Good Morning Viet Nam!

        Viet Nam, holy cow. My Asian tour is off and running. We had one day in between Singapore and Viet Nam. Not much time to really let Singapore sink in and get ready for another country, but oh well. I also found out in that one day that my main trip to Nha Trang was cancelled. One day is also not enough time to plan out a whole country when you haven’t looked up anything. My plans got drastically changed, but I still had a great time in Viet Nam. We weren’t allowed to go to Nha Trang because of the horrible flooding. There was no way to get to Nha Trang. The highway was shut down because of a land slide and the airport was shut down because it was flooded. I made due and still had a great time.

        On my first day in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), I went with my Cognition professor on a FDP. We first went to the Ben Thanh Market and then to the Viet Nam War Remnants Museum. The market was very cool. You could get pretty much anything you wanted there. They had all sorts of clothes, textiles, restaurants, fish and meat markets, jewelry…you name it. There were also tailors inside that could make you a suit or dress in a day. It was awesome and cheap. I didn’t buy anything during my trip because we didn’t have enough time. Tucker and I walked through it then decided to go walk around outside with the time we had before lunch. We walked down a few streets close to the market. We ran into a cool looking Hindu temple. After we took a few pictures, we found a nice coffee shop. We ordered some coffee…not realizing that it was going to take forever to make the coffee. We discovered that Vietnamese coffee is the best ever, but we had to chug it in order to make it back to the bus on time. We chugged it, paid, and sprinted through all the motorbikes back to the bus. We got back in time to find out that we were going to eat at a restaurant across the street from the market.

        We at lunch at Pho 2000. Pho, pronounced “Fuh”, is a Southern Vietnamese noodle. I had Pho Ga, or pho with chicken. It was delicious. They make it with a basic broth, meat, onions, and spices. The price made it even better. We got a huge bowl of pho and two drinks for about 4 dollars. This was just the start of me eating Pho in Viet Nam.

After we ate lunch, we headed to the War Remnants Museum. This museum was a pretty big eye-opener for me and the rest of the people on my trip. Being from the US, we aren’t really taught anything about this war. We are taught that it happened, and that is about it. I wasn’t even taught that we lost…or at least I don’t remember anyone teaching me that. I had never heard of Agent Orange or anything of the brutalities that went on during it. It was hard to look at all the pictures, but I am glad I went. If I hadn’t gone to the museum, I probably would have never known what really went on during that war. We only got 45 minutes or so to go through the museum, but that was about all I needed to see.

        After my FDP, I met up with Amanda and we headed back to the Ben Thanh market. This time I started my shopping spree. I brought a bunch of 1 dollar bills just for the shopping in Viet Nam. They love taking them in the market and it was easier for me to do the conversion rate. It was close to 20,000 Vietnamese Dong to 1 USD. Everything was so cheap that I felt like I needed to get it all. I only got a few things this trip, but this wasn’t my last trip to the market. We shopped around for the afternoon, then headed back to the ship to get some dinner and drop off what we had bought. 

        We grabbed a quick dinner and got ready to go out for awhile. Amanda, Angela, and I went to 39 Bonard Restaurant to meet Megan, Eloise, Jon, Travis, and Bri. It took us awhile to figure out where they were because it was somewhat hidden. It was on the top floor of a building. It had a really cool view of the market area in HCMC though. When we got up to their table, it was full of food. Apparently the staff just kept on bringing out plates of food even though they hadn’t ordered it. They wanted us to try all sorts of different things. After the restaurant we headed to the night market. It is at the same place as the Ben Thanh market, but it is on the streets around the building. The inside market closes at 6pm and the night market opens at 6pm. It is pretty much a market that never closes. We walked around there for awhile and then a few of us headed back to the ship. I got back to my room and change into my pjs just in time for Eloise to talk me into going back out to meet up with Jon, Bri, Travis, and Megan. We met them at a bar called The Factory. It ended up being really cool. It was really industrial and all the workers had on construction type outfits. They also had new American music playing. We were all really excited because we have no idea what the new music is since we left.

        Once we were done at The Factory, Eloise and I headed to Apocalypse Now. Some SAS kid rented out the top floor of this club so pretty much the entire ship was there. On our way there, I was using Eloise’s iPhone as a GPS to figure out what streets to take. I was holding it in front of me when a guy on his motorbike jumped the curb behind me, drove really close to me, and slapped the phone out of my hand. It luckily hit the tips of my fingers and flew back towards Eloise. It landed in her arm. After she flipped him off and had a few words to say, we both just stood there and didn’t know what to say. We couldn’t believe that he had done that. After we contemplated what had just happened for awhile, we walked the rest of the way to the club. We stayed long enough to say hi to some people, and then headed back to the ship. We figured we shouldn’t walk around anymore, so we shared a cab with some other SAS kids.

