Good Morning Vietnam!

Vietnam was beautiful!! One of the most beautiful places I have ever been was the Mai Chau Village in Northern Vietnam.

Day 1 Sunday March 25, 2012: We arrived in Vietnam early in the morning and I was SO excited to get off the ship! I didn't make any set plans for the day except that I knew I wanted to see the Chu Chi Tunnels. I went out with four other girls in the morning and we stopped to get some Vietnamese coffee. On the way to the café all I saw were motorcycles on top of motorcycles. There are no traffic laws what so ever in this country and I have no idea what the traffic accident rate is but I would believe it if it was one of the highest in the world. I told everyone I was not about to get on one of those motor taxis. Once we got to the café I ordered an iced caramel macchiato and it was really good and also very Westernized because it tasted exactly like what you would get at Starbucks or Caribou Coffee. It was good but not what I really wanted to try. After coffee we ran around town trying to find a tailor that would make robes and pillowcases and dresses for the girls I was with. It was a struggle trying to find one that could finish it in time and we all got a little flustered because no one really spoke English. It was even worse than being in Brazil in terms of the amount of people that spoke English. We asked around and finally a group of taxi drivers knew where we should go. I was the one person that said I would not ride a motor taxi and I was the only one that had to take one! The rest of the girls were on bicycle taxis. I had to wear the helmet and everything; I looked great I'm sure! It was quite terrifying and I had to hold on to a fat, sweaty, old Vietnamese man. This isn't exactly how I pictured my first motorcycle ride to go. After awhile they brought us to a tailor that could get everything done in time. When we went to pay the taxi drivers they were trying to rip us off big time. The Vietnamese students onboard said we should pay no more than .50 cents aka 10,350 dong for a taxi ride around town. They were asking us for $10 American which is WAY too much money. They were extremely aggressive and were trying to grab money out of my purse and I freaked out. I made all the girls go into an actual taxi. The other bicycle taxi drivers then proceeded to open the taxi doors and yell at us. It wasn't scary, it was plain rude and annoying. I did not appreciate the fact they were trying to rip us off because we were White, and I certainly did not appreciate them getting physical with us. Bridget handed one of them 250,000 dong which is about $25 and the guy just walked away with it when she thought he would give her change. They were jerks. The taxi driver that we were with said $2 to bring us to the restaurant then the bus station. Perfect! We went to a local Vietnamese restaurant that served Pho (pronounced Pha or fa). It is a Vietnamese soup type thing. You can get meat in it or just have it vegetarian style. On the table are a vast amount of vegetables, sauces and powders to put in the soup to spice it up a bit. I got the vegetarian style, which is just the broth and noodles. I added some hot sauce and chili peppers. It was delicious! I cannot wait to find some when I get back to the United States. After lunch we headed to the bus stop to start our journey to the Chu Chi Tunnels. We got on the right bus for a two-hour, public, unair-conditioned, crowded, bumpy bus ride. No one spoke English and we had no idea, which stop to get off at. Around the two-hour mark the bus just stopped at a bus depot. We had no choice but to get off. As soon as we got off the bus in a sketchy part of Vietnam men were bombarding us asking if we needed a taxi. We finally found a young girl that spoke English and she told us we had to get on another bus to get to the Chu Chi Tunnels. She happened to live right near them so she said she would take us. This girl was like an angel sent from heaven. We took another thirty-minute bus ride and finally arrived at the Chu Chi Tunnels. Unfortunately we got there are 4:00 and they closed at 5:00. So we got a quick tour of the tunnels. It was extremely humid and hot in the jungle and as soon as I saw the hole in the ground that I had to climb into I felt a little anxiety. The tunnels were not big at all and as I was crawling through the dark tunnels with bats flying into my face, I could not imagine the Vietnamese soldiers living in these tunnels and not coming out for weeks at a time. I would go crazy. The guide showed us the "bedrooms", "medical wing", "dining wing" and "main headquarters". It was such a surreal experience when the guide started showing us different booby traps that the North Vietnamese army would plant throughout the jungle. It was very upsetting to see how proud they were of these torture devices that they kid under leaves hoping and American soldier would step on it and become mutilated and experience extreme agony and pain. The girl we met on the bus was still with us and called her friend who was a taxi driver to drive us back to Ho Chi Minh City because of course we missed the last bus back. When we dropped off the girl at her house we tried offering her money for helping us and she wouldn't take it. All she asked for was one American dollar so she could remember us. It was nice to FINALLY find someone who wasn't using us for money or expected money for helping us. It was refreshing. We all fell asleep as the sun started to set on our long taxi ride back to Ho Chi Minh City. Once we got there I was really happy to take a shower because the Chu Chi Tunnels left my body sweaty and very dirty. After that I grabbed a burger on deck 7 and then started packing for my 5:00 am flight to Hanoi and went to bed fairly early.

