  My first DVD, Saw 3D was in some European language I couldn’t identify, but it was worth the gamble and my TV shows seem to work so far.  Russ and I went out to the War museum in the afternoon.  It would have been cool to get the perspective on the war from Vietnam’s perspective, but I didn’t really learn anything.  It isn’t the museum’s fault though; I just don’t ever get much out of museums.  They are always full of pictures or other things that are too far away for me to really see well and captions that I can’t read.  I tend to just float around and look at the pictures.  The weapons were interesting, but I didn’t learn anything from it, aside from the fact that Cuba supported Vietnam during the war.  Russ and I concluded the day by just walking around Saigon before going back to the ship.

            Vietnam was very friendly and a lot more developed than I had expected.  People warned us about crossing the streets because there are no crosswalks, you just cross and the motorcycles go around you, as long as you just keep going and do not stop in the streets.  It really isn’t bad though.  I never thought my life was in danger while crossing the streets.  It’s really exciting actually; my friend compared crossing the streets to a game of Frogger.  I rode a motorbike taxi around a couple of times too.  It’s weird being so open with the road, but exciting.  It was fun to do once, but I don’t really want to do it again. 

Now we only have two days at sea until china.  I can’t believe how fast this whole semester is going.  I do not want this to end.