Nam

Tuesday, November 3 – Vietnam
12:17
I’m in Nam.

Sunday, November 8 – Half way around the world
20:13

I’ve really started to hate the way I write in this and the way it sounds - how boring it is. I do plan on going back through my journal (since I’m keeping it on Pages) and editing it before I print it out, but I feel like I should just rewrite it all together. This is probably a big reason why I don’t write in it often.

I went to Post-port Reflections tonight. Post-port Reflections is led by the ship’s psychiatrists and it gives anyone who comes a chance to tell a story from the country we just visited. I’ve been to a few, but I have never told a story. I have a stack of my own personal really fantastic stories from Vietnam, and with the previous notion that I couldn’t filter one out to share I got up in front of 50 or so people and told this story:

The second to last night, a few friends and I went to 185 (a bar and restaurant). Half the tables are outside on the sidewalk, and are at a very low level. We had people coming up to us trying to sell us things from cigarettes to flowers and even pot. This little girl in a pink shirt comes up to our table with a big grin on her face, a piece of ice in one hand and her merchandise (flowers and additional assorted goods) in the other hand. She doesn’t try to sell us anything, she just starts flicking the sweat of the ice at us. She’s laughing, we’re laughing. She moves on to the next table, which is a table full of SAS girls and puts the ice on the back of one of the girls. Not even a minute later, we hear a thud on the table. My whole table looks around in confusion and then we realize there’s a rat in the middle of our table. It scurries around, jumps on the empty chair next to me. I don’t even move, I’m just watching. The rest of my table (all guys at this point) jump up out of their seats (good move on Travis’ part). The rat jumps onto Travis’ seat, and then jumps toward the table full of the SAS girls. They react in the typical girl way, screaming and panicking. The rat leaves as quickly and strangely as it came. Oh, and I forgot to mention that there was a man at our table trying to sell Travis a massage when the rat came from the heavens. The man tried to hit it with his massaging tools, which is probably why it scurried all over the place. My friends and I are in complete amazement and wander at what just happened. The little girl in the pink heads back over to our table and approaches Travis. She at first gets him with the whole pointing trick; where she points at his knee, makes him look down and then touches his nose. She then proceeds with, “Let’s play rock-paper-scissors. If I win, you have to buy one of these flowers. If you win, I’ll give it to you for free.” He agrees. He loses the first game. She tells him it’s okay, they will play best 2 out of 5. She goes on to beat him all 5 games. We are all laughing at this point. He buys the rose because of how impressed he is with this little girl, her marketing tactics and well - because he lost. This all happened within the first 10 or so minutes that we were there and all during our first drink. Travis turns to the table and says, “I always judge the night by my first drink, and tonight’s going to be a good night.”

After I told my story, I realized how I wanted to write in my journal. I want to do bullet points so I don’t forget all that I did, and I want to tell a few of the best stories. Sorry for all of you that have been suffering through my journal so far.

To continue on with my story, Shannon was gone for the rat bit of the story, because she had been down the street buying a can of coke (she didn’t want to drink alcohol). She comes back, with a smile on her face, and tells me, “I have news that may be really good for you.” She goes on to tell me that she found Diet Dr. Pepper, and that the guy is out of regular Dr. Pepper. I explained to her that yes, that is good news because that means there IS Dr. Pepper in this country and I will be tasting 23 masterly blended flavors in the next few days. This bit will be important later on.

Here goes with the bullet points:

Day 1:

• Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) with Shannon, Eric and Chelsea.

• Having a blast crossing the road.
• Shopping, laughing and wifi by day.

• The four of us went out with Jackie, Ryan, Cody, Beth and Erin and ended up running into 50+ SAS students at Apocalypse Now. Lots of fun!


Day 2:

• $100 solution: a lot of things didn’t go according to plan.

• YMCA with the Vietnamese sewing girls who sang to us and showed us some kind of dance.

• The Vietnamese “one finger moving we are happy” song, which is closely related to our “if you’re happy and you know it”.

