Hello!

I just arrived back from my longest port, Vietnam. I didn't know what to expect from Vietnam besides what I had been hearing in class and I was really surprised at how much I liked it. I spent two days in Ho Chi Minh City, and four days in Hanoi. There was a huge difference between these two cities. Ho Chi Minh City was a booming city with a lot of development and construction, while Hanoi was a little more low key but I thought it had a lot more Vietnamese culture. I was lucky enough to travel with a friend on mine from the boat who had hosted a Vietnamese exchange student in high school. We were able to meet up with her friend, Quanh, while we stayed in Hanoi, and got more of a local experience. Quanh was super nice and spoke perfect English, it was such a treat to have her show us around and view life from her eyes. She would write down little Vietnamese notes on where to go so we could show the cab driver, and little things like that helped immensely.

The first day in Hanoi when we met up with Quanh I was surprised the first thing she took us to do was eat on the side of the road for breakfast. I had passed plenty of the people eating on the side of the road and was nervous to try it. So I sat down on the tiniest (looked like infant) chairs, and table and had a traditional Vietnamese breakfast called Pho. It was like soupy noodles, and it was delicious. She told us the best breakfast comes from the side of the road. It was an adventurous start to our trip and I couldn't wait for what was in store. The first couple days I visited Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, the sacred lake, war museum, Vietnamese water puppet show (that I fell asleep in), and the prison John McCain was imprisoned at. The prison I visited was really interesting for a couple reasons. It was where John McCain was imprisoned but before it had been a French prison for Vietnamese people. I saw all the different history, and it was exciting to see the history from the point of view of the Vietnamese. It viewed the prison as a more uprising place when the Americans were imprisoned there then the Vietnamese people. I saw pictures of John McCain while he was young and a prisoner and they even had his uniform and parachute that they found him in. It was really cool to be in a place where there is a lot of American history as well. Also, I learned the deep love the country has for Ho Chi Minh. While I was at his mausoleum for less than an hour, a local Vietnamese man came up to my friends and I and gave us a ten minute speech about Ho Chi Minh in Vietnamese. Clearly we couldn't understand a word he was saying, but he continued on for what seemed like an eternity before Quanh politely stopped him and told us a few things he was saying to us.

A few of my favorite parts about Hanoi was it is popular to sit on the side of the street and have a couple beers with friends. Quanh took my friends and me to a local street corner and we all sat on our tiny plastic chairs and had a beer with her friends. She said it is extremely common for people to hang out there, but not past midnight because that is when the police come and shut everything down. The city of Hanoi has a strict curfew that is not to be played around with. Although Hanoi was really fun to just walk around and it was easy to find your way. The Old Quarter is where I spent most of my time and there was tons of shopping and great places just to sit and grab a cup of coffee. Although my favorite thing I did was eat dinner with Quanh and her family at her home. She lives in a small, French, home that was nothing like your typical American home, but it was cute and quant. Her mother made us a huge authentic meal that was delicious. We stayed there for hours and hung out with her family and a couple of her friends. It was nice to have a much more local perspective on life in Vietnam, and her family was all very welcoming.

The third day in Hanoi I took a trip to Ha Long Bay. It was about three hours away from Hanoi and it was absolutely amazing and is soon to be one of the natural wonders of the world. I took a boat out there for the day, and was able to Kayak and go into the caves. It was so beautiful and the caves were unreal. There are many different water villages there as well. Water villages are exactly what they sound like. It is a bunch of small little floating houses out in the middle of the bay and that is where some of the Vietnamese people live. It was amazing, and I could never imagine what life would be like living in a house in the middle of the water nor would I want to. My friends and I were on a boat with a wide range of people, but we met a group of five ladies from Indonesia that absolutely loved us. We had never even met them and they would come up to us and ask to be in pictures with us while they all held up there peace signs. At the end of the day we exchanged emails so we could get their photos, it was a blast.

While in Vietnam I did learn the hard way which cabs to take and which ones not too. Different companies had their meters rigged so every time they would break or honk their horn the meter would continue to rise. So needless to say after a few expensive cab rides I knew which ones not to take. But over all the country was extremely cheap. Everyone was millionaires because 20,000 dong was equivalent to 1 US dollar. It took me forever to figure out those conversions in my head. There was shopping and knock offs everywhere. Overall I really liked Vietnam and it is definitely a place I could see my self going back to. It has everything and the big cities were like any other big city in the United States with shopping, skyscrapers, and people everywhere.

Only two days until I take on China. I can't believe it is already November, where has the time gone?

Ash