I had no plans for my first day in Viet Nam. Liz K had an FDP and I had not really asked many of my friends what they were planning to do. Eventually I ended up walking around town with Matt, Joe, and a few other people. We were planning to go to the Mekong Delta. They had a floating market there that sounded like it would be interesting. Eventually we found out it would take us at least three hours to get there. Matt, Joe, and I didn’t really want to spend that much time in a taxi, so we decided to break off from the group and walk around Ho chi Min City (or Saigon, as it is called by the locals. Why do we have separate names, anyway?). First we took a riverboat tour. The lady driving our boat was nice and had a huge smile on her face. I couldn’t speak to her because the boat was too loud for me to shout over. We were able to see some of the city and swamps from the riverboat, which was pretty interesting.
Once the ride was finished the lady driving our boat pulled us up to the side of the river where there was a crumbling set of stairs leading up to a fence that separated us from the sidewalk. The others had no problem jumping the fence, but it was almost to my shoulder. Of course, instead of accepting anyone’s help, I decided to fling my body over the fence like a… comedian who is focused on physical comedy. Probably not my most graceful moment.
We walked over to see a giant building that we kept taking pictures of because it looked like it had a helicopter pad on it. Turns out what we thought was a helicopter pad was actually a sky platform for tourists. We decided not to pay for it and kept walking. For lunch we stopped at a place called Blue Ginger. I tried some Pho (pronounced like fuh, as if you are asking a question) in Viet Nam for the first time! It was soooo good! After lunch, the next stop was the Ben Thanh Market. It was a little overwhelming. It was a giant building filled with different vendors. I could barely walk around without running into stalls or people. We split up for 30 minutes in order to buy things. I didn’t really need anything, but I got a few random souvenir’s anyway.
We walked down the street and came to the reunification palace and then the War Remnants Museum. It was a really good museum, but the pictures were extremely graphic and horrifying. I suppose that is what wars are like. It was a lot to take in and I walked around the building in a daze until I ran out of rooms to look in and we went to the next place.
We stopped at Vietnam House for dinner. I tried to order something different this time, but when I got it, it still looked a lot like Pho to me. Pho is very interesting to eat because it is broth and noodles that you are supposed to eat with chop sticks and a spoon. I think I am getting better at it. After dinner Joe decided to look for an internet café and take the shuttle back to the ship, but Matt and I decided to walk since it wasn’t too far.
People have told me that the streets in Viet Nam are terrifying to cross. Until this point in the day it had not seemed too bad to me. The streets were completely crowded with motorbikes and cars. At the preport meeting they said to just look forward and walk at a steady pace to cross the street. So that is what we did. I thought at least four of the bikes were about to run over my toes, but they missed me by inches. Matt tried to record the street crossing on his camera, but it died. Maybe I can get something next time.
We stopped at the bridge on the way back to the ship because a bunch of kids were jumping off of it and into the river. One of the kids ran up to us and tried to get us to jump too. His name was Hung and he didn’t speak very much English. He was only able to say he was from Viet Nam and tell us his name, then he ran back to his family.
Back on the ship we drank some Milo and tried to figure out how to get the Viet Nam episode of Top Gear to watch. I am still working on that, but we were able to start watching the India episode. We got about 10 minutes into the episode before the Lizzes came to join us and we switched over to the Office instead.
So far I like Viet Nam.
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