Vietnam

3.27.08
Ho Chi Minh City!
Well, this morning was actually kind of sad. SAS offers a “family” trip to Vietnam, so when we docked this morning there was a good crowd of parents all waiting at the dock for us to come in. It was like when we left the Bahamas because parents had signs and were dancing (I kid you not) and shouting up to their kids. It really made me wish my parents could have been there. However, considering my parents want to kill me right now, it’s probably for the best that they’re not here. Though, to be perfectly honest, I would still take ‘em ready to kill me and in Vietnam than not getting to see them at all. I do go home in just over a month so I can hold out a bit longer [it’s so crazy to think that I only have one month left?!]. It’s just tough when you get to see other kids with their folks.
So, anyways, after a slightly depressing morning I was ready to get off the ship and shop away my sadness. Wow, it is way too easy to buy cheap stuff here. I’m not going to lie, I thought it would be a lot cheaper than what it is, but it’s still pretty darn cheap. T-shirts for 3 or 4 bucks? Let’s just say I went through the cash I brought today pretty quickly, and it was totally worth it. I wasn’t really sure who I was going to spend the day with when I woke up. I thought I might walk around with Tea and Christine, but I knew they would be leaving around one to get to the airport because they are going to stay in a city in North Vietnam for a few days (of which I forget the name). I thought then that I might walk around with Amanda, Meghan and Kate because I really haven’t gotten to see too much of them since Mauritius (both of preference and just because we’ve had different agendas), but then I wasn’t so sure. I ended up walking around with Nicki and another kid, Ben. I met Ben pretty early on in the trip, and he lives near Lewisburg so he comes to Bucknell to see some of our concerts. He was actually at the Goo Goo Dolls concert last spring! Small world. We walked around the city and ended up doing some serious damage at the Ben Thanh Market. It was fabulous. After an hour, however, we wanted to make sure we still had a little money left for food later, so we left. Don’t worry, I am definitely going back there on the last day to finish up my shopping spree. We were going to go to the War Museum, but by the time we walked there it was already closed. We decided to just have an early dinner at a chic café called Window’s Café and I had some delicious sautéed beef with “broccoli” (apparently the Vietnamese consider cauliflower to be broccoli, but I do like cauliflower so it wasn’t a problem at all). We decided to start heading back to the shuttle stop. The port we’re docked in is about a 30 minute ride into downtown, so SAS was nice enough to have shuttles running back and forth for us all day long. Halfway to the stop, we ran into some locals playing hackysack and Ben couldn’t resist. We stayed with him for about fifteen minutes while he played, but after that we were ready to head back to the ship. Ben wasn’t done, however, so for all I know he could still be out there playing with them! It was pretty entertaining. We were able to make a few more purchases on route to the shuttle, and then headed back to the ship. I thought about going back out because my Cambodia trip doesn’t leave until 8am tomorrow, but I decided I was too tired and that it would be a nice evening alone (since my roomie is gone, and it’s always nice to have some “just me” time; I haven’t really had much of that at all). I’m pretty much packed and sooo ready to check out the Temples of Angkor Wat! I’ll make sure to let you know how the rest of Vietnam goes!