Five Day Sweat

We arrived in Vietnam on the afternoon of November 14. The first day, I did yet another city orientation through Ho Chi Minh. We went to some of the city highlights including the Reunification Palace, the Ben Thanh market, and the Bitexco Financial Tower to name a few. The tower was

the main highlight of this field program for me. We went up 50+ stories on one of the tallest buildings in the city. What an incredible view it was. Vietnam was also extremely hot! This was one of the most miserable countries for me in terms of humidity and being in a constant sweat for the five day stay in Vietnam. I spent four out of the five nights on the ship to sleep which was still warm, but at least air conditioned. I went out with two of my friends, Sam and Melanie for a few drinks after the city orientation that we did together. We took a shuttle provided by SAS into the city center and from there we found a craft brewery called the Heart of Darkness Brewery. Despite drinking a nice cold brew around 9pm, I was still sweating bullets. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic spot. From there, we went two doors down to the Blue Gecko bar. An Australian bar! There were only two other gentlemen when we first walked in, one from Vancouver and the other from Ho Chi Minh. We ordered another beer and then Sam and I played a game of billiards.

Day two would be the only free day that I would have in Vietnam. I walked around the city with my friends, Carolyn, Nickki, and Melanie on our own city orientation. We woke up on the ship, had breakfast there, and then went on a quest to find coffee and wifi. Vietnam has the best coffee I have ever had. Iced coffee was a huge thing in Vietnam which is understandable for the constant heat they have. I don’t think I would ever want to come back during a summer season. But if I did, I would go straight for the Vietnamese Ice Coffee. The exchange rate was about $1=22,700 Vietnamese Dong and each coffee was roughly 15,000 Dong. I pulled out cash when I got into the country and I pulled out 1,000,000 Vietnamese Dong. I was a millionaire: at least for an hour or so. I spent much more than I had originally intended on coffee but I don’t regret a single cup.

After we found some good wifi, we went to the Ben Thanh market. This market was huge! We spent an hour or two shopping and looking around, trying not to get sucked into purchasing things that we didn’t actually need or even want. They had some of the most amazing things in this market, mostly because they were knock off items. Very nice ‘North Face’ backpacks would sell for as low as $9. It can be tough to even differentiate between what is real and what is fake between some of the clothes and accessories. Nickki bought a shirt that was clearly a knock off. It was a red Hawaiian shirt with BOTH a Nike and Adidas logo. Hilarious! We went to the War Remnants museum following the market. It was a unique experience to see the war with Vietnam from a different perspective. 

Day 3, Carolyn and I got on a bus to head towards the Mekong Delta where I would spend the next three days. Before this semester began, we had both signed up for this one night excursion at the Mekong Lodge to relax and experience the Mekong life. ‘Me’ means big and ‘kong’ means river. It was indeed a larger river! We went from our ship to the bus and straight back onto a boat as soon as we arrived. Our ferry took us to the river side resort where we would be spending that night. The resort was beautiful in a swampy kind of way. Despite not seeing hardly any mosquitos, I poured bug spray all over my body. The lodge had 30 bungalow style houses which were all quite luxurious inside. I had two roommates. For lunch, we were served an 8 course meal. I was a bit concerned at first when the first thing they brought out was the Crispy/fried Elephant Ear fish. Basically, they told us how they freshly caught this fish from the river. Despite being an ‘eco-resort,’ they told us that all of the waste goes straight into the river and it was obvious that the river was polluted with all kinds of other junk. Still, we ate the fish. Scales and all. It was good! There is a picture below. 

We went on an afternoon bike ride around the city visiting a number of different businesses and shops. It felt great getting that little bit of breeze during our bike ride but as soon as we came to a stop, that was when the sweat began pouring again. Still, during our village visit we learned how to make tapioca, coconut candies, and I even made my own rice paper! We even took all 30 of us and our bikes on a local ferry across the river to bike around a different village. That night we did a cooking class. We didn’t actually do so much cooking ourselves, more so the preparing. We made egg rolls, wontons for soup, and we learned how to make sweet and sour chicken. Really, we made the kinds of foods that we could prepare enough for the real chefs to come in and fully cook them. It was delicious! We had loads of free time in between our lunch/bike ride as well as our bike ride/dinner and then after dinner also. Basically, it was a relaxed pace from all of the other Semester at Sea field programs that I’ve been on this far which was extremely nice. Many SASers decided to do the $5 spa promotion at the resort, but I chose just to hang out around the pool for obvious reasons (picture of the pool below).

