Vietnam

I hadn’t been off the ship two hours in Vietnam when I fell in front of a bus. Nothing happened though except I think I scared some old women, oops. I went on a field trip for my Human Effects on Coastal Systems class the first day we were in Vietnam. We went to the Can Gio Biosphere something or other. It was one of my favorite SAS trips I’ve done. We took a bus then a ferry to the tourist center. Then we took a speed boat (very exciting) to a mangrove forest where we got to ride in paddle boats for a little while and try to catch crabs in a holding pond. Then we speed boated over to another area where we walked on really cool bridges and then took a safari-type vehicle to a crocodile farm. We got to ride on a little pontoon boat and feed the crocodiles fish tied to sticks. It was very exciting and only a little scary. We also got to climb up this really tall tower that had a great view. It was a little scary too because it was rusted through in some places.
When I got back from my trip, I met up with some friends to go out to dinner. We went to a Japanese place right by the boat and got a lot of sushi. It took forever but it was delicious and pretty cheap. I had the next day free so I went to the market with two other people and then we went to a park to meet some Vietnamese students one of them had met the day before. Apparently a lot of students come to the park to practice their English with all of the foreigners. We talked to them for a couple of hours which was really neat and then we walked around a little more.
Monday I went on an SAS trip to visit a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels. Cao Dai is a very interesting religion. It’s pretty much a combination of Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Or maybe some others. Or maybe and others. Anyway, it’s interesting. The temple was very decorative and reeked of incense. (Mama couldn’t go to any Asian countries because they would all give her headaches.) They also had an amazing flower garden. We watched part of a worship service. It was a lot of chanting and robes and whatnot. I think it’s kind of weird that they let tourists watch them. There were probably at least ten tour busses there besides our group.
The tunnels were really cool to see. They’ve been widened to accommodate Western sized people. They’re still super tight. And they have bats in them. Fun combination. The whole tunnel network thing was pretty ingenious. Another day in Vietnam I went to the War Remnants museum. The tunnels and the museum were really…enlightening can maybe be the word. They were from the Vietnamese perspective, obviously. I think the part that got me the most (not that it wasn’t all really hard to take) was the room in the museum about the aftermath of Agent Orange. While spending time in Saigon on my own, I’d already thought to myself “Wow, there are a lot of people with deformities here.” It didn’t occur to me that I was seeing the effects of Agent Orange. It’s unbelievable and awful.
Back to the lighter side. Another day I went to the Mekong Delta with on another SAS trip. We got to ride in another riverboat and eat a lot of snacks. Tropical fruits like jackfruit and I can’t remember the names of the rest. And we went to a place where they make coconut candy. We got to eat it while it was still fresh and warm. Delicious! We also went to a place that specialized in honey. We even saw the honeycomb with the bees on it. The guy practically held it in my face in fact.
I spent part of the last day shopping because I wanted to buy a hiking backpack for my trip in China. I ended up buying a really great one for $11. My friends were laughing at me because they said I was like a kid on Christmas I got so excited. If you want to see the excitement (or the backpack) just ask me because I’d love to tell the whole story about how I got it.
Let’s see…I rode a motorcycle for the first time in Vietnam. That’s their primary form of transportation. I didn’t drive it though. It was a taxi type thing. And it was more like a scooter than like a Harley or something. Oh, I had the most amazing shrimp spring rolls ever. They were from Pho 2000. It’s called that because Bill Clinton ate there in 2000 and they renamed it. There are pictures of him all over the restaurant and a sign saying “pho for the president.”