Day 2 Monday March 26, 2012: I woke up at 2:45 am to be able to meet my group I was traveling with at 3:30 am. I signed up for the Hanoi and Mai Chau Village home stay trip. There were only 10 of us in the group, which was a huge change to the group of 70 I had to travel with in India. My technology and reproduction professor happened to be the trip leader and her husband was joining her. Two people didn't wake up and missed the trip so there were only a total of eight. We all tiredly headed to the airport for the two- hour flight to Hanoi. Once we got there and stepped off the airplane I was surprised at how cold it was. Our guide met us and as soon as he spoke I was confused. He sounded like he was from London. He said he had never been out of the country but he was taught English at a British private school. It all made sense! It was hilarious having a Vietnamese guide with a British accent. We got to walk around the city of Hanoi, which I loved, and then we got on the bus for a four-hour bus ride to the Mai Chau Village. It was a very long bus ride but a beautiful one. We drove up the winding streets through the mountains. Once we got closer to the village the mountains became prettier and the rice fields more green and plentiful. The Mai Chau Village was so beautiful! All of the houses are long wooden houses built on stilts. It was surrounded by extremely neat, and green rice patties and the whole village was enclosed by tall, jungle-filled mountains. We walked to the house that we were going to be staying at and were greeted by an old Vietnamese woman. When she opened her mouth I was a little grossed out that it was black. Our guide later told us this is because the older generation of women would dye their teeth black as a sign of status. They would maintain the black dye by chewing biter nuts everyday. It grossed me out but hey to each their own! She wanted us to call her "grandma" and she spoke no English. She showed us to our room, which consisted of one long house with eight separate sheets on the ground with a pillow at the head of the sheet. Above each spot there was a thick insect net. I cannot say I was super excited to sleep on the floor with Vietnamese jungle sized insects crawling and flying all around me but that is part of a home stay.  The bathroom was a toilet but there was no toilet paper and we couldn't use the sink water to brush our teeth. There was a shower, kind of, but I didn't use it during my stay there. We all changed for dinner (I had on sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and scarf, it was freezing in the mountains!) Dinner was really good! It was all traditional Vietnamese dishes full of pork, beef, chicken, grilled vegetables, rice, and other things that I'm still not quite sure what exactly it was. While we were eating all of the local young girls and guys did cultural dances ands singing for us. It was really cool! It was funny because all of the young girls were so tiny and pretty and all the young guys were really cute!  Our guide was telling us that his fiancé didn't like him coming to this village because they are known for their good-looking younger generations. After the cultural dancing we all gladly went up to our long house and fell asleep. It was not comfortable at all and the blanket smelled like stale bug spray. I could hear creepy crawlers on my bug net and on the floor around me, not cool! So I put in my Ipod and fell asleep right away.

Day 3 Tuesday March 27 2012:I woke up in the morning still tired and with a sore neck but was excited to walk around the village. Breakfast was really good! It was eggs, bread with some really good cheese, and friend bananas. Yum! Then we went on a four-hour walk around the village, which was awesome! So pretty! I took some of my favorite picture so far on this trip during the walk. We walked through some of the houses that were selling hand-made scarves and paintings. I saw a painting that was a U.S war helmet with a Vietnamese knife going right through it, disturbing. After the walk we ended up in town and walked through the meat market. I must say, I have never felt this nauseous before in my life and I saw some gross stuff in Africa and India. This meat market smelled so bad and had the weirdest animal parts on their counters. I stumbled across a dead puppy's head and its feet were also chopped up next to it for sale. GROSS. I actually am still disturbed by this. I totally forgot that Vietnamese people eat dog. It all clicked in my head why there were so many dogs wandering around the village. Not for pets, or stray dogs, but for food. I respect their culture and the fact that they eat dog but it was sad and really grossed me out. After I went to that meat market I didn't eat any more meat while I was in Vietnam. The smell and sights still bother me. For lunch we had delicious spring roles, some of the best pineapple I've ever had, and really good sticky rice. We all sadly left the village and headed back on the four-hour bus ride to Hanoi. I fell asleep for the whole bus ride and woke up at our hotel in Hanoi. It was the Arista Eden hotel and was so nice! It was quite a change in accommodations compared to our home stay. I am not going to lie when I say I was happy to be able to shower, sleep in a bed with no bugs flying around me or crawling on me! We all showered and changed to go to a Water Puppet Show and out to dinner. The Water Puppet Show was probably one of the weirdest things I have ever seen in my life. It was literally puppets in water, but the puppets were creepy and the show was in Vietnamese so I couldn't understand any of it. It went on for about an hour and then we headed to dinner. It was a delicious dinner of fish soup, beef, pork, fish, rice, grilled bananas, and good drinks. It was really cool getting to know my professor and her husband. My professor has been teaching at Cornell for 33 years and pretty much started the women's study major there. She has been on Oprah multiple times and other television shows as well. She thinks that I would be an excellent person to work in healthcare whether it is public health, law (which she stresses the most that I should do) or the business side of it. So that was nice to hear from her! After dinner we all went back to the hotel and I went out to see the Hanoi nightlife and then came back pretty early because I had to get up early, yet again, in the morning.