        The next morning, I left early for the Cu Chi Tunnels. I stayed awake for awhile to see other parts of HCMC, but I fell asleep after awhile. It was about an hour and a half to get to the tunnels from the port. When we got there, we got our tickets and headed to a covered area to watch an informational video. Our guide gave us some overview information about the area and how it was used. Then we watched the video. I missed parts of it because I could not keep my eyes open. It was a very old video that was in black and white and I couldn’t keep my attention focused. I woke up at the end of the video and we headed to the tour part. We stopped at a tree and our guide told us to find a tunnel. We all looked around and started kicking leaves around on the ground. We couldn’t find anything. She took her foot and scraped a section of leaves away and you could see the top of the tunnel entrance. We all got turns to try and fit in the hole and put the top back on. We all thought we weren’t going to fit because it looks so small. All of the people that tried fit, some easier than others though. After that we walked around the area some more. She showed us several craters from bombs, trenches, and mounds they used to get oxygen into the tunnels. It was really cool. It was all things I would have never realized what they were unless she showed us. After we walked for awhile we finally got a chance to walk through the real tunnels. We went for about 200m in the tunnels. They enlarged this section of the tunnel about 2/3 of what they originally were. I can’t imagine trying to fit in there before they made them larger.  I also can’t imagine living in them at all. It was a workout just trying to go 200m in them, let alone doing that all day. On our way through we got to see where their clinic was as well as the kitchen. It was really cool how they built this whole city underground. They showed us when we got above ground where the exhaust comes out of the kitchen. They made it so it comes out a ways away so if the enemy saw it they would just bomb the exhaust and not the actual kitchen. Once everyone was out of the tunnels, we headed to the gift shop area. You could take turns shooting all their different kinds of guns they used in the war. Amanda and I skipped out on that and headed towards the bus. It was another hour and a half back to the port, so we all took another nap. We did stop once on the way back at a rubber tree farm. That was really random, but cool. We got out and went to check out the trees.

        When we got back to the ship, Amanda and I cleaned up and headed out for lunch. My roommate Anthony came with us to get more pho. Before we went to get pho, we stopped at the Rex Hotel and booked our plans for dinner. My boss Yvonne recommended the Bonsai Cruise. It is a dragon boat that serves a huge buffet dinner and entertainment. We didn’t have any plans so we figured that would be a fun way to spend the night. It was a pretty easy process to sign up. After, we headed to Pho24. It was delicious. It was even better than Pho 2000. We each had vegetarian pho, spring rolls, and 2 drinks for about 6 dollars. After we had that, we headed to Tutti Frutti. It was a self-serve frozen yogurt shop. I hadn’t had any froyo since I was last in Denver. I had a gigantic bowl. I had tart and passion fruit mixed with gummy bears on top. When we were done with yogurt, we were stuffed. We decided to walk it off around the market. I ended up getting a whole backpack full of stuff at the market. Much more than I had planned, but it crossed off a big chunk of gifts I needed to get. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. We walked back to the Rex Hotel to catch the shuttle back to the ship and stopped at a few shops on the way there.

        When we got back to the ship, we relaxed until we needed to be ready for the cruise. We took a nap, and then got dressed up for our dinner. The cruise left from right next to our ship, so it was really convenient. We walked over and checked in really early. We got to take a picture with some of the performers, and then we were taken to our table. The buffet looked so amazing. It was almost the entire length of the ship. We had a welcome drink and some small appetizers while we waited for the rest of the people to show up. It ended up being half of our ship’s crew that sat near us. It was really cool to eat with all of them. They don’t get to do things like this very often so they were all very excited. Once everyone showed up, the boat took off and we were allowed to go to the buffet. The food was amazing. I think I had 4 or so plates before dessert. I had spring rolls, sushi, salads, teriyaki, shrimp…about anything you could think of. It was so nice to have a really good dinner. They had live music and traditional dancing going on the whole time we were eating. The ship was going up and down the Saigon River, so we also got a really good view of the HCMC skyline at night. We ate all the way up until we had to leave. When we were getting ready to leave, Amanda and I put our money together to pay. We set it down on the table waiting for our waitress to come pick it up. We hadn’t thought about the wind that was being caused by the ship moving. We turned around and then heard our money move. By the time we could react, the money had blown right off the ship. Luckily we only had to pay for our drinks on the boat since everything else was prepaid. That would have been one expensive dinner if we had to pay twice for everything. After the dinner cruise, we were all pretty tired. We headed back to the ship to relax for the rest of the night. I took my computer and sat outside to get free internet for awhile, then headed to bed. Amanda and I were getting up early to run, so we called it a pretty early night.

