Here is my Vietnam blog which will be broken up into parts as always. As I write this we are on our way to Singapore where we will be stopping to fuel up, but not allowed to get off the ship. I have a pretty big presentation today, so hopefully that went well by the time you read this. Other than that, it is ship life as normal here. I was up in the sun for 2 hours yesterday so I am getting nice and tan. I decided that if I am going to be spending all of this time in tropical weather, I might as well look a little dark. I know it’s a tough life that we live here on Semester at Sea.
It actually took me longer to finish this than I thought, so we have come and gone from Singapore, which was uneventful other than the battleship that circled us all day protecting us from pirates, which was pretty cool. I also went up in the sun again the other day and got burnt as heck, so I’m getting over that. And finally my presentation went great!
Here’s Vietnam (Part One):
I woke up at about 6 am the morning we were to pull into Vietnam to go and see the sunrise. I walked up to the top deck at the front of the ship where there were about 10 others up as well, mostly faculty. We were cruising through a river, not sure if it was the Mekong or the Red perhaps, but it was really pretty. The water was perfectly smooth and there was lush landscape on both sides. The sun rose, and I got some pretty good pictures of it (So far I’m 3 for 3 on making it up for sunrise). I stayed outside for about another hour and watched us cruise closer to the city, passing by hundreds of small fishing boats, villages, and farms.
Immigration had been on the ship since Hong Kong, so the process to get off was relatively fast. We just had to go pick up our landing card and after that we were cleared to leave. I had made plans to hang out with my roommate Tolan, his girlfriend Sarah, as well as some other friends Jose, Melinda, Amy, and Kevin. The first order of business when we got ashore was to find a tailor to get some custom suits made. We went into one of the first ones we saw in downtown Ho Chi Minh City/ Saigon, and after some poor attempts at bargaining, arrived at a price of $110. That was too much for some of our group, but Jose and I decided we didn’t want to shop around very badly and went with that store. They took down our measurements; we paid a deposit and made plans to pick up our suits the last day in Vietnam. Mine was the nicest material they had, which they say is wool cashmere. That means little to me, and it is probably a lie, but I think it looked nice. It is black with dark blue pinstripes, definitely classy.
After that the next order of business was shopping. We headed in the general direction of the Ben Tamh market (Probably butchered that spelling), which is a pretty famous market in Saigon. While on the way a Vietnamese kid started cleaning my shoes as I was walking, and as I was literally doubled over with laughter trying to tell him no thank you, I finally just stopped and let him clean them. They looked awesome afterwards don’t worry and I gave him $2 for it. Definitely worth the laugh I got out of the process. Fortunately in Vietnam they actually seem to prefer the dollar over their native currency the dong. The conversion rate is nearly 20,000 dong to 1 dollar, and inflation is a big problem there. As a result, they nearly always priced things to you in dollars, and took dong if you offered it instead. It was a nice change, and it meant that I only had to use the ATM once the entire time I was in the country.
So we were heading to the market and a random Vietnamese guy starts following us and shouting about how he can take us anywhere for cheap. We repeatedly said no, but he persisted, and we followed him to a restaurant nearby to eat lunch. We ate Pho, a delicious Vietnamese dish, for about 45 minutes, and emerged to find the guy of course waiting for us outside. We told him no thank you, we just wanted to shop, and we walked into the market across the street. We shopped there for probably nearly an hour, and this guy never left us. Everytime we turned around he was following us, and it really became irritating but useful at the same time. For example I wanted a bottle of water and the lady wanted me to pay 20,000 dong for it, a dollar. He went and bought me one for 8,000 dong, I paid him that much for it, and that was that. He showed us to a place where you could buy full seasons of shows for almost nothing, so I bought seasons 1-5 of the Office for 11 dollars. I made them try it out in front of me, and it worked great. I’m through 6 episodes on my computer and the quality is flawless. I needed a flag from Vietnam too, something I’m getting from every country, so I asked Ding, our follower, where I could find one. He proceeds to lead me on like a mile trek through the city to a random shop on a random street that had all the flags I could ever want. We walked back to the market and met up with everyone again afterwards. Keep in mind, we had neither paid this guy a dime yet, nor agreed to.
The market was getting kind of warm and we were getting ready to move on, so after talking to everyone we agreed to allow Ding to take us on a city tour for the huge price of 5 dollars a person for the rest of the day. Basically he paid for all of the cab rides, translated for us, and sometimes gave us information if a guide wasn’t available, and at the end of the day we were to pay him 5 bucks. Our first stop was the reunification palace, the capital of the south during the American War as they refer to it. It was here that the northern tanks crashed through the gates, and the south officially surrendered ending the war. It was neat to see, but we didn’t have a guide of any sort and didn’t fully understand what we were looking at. I took plenty of pictures though and will have to go back and learn what I was supposed to later.