• Some of our students dancing to Thriller, hip hop dancing, and Joey Coe who sang Wagon Wheel (which made me tear up due to my parent’s wedding CD). 

• Learning about Disney Internship during lunch from Lauren Gray.

• Half of us didn’t go to the Agent Orange Orphanage due to time restraints, I was one of them who didn’t go. 

• No $100 solution, but I still had a fantastic day.

• Trip to Mui Ne with Ryan and Shannon: Four hours and met Joseph (“Canadian” Korean man).

• Stayed at Wind Champ first night because of Joseph and because it was 1:30 when we arrived.

• Wind Champ: crappy expensive hotel under renovation.

• Went out to Sankara, a “club” beach bar for about a half hour.

• Ryan was out until 5, came back and then Joseph showed up at 5:30 to take him back out until 9am.


Day 3:

• Shannon and I walked down the beach to check it out. We ate at a place called Joe’s (go figure) where we met three travelers (who just met the night before). One had been traveling for over a year, most of it spent in Australia (11 months) on a work visa. The other was a flight attendant who works every other month (on one month, off the other) and travels during the non working months (since he’s being paid half wage during the off months). The other girl, I think, was just on a holiday.

• The travelers told us about a hotel that was having a sale for just opening that looks amazing. We checked it out and decided to check out of our “hotel” and into Ocean Front. 

• Rode on motor bikes for hours: hit up sand dunes, a random village, and other awesome things. Great experience
.
• When we found out that we had to pay an extra $15 to have Ryan stay with us in the hotel, we decided to check out and grab the next bus to Ho Chi Minh. We liked Mui Ne, but Ho Chi Minh had a lot to offer and we didn’t really know what else to do in Mui Ne. 

• Checked out around 5:30, with all of our stuff. Went to get tickets for the next bus home... which ended up being at 1:30 am - several hours from the time of purchase.

• Had a 5+ hour, 600 Dong ($28) dinner: 2 appetizers, 2 sodas, 2 bottles of water, 2 big Tiger beers, 7 mojitos, 3 entrees, and a pizza.
 (Shannon forgetting Ryan's name, "These Germans are bothering me")
• After our 5 hour dinner, we ended up sitting with a table of Swedish guys and one girl that are our age. Played “drink while you think” and their version of Ring of Fire. 

• Left the restaurant and went to Sankara until 1:30.

• The bus didn’t come until after 2


Day 4:

• Woke up in Ho Chi Minh City after a lovely 4 hour nap at 6am, headed back to the ship to sleep until noon.
• Out shopping with Shannon: purchased all our essential souvenirs (postcards and the like).

• Night with Travis, Shannon and Ryan: night of the rat and Dr. Pepper story. Left 185, moved onto Lush and then Apocalypse Now. Rode on Motorbikes 

Day 5:

•Cu Chi Tunnels: First one in. Awesome. Learned a lot.

• Out with Travis: found a lot of great items, our day long quest for Dr. Pepper ending in Diet Dr. Pepper. We had dinner at 185, with our Diet Dr. Pepper, where we had banging burgers (the best I have ever had). We were meeting up with some friends there (who were basically finished when we arrived), and one told me that he and Shannon found and purchased two Dr. Peppers for me. Freaking awesome.

• Back on the ship where I rushed to send out postcards in time, showered and caught Harry Potter (the one I missed over the summer) in the Union.

Vietnam is in my top 5. It’s up there with South Africa. I think I’d choose to come back to Vietnam over any other country we’ve visited so far. Next time I will be going to Hanoi and Halong Bay. I will bring lots of money to get clothing made for me. I did a lot in this country and had a lot of great adventures. It makes me wish I spent my time more wisely in India, but there’s always next time.

Not only did I have excellent adventures in Vietnam, I got a lot of great ideas of what I can do in my future. Work in Australia for a year? That sounds incredible. Intern at Disney over the summer? Count me in.