        The next morning we got up at 730am to run for awhile. After we were done, we showered and headed to Highlands Coffee. We wanted a good breakfast and some really good coffee to go with it. We got just that. I had fried eggs, bacon, potatoes, fruit, and a coffee with condensed milk. It was all delicious. After our breakfast we headed to a large park in the middle of HCMC. It was a short walk from the coffee shop. It was a really cool park. There were people all over the place. Running, dancing, playing games, or just talking. We walked around for a good 2 hours taking pictures and watching everyone else in the park. I was really tempted to find someone else on the ship that plays tennis, because there were tons of courts at this park. They were only by reservation though, and the people I know that play weren’t in HCMC. After we walked around the park, we decided to walk around the city some more. We went all over. We walked through a bunch of other parks. We didn’t really have anything we wanted to see, but we didn’t know what else to do. After we walked around forever, we headed back to the ship for some lunch. We barely made it back in time because the shuttle driver decided to stop and get some coffee. We made it back with 5 minutes to spare before they shut down lunch. It was nothing special though, so I had some fruit. When we were done eating, we got our computers and headed back down to Highlands Coffee. They had really fast, free internet, so we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon catching up on some stuff. It started to pour while we were there, so we ended up staying there even longer. We headed back in time to grab some dinner and called it an early night.

        The next morning we headed to the market again. We stopped by the tailor Amanda had gone to get some dresses made. It was just a small shop down the street from the market. I ended buying some stuff from her as well because it was really reasonable priced stuff for being handmade. After that we just walked around the market again until lunch. We surprisingly enough had pho again. This time my friend Michael met us. We all had big bowls of pho and spring rolls again. We then walked around the market some more. After awhile we decided to try and find a different section of HCMC. It was called the backpacker’s district. It was suppose to be just a really lively place where all the European and Australian tourists stay. We hoped on some motorcycle taxis and told them to take us there. We ended up at some random building. I think it was a post office. It was pouring rain by the time we got there, so we just jumped off and stayed. There were some shops inside so we looked around while we were waiting for the rain to stop. It didn’t stop, so we decided to buy some ponchos and run out to find a taxi. We ran out and by the time we hailed a taxi, we were all drenched. We decided to just go back to the ship before dinner.

        We got back and cleaned up. We decided to try and find the real backpacker’s district. The motorcycle taxis outside the port knew where it was so we jumped on. They took us to an Irish pub. It was still raining so we hung out there for awhile. We then headed to a restaurant called Go Go Go. I just had some happy hour spring rolls because I had some nachos and fries at the Irish pub. When we were done eating we headed back to the ship before going out for the night. On our way back we heard that someone had passed away on the ship. We wanted to figure out what was going on. When we got back it was confirmed that Andre Ramadan has passed away in his cabin. It was a pretty unfortunate event. We still haven’t heard what the actual cause of death was. The mood on the ship after that memo was pretty somber. A few of us decided to go back to the backpacker’s district because the ship wasn’t a good place to be at the time. We went to a place called The Crazy Buffalo. It had a huge buffalo sign on the side of the building. We ordered a bunch of food. It was all delicious. We got in a huge fight with the waiters and managers when we were trying to pay though. The American dollar is accepted pretty much everywhere in Viet Nam, so we paid part in Vietnamese Dong and part in USD. They took the money and told us that it wasn’t enough because it was 17,000 VND to 1 USD. It really is 19,600 VND to 1 USD. Most places even round up to 20,000, but the place wasn’t going to budge. We ended up making a pretty big scene before I slapped down an extra dollar and walked off. If I would have known that that was all it was going to take I would have done that a lot earlier. After that we decided to try and find a decent club. We ended up going back to Apocalypse Now. It was really fun. It was packed, but this time it wasn’t complete filled with SAS kids. We stayed there until 3am or so then headed back to the ship.

        The next morning I slept in a bit because I was out so late. I met Amanda at Tutti Frutti for some lunch. Annie and Gina ended up wanting to get some lunch as well so they joined. We got some sandwiches and froyo. This time I tried the vanilla and chocolate swirl. It was good as always. After we ate Amanda and I walked around for the rest of the day. We had planned on going to get massages because they were so cheap, but we ran out of time. I tried camera hunting, but didn’t find anything for a reasonable price. We spent our last money and headed back to the ship. It decided to pour rain on us right when we wanted to get back so we sat under an awning of a shop until we could get a taxi. We thought we were going to have to stand in line at the ship in the pouring rain, but we were able to get right in when we got back.

        Well, this once again took me longer to write than I had planned…and I am still well behind on blogging. It is slowly but surely coming along. I will try to get China written before we get to Hawaii...that is if I don't go crazy with this rocking boat. It feels like we are on an endless roller coaster at the moment. The seas are HORRIBLE. I am finally done with almost all my big assignments, so I just have my finals left WOO HOO! Only 2 weeks before I am back home in the continental states. I can’t wait. Well I hope Thanksgiving was great for everyone!