After that Ding took us to the city museum, which unfortunately was closed that day, so we immediately got back in the cab and headed to this place where handicapped people were working on art. There is a company in Vietnam which allows those handicapped who apparently can’t get a job anywhere else, to work on art and earn a commission. They were making these beautiful paintings, pieces of furniture, and pottery decorated with egg shells and carved bone I believe. It was cool to see the actual process of it all but sad because the working conditions looked like a sweat shop. The people were all smiling, Ding said because this was the only place they were allowed to work, so I guess they were happy, but it still looked rough. None of us bought anything, it was all slightly too expensive, but we all had a great deal of respect for their art work.
We left from there, and Melinda and Jose wanted to grab a bite to eat so we dropped them off at a restaurant while the rest of us headed to the war remnants museum. This museum was extremely graphic, and showed pictures of the American War, particularly of Agent Orange, the chemical that we poured over Vietnam which caused mutations and birth defects. It was really a sad sight to see, and very different given how one sided and anti-American it was. When you go to a museum back home, it is generally skewed toward being patriotic or pro-American, and so this was quite a shocker. We departed the museum and met back up with Melinda and Jose who were wrapping up their snack I suppose you would call it, and continued on our way.
The next order of business was cheap DVDs. Ding knew of the place that he said was the cheapest in town and reliable. Whether that was the case or if he just got a commission we will never know, but they charged 70 cents a DVD and they have all worked so far, so I think we are all perfectly content. After looking through hundreds I only bought 6. I’m not a fan of buying movies I’ve already watched before so I didn’t. The ones I got were: Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Wasn’t even in theatres yet when I left), Ninja Assassin, Funny People, Law Abiding Citizen, State of Play, and Star Trek. The one thing I regret doing is not buying Avatar on Blu-Ray since they had it for 2 dollars (instead of 30 back home), but oh well. I’ll look for it in India or Africa I suppose. Some friends did buy it on DVD and we watched it last night, the quality was fantastic. If anyone has not seen Avatar yet, you owe it to yourself to see it. It’s the #1 grossing film of all time by a huge margin and definitely worth the price of a theatre ticket if it is still out. If not, get the DVD!
At this point it was getting late and we were just wandering around following Ding. He suggest massages to us so we said sure. There were 7 of us, and we split up between 2 massage parlors to get our 10 dollar, 1 hour massages. Myself, Kevin, and Jose ended up at a place in a sketchy building where they actually do most of the massaging with their feet. There is a bar on the ceiling for them to hold onto, and they walk all over you and stuff. Honestly it was a really good massage albeit very weird. The room at separators between the 3 beds, but was open, so they were all cracking jokes about us in Vietnamese the whole time and laughing. They spoke not a word of English, so we did the same back to them and it was a grand time had by all. Afterwards, the lady refused to let me leave until I gave her a tip, so I handed her a dollar. She didn’t appreciate that either, and told me 5. It was different to have such a direct approach like that, but it wouldn’t be the last time for the night.
We decided that dinner sounded fine, so we headed on our way. Sarah has a book that has 1000 places you have to go before you die, and one of them is a random restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We showed Ding the name and he said it was a couple blocks away. He ended up getting lost taking us there, and a 5 minute walk turned into a 30 minute walk. We were all coated in sweat, but finally found the restaurant. It was a place that served mainly Pho, like what we had for lunch, and it honestly wasn’t any better, but at least Sarah got to cross it off her bucket list. We ate for about an hour and were beat, so we headed back to the ship via cab. We arrived and it was here that we had to say goodbye to Ding and pay him the 2nd installment of the whopping 5 dollars he was charging us. He ended up asking for more, saying he worked really hard. It was sad, because he came off as such a nice guy, and honestly I would have given him more anyways, but having him ask for it put him down a notch in my book. Regardless I basically gave him a 3 dollar tip, which was 60% and I’m sure meant a lot to him. Some of the others decided to get ready back on the ship and then go out, but I was beat and didn’t want to miss my trip in the morning, so I called it a night.
The next morning, I wrote my letter to my pen pals in Connecticut, packed up a package with trinkets from China, and hopped a motorcycle to get to the post office in Saigon. Honestly the motorcycle ride was the best idea ever, it was extremely entertaining, fast, cheap, and I have absolutely no regrets. The guy waited for me for like a half hour while I had to deal with the delight that is communist post offices (They open your packages and look at everything inside item by item). I got the letter sent for about $6 US, which was way more than I would have liked to pay, but it’s in the name of education I suppose. After that we headed back to the ship where I packed up and got ready to leave for Cambodia…
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