After another quick 2 days at sea we arrived in Ho Chi Minh (also known as Saigon), Vietnam.
The first night was my friend Shawn’s 21st birthday so he rented out the upstairs of a bar that was close to the ship; it was a really fun night with all of my close SAS friends.
The next day we got a moped tour from some of the locals that were right outside the ship. They took us to a pagoda, the War Remnants Museum and to a local Vietnamese restaurant and had Pho. To end the first night, we went to a water puppet show and it was really cute even though I couldn’t understand what it was about because it was all in Vietnamese.
On the third day me and my roommate, India, took mopeds into town and had coffee. Vietnamese is by far the best coffee I’ve ever had. We walked a few blocks to the local market and it was never ending. I bought a few pairs of pants and a rice hat. Down the street they had some huge malls so we did a little bit more shopping. At night, a few of us went down to the Bui Vien walking strip which was a really cool area with shops and bars all along the street.
The next day I went on a field program with SAS to the Mekong Delta which took about 2 hours to get there. When we got there, we went to a brick factory and then got into a boat. We stopped to get fresh coconuts then continued down the river to a shop where they made candy and had tea and some odd fruits which were actually pretty good. We then took a tuktuk, which was basically a wagon, down to a local restaurant where we had elephant ear fish which was just sitting on the table and then some ladies came by and put it into spring rolls for us. Then it was time to take a small canoe down the stream to the larger boat that took us back to the bus. After eating dinner on the ship, I went out again to the walking strip with 11 SASers and it was so much fun!
On the fourth day, I hung out around the ship until lunch then went out to get coffee. As me and India were looking for something to do we decided to go get another ear piercing at this really nice place right around the corner (and no need to worry it had great reviews and lots of tourists were there as well). We ran into some SASers afterwards and walked around with them for a while before heading back to the ship for the night.
On my last day, I had a field class for my Pacific Wars class. Early in the morning we headed to the War Remnants Museum where we got to spend about 2 hours walking through all the different rooms. It was really heartbreaking to see all of the pictures of the piled-up bodies and the affects that Agent Orange had on the children.
Next, we headed to the Cu Chi tunnels and saw where the Viet Cong would hide out and many Americans died down in the tunnels. We also got to shoot an AK and it was so much heavier than I thought it would be. Overall, Vietnam has definitely been my favorite country! I love the people, the city, and the food. I hope to come back very soon and go explore up north.
A few things I learned:
- How to say Hello in Vietnamese: Xin chào
- A lot of the Vietnamese do speak English
- For the amount of damage that Americans did to Vietnam, The Vietnamese people still love Americans and are so sweet
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