We woke up the next morning at our leisure, and had a wonderful breakfast at the resort. I sat with two ship professors and Life Long Learner. I love being able to sit down with professors outside of the classroom setting and getting to talk about life with them. The best part of our breakfast though was when they brought us out the free Vietnamese ice coffee. After breakfast, we went to the Cai Be floating markets where we saw vendors selling every kind of item from their boat in the middle of the river! Apparently, this is how all of the local people and shops get their food and supplies. Everything is brought into the Mekong Delta from the outside by these boats and then the local village people transport to the boats to get what they need. We also got off our boat to visit a small market on shore that was clearly catered for the tourists. Still, It was fun to check out the market and watch them make more great food then try some of this. We stopped for lunch and some more delicious Crispy Elephant Ear Fish later that afternoon.

When we arrived back at the ship in Ho Chi Minh, I met up with my friend Tyler to go out in the city to do some night street photography. I had been on the hunt for a good bowl of Pho (the most delicious noodle soup I’ve ever had) for the first days in Vietnam but had no luck since I was on the field programs. The fourth night I finally got Pho. It was unreal. I can’t wait to try to make it when I get home! Between Tyler and myself, we polished off three delicious entrees with a couple of waters for less than $5. We then went to take some pictures of the city which I have one of those below. We were in the ‘Backpacker’s District’ when I took this photo with they Bitexco tower in the very background.

The final day, I had a ‘field class’ which is basically a field trip. We drove the 2.5 hour back to the Mekong Delta in an attempt to find companies/businesses that practiced social responsibility. What we found was very limited if anything. We did similar activities as to what I had already done the past couple of days in the Mekong Delta. We did the bike ride through a different village, went to various local houses that served us some kind of tea, pastry, or other things of the like that were part of their family business. For the most part, we spent the majority of our time on an old wooden ferry gliding across the river. We were served yet another 10 course meal on our ferry. One of the specialities again being the Crispy Elephant Ear Fish. This was the third day in a row that I had this ‘delicacy.’ The fifth day was a bit more unique seeing as we had our lunch served to us on this small wooden ferry. I was afraid in that coming back to the Mekong Delta we would do the same exact thing as we had in my other SAS program, but I’m happy this wasn’t the case. It was at least in different places and there were things that I didn’t see the first two days! One of those things being that I was able to do a small canoe ride with a local on our last day. I wore a rice hat and that saved me from the heat!

This is the paragraph my mom will hate… First off, speaking on the traffic in Vietnam. I thought Ghana and India were bad. Vietnam was 100x worse. Our tour guide told us that there are 4.5 million motor bikes in Ho Chi Minh City and at any given time, there can be hundreds if not thousands of motor bikes crossing the threshold at a busy intersection. Unfortunately for us, there were very few if any pedestrian crossings. So how did we cross? Slow and confidently. As we walked across, trying not to hesitate with hundreds of mopeds whizzing past us, I held my breath and prayed I wouldn’t be hit. Most of my time in Vietnam was spent in the Mekong Delta but for the first two days and the fourth night, we were out wandering the streets. Had we spent more time in the city, I figure eventually my luck would have run out. It was like a video game trying to dodge all of the mopeds, but this was real life. Secondly, on our visits to the Mekong Delta, we saw a fairly common product known as snake wine. We saw them making/marinating this snake wine with literally hundreds of snakes in this giant glass container. People drink this alcoholic beverage for all of the health benefits that come from these snakes. It was quite disturbing to see. It didn’t taste all that bad though! Don’t worry mom, I’m fine (at least so far). Unfortunately, my USB that I bought glitched on me and I lost all of my Vietnam photos except for my favorites. Here are five fotos from Vietnam.