Rice Hats, Tiger Beer, Street Vendors, and Knockoffs... (Vietnam Part II)

Of course, that doesn’t even come close to summing up Vietnam and all this amazing country has to offer. Vietnam completely blew my mind and I had NO idea what to expect at all. We officially have less than one month left which is pretty sad, but at the same time this trip is just flying by and I can’t describe how much more amazing it gets day by day and country by country.

 

After spending one more day in Hanoi, skipping out on some museums (indy travel rocks!) and exploring some markets and more of the Old Quarter, buying North Face backpacks, Puma shoes, t-shirts, and lots of DVDs, we flew back to Saigon. The last day in Saigon was awesome – I got my dress fitted and finished and I really like it, went to the huge Post Office, bought a really cool painting of a bar/poker scene with people in fedoras, then found some friends we all wandered around the Russian Market which I liked a LOT better than Ben Than. The food in Vietnam was amazing, for dinner my parents and about 8 of my friends and I all went out to Ngon on our last night, a restaurant that has essentially taken “street food” and offers it in a sanitized setting. You could walk around and watch people making the food and then pick what you wanted or ordered off the menu. Everything was fantastic, the best part was when our waiter would show us how to eat some of the food after we would just stare at it for a while! It was absolutely wonderful to have my parents with me in Vietnam. It’s definitely on par with India as being the country I want to return to the most!

 

One of the most intense parts of SAS so far was the Museum of War Remnants. The photographs were very graphic and tough to handle. The entire place was really somber, and it was one of those places where you just want to look at the stuff and leave and forget… but the pictures are just imprinted in my mind. I wanted to turn away so many times but I forced myself to look and see and learn. When things are shown to you in a different perspective, in a different light, it changes you. It certainly made me more aware of the war atrocities. The only other time something was this hard to stomach was when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Berlin a few years ago… It just gives me chills thinking about both those places, but I think they are amazing to have because people shouldn’t just think of history and wars as nothing. People need to know, to take pictures, to tell stories and not just hold everything up inside. War is war. It kills and destroys and causes more damage than people realize, especially when the war is not in their own country and not just a name on a TV or a country on a map. It’s reality.

 

This was definitely the port where people bought the most stuff. Guys were running around in their suits when we all got on the ship, a lot of girls had dresses/skirts/shirts made, people bought backpacks and rice hats and DVDs and t-shirts (Tiger Beer, Good Morning Vietnam, Same Same…but Different) and shoes (well, maybe that was just me since I’m the size of the Vietnamese and fit into the ones on the racks!) and all the guys bought Polos. The Voice even joked about it this morning at the Noon Report, saying that we are testing the capacity of the ship with all our stuff!!

 

3 days at sea and then it’s China. Soon I’ll be able to check off my top thing that I was looking forward to the most on this trip, the Great Wall.