Day 4 Wednesday March 28 2012: I woke up and trudged down the stairs for breakfast. The coffee was really good (and really strong) because it was actual Vietnamese coffee. I had the BEST fried dumplings and some weird Vietnamese cereal. We then packed our stuff and checked out of the hotel. We went to a lot of monuments and temples in the morning. We went to the Ho Chi Minh tomb where the ex-president's body is just chilling (literally) in a glass coffin and people can go in and see him. It was really creepy inside the building. Everything in the United States is white and Greek styled (in Washington D.C) but this building was eerie and made of black marble. We then visited a war museum, which I describe at the end how I felt about them. The saddest thing to me was the monument outside of the museum that was a pile of American wreckage from the war that was there to recognize Vietnamese heroes that killed these soldiers and shot down these planes. It was upsetting and I got angry when I was walking through the monument. War is the most pointless action in terms of wasting life and money. I know this opinion may be naive but regardless it's how I feel. I understand why it happens sometimes but the amount of damage it did to American and Vietnamese soldiers, their families, Vietnamese land, amongst other things will go on for many more years. It is one thing to read about the war, see movies and television shows about it, and hear about it, but being in Vietnam and seeing what it did first-hand was a very surreal experience that I will never forget. After visiting the museum we got to split up and do our own thing until we had to leave for the airport. I went to an amazing restaurant for lunch and had spring rolls, pho, peach tea, and one of the best milkshakes I've ever had! After lunch I went shopping around some of the markets and then met back up with my group to go to the airport. We boarded a huge plane that had three rows of seats with three seats in each row. I've never been on a plane that big! It was really cool because they showed a camera that was in front of the plane of us taking off and landing. After the long plane ride and bus ride back to the ship I unpacked, showered, got some food, and passed out!

Day 5 Thursday March 29 2012: I finally got to sleep in until about 9:00 am! It was very exciting. I woke up really looking forward to traveling around Ho Chi Minh City by myself. I looked up the address of a local coffee shop and headed to get a taxi. Of course the only thing available was a motorcycle taxi. Not thrilled, I hopped on and prayed I would get to the coffee shop in one piece. As usual the taxi driver said he knew where the address was, but indeed he did not. I cannot begin to describe how often this happens and how annoying it is when you ask "are you sure you know where this is?"…."yes yes"…and you start going and they drive around in circles and have to stop and ask at least ten people before they can find it. By the time I got to the coffee shop I was a little annoyed and a lot sweaty. As I went to get off the motorcycle my backpack strap got stuck in the seat and I fell and the bike came down with me. It hurt a lot but I was thankful the hot engine didn't burn me. Everyone rushed to help me up and it was really embarrassing! I went inside and ordered a blueberry muffin and an iced coffee, yum! I then got some free wifi (which is the most amazing thing and I will never again take for granted the automatic free wifi you get in the U.S) I took the time to catch up on emails, do research for my many papers due in a couple of weeks, check my facebook, and I also got to look up classes for the fall and put them in my shopping cart. I was there until about 2:00 in the afternoon. After that I went outside and walked around and came across one of the nicest malls I have ever seen in my life. I walked inside and saw the coolest boutiques and shops I had never seen before. I went into a store called Cashew, and fell in love! It was my style of clothes and I ended up finding a dress that I fell in love with. They didn't have my size (because everyone in Vietnam are extremely tiny) I was really upset, but then one of the employees (none of them spoke English which led to an interesting shopping experience, it took me ten minutes to explain how I needed to try on the dress) found my size on the mannequin in the window. I tried on the dress and had to have it! It is my 21^st birthday dress so I cannot wait for July 29^th J After I looked around in some more stores at things I could not afford I went back to the ship in a normal taxi, which I was really happy about. That night on the ship they had a BBQ style dinner, which was heaven! I missed American BBQ food, especially hot dogs and potato salad.

Overall, I loved Vietnam. Even though there was an intense language barrier everyone was extremely friendly and tried to be as helpful as they could. Of course there were people trying to make a living by trying to sell me things but they were nowhere near as pushy or rude as people in India. Vietnam in general was clean (except the gross meat markets that made me want to become a vegetarian). As I said before, Mai Chau Village was exactly what I needed. I peaceful, stress-free, and beautiful place to get to know local people and reflect on everything I have gone through so far this semester. I also had a not so peaceful experience at the Chu Chi Tunnels and multiple war museums I visited. The only way I can describe seeing American wreckage made into a monument to acknowledge heroic Vietnamese soldiers and bombers that took the American planes and soldiers down were upsetting, disturbing, and weird. I am not exactly sure why exactly The United States felt the need to get involved with the Vietnamese War. It seems like a waste of human life. I have never been to a country that we have been in a serious war with so it was very eye opening and upsetting. I realized though how people must feel when they come to the United States at see monuments or museums dedicated to the destruction of their country. I'm glad I got to see these museums and the Chu Chi Tunnels to get a better understanding of how devastating war can be and what terrible and destructive long-term effect war has on countries and people, both physically and psychologically. However, I could not have had a better experience in Vietnam and I cannot wait to go back one day with my Dad (because he would LOVE it)

Miss and love you all!

I cannot belive I will be in China tomorrow for a week then in Japan two days after that for five days and then I will be done with ports! (Except for a day in Hawaii) It is crazy how fast this semester has flown by!

-Alli