"Is it nature or nurture that sends a person out onto the Road - that whispers in one's ear that it's time to take off and make for the horizon, just to see what's out there?The urge to travel - to open our minds and move beyond the familiar - is as old as man himself. It's what drove the ancient Romans to visit Athens's Acropolis and Verona's amphitheater. It's what sent Marco Polo off on his momentous journey east, and what moved St. Augustine of Hippo to write 'The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.' Whether we go to London for the weekend or to a place that's utterly alien, travel changes us, sometimes superficially, sometimes profoundly. It is a classroom without walls." - Introduction, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, pg. xi

So I've totally been procrastinating writing about Vietnam.I'm not sure why since I had a good time there…its been one of the best ports for me actually.After the first day of exploring Ho Chi Minh City, and by exploring, I really mean shopping, I spent the next 3 days in the Mekong Delta.The Mekong Delta is a really cool area.It is one of the most fertile areas in all of Southeast Asia and its kind of like Venice, but not at all! LOL.

There were only 19 people on our trip which was great. Traveling with a small group is so much easier. We left the ship early Friday morning and drove about 2.5 hours and then boarded a boat to explore the Delta.Most of the transportation in the Mekong is by boat since it's a huge network of rivers and canals.We stopped at a lot of different places to see the kinds of farming and small industry of the area including rice paper, coconut candy making, popped rice (like popped corn), tropical fruit farms and more. We got off the boat for awhile after lunch and walked alongside the canals to see some of the houses and went for a bikeride around one of the small villages. There were just so many sights to take in riding along the water; the houses on stilts at the river's edge, people paddling their small boats, peoples bigger boats with crazy engine contraptions, even larger boats that whole families lived on and then the commercial boats used to transport goods all over the region. I say its like Venice because it is an entire region where river and canals are the major method of transportation but not at all because while there are cities in the area, this is a very rural area and it is definitely Asia! Our first night, we stayed at what our guide called a "homestay".I would call it more of a bed and breakfast kind of accommodation.It was one house way out in the Delta on the water on stilts and totally removed from the towns and villages.We each had a cot, complete with mosquito netting.There were 3 rooms in the house total, 2 for sleeping (10 people each) and 1 common room with hammocks and tables and chairs where we ate and hung out.Upon arrival, we had some free time to relax and I took advantage of one of the hammocks for a nap.It was so quiet and peaceful.We had dinner, which was very authentic and interesting but good and there was a traditional musical performance. After dinner, we spent the evening sitting around the common room just hanging out.It was pretty cool to spend a Friday night out in the jungle of Vietnam with no TV, no radio, and no sounds of anything from the outside world…. I spent most of the trip with some students, Nicole and Lindsey.Both are older students and it was nice to get to know them, we spent evening chatting and getting some of the coconut candy stuck in our teeth! We talked about everything, from our experiences on the trip and the challenges of holding our lives together back home.We've been having a lot of the same struggles, similar ups and downs.We called it a nice pretty early according to most standards but it was nice to crawl on to my cot and tuck in my blue mosquito netting and fall asleep.We all woke up nice and early, had breakfast and headed back out on to the boat for some more traveling on the Mekong.Our second day, we came back from the remote areas and went to a huge fresh market in Vin Long where they had all sorts of fruits, vegetables, fish, grains, meat and just about everything you can imagine.After the market we went to Can Tho, the largest city in the Mekong.There we visited an orphanage which was really very sad.Almost all of the children there were mentally and physically disabled was so sad to see. There were a few babies there that weren't disabled but whose mothers had abandoned them at the hospital. After our visit there, we spent some time in Can Tho and visited a few different temples and pagodas; Khmer, a Vietnamese and a Chinese Buddhist temples.Each one is Buddhist but had some differences.I like the eastern religion temples and how welcoming they are. I've found that they are much less 'religious' like Western religions seem and much more spiritual and focused on philosophies of life. We stayed at a hotel in Can Tho and our 3rd day visited the floating market in Can Tho which is the largest, busiest, and most colorful in the whole Delta.It was pretty crazy. It seems like a huge traffic jam of boats buying and selling all of their fruits and vegetables.You can tell what a boat is selling because they tie one or a few to stick up on the boat kind of like a flag. We made our way form one end of the market to the other and everyone wanted to buy stuff but we can't bring fresh produce back on to the ship but one of those mangos would have been awesome! After taking in the floating market, our group headed back to the ship.Since we were much earlier than expected, I headed back in to Ho Chi Minh City with Nicole and Lindsey for some more shopping around the markets.We went back to Ben Than and got some great deals and also made stops at each of the tailor shops to try on our dresses.Unfortunately my dress shop said mine wasn't ready.I was really hoping to have a fitting but that didn't happen. I wasn't going to have time the next day since I was on another SAS trip to the Cao Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels and Leigh Ellen had to pick up my dress.I really wish I had been able to get it fitted because it's too big. I'm pretty disappointed and was really looking forward to a perfectly fitted beautiful dress.It could be a lot worse…it could be too small.Now I have to find a tailor when I get home and see what happens.I still love it, just needs to be taken in before I can wear it.After all of the shopping and tailoring, we went back to the night market for dinner. Our meal was awesome and came to less than $2 per person!

My last day in Vietnam, I was the trip leader for a field practicum to the Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels.Cao Dai is a religion that was founded in Vietnam in 1927 and is pretty interesting and a little strange at the same time. It seeks to unite all religions, both eastern and western by recognizing a supreme deity that has many different manifestations, ie, Buddha, Christ, etc… that in essence, all of humanity just has different ways of being spiritual.It was too bad that the temple was almost 3 hours from the ship and we only stayed for about 15 minutes of the service and didn't get a chance to walk around at all. There's a whole lot more about it but that's the short version. I looked it up online and read some more on it and its actually not too far from I think myself about world religions. After the temple, we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels and that was a completely different experience.Our guide was very good and it was very interesting to see this piece of history, and from the Vietnamese side of the conflict. I learned more than I had ever known about the Vietnam War in the few hours we spent there. The one thing that did disturb me more than seeing the tunnels and learning how the Viet Cong defeated the Americans was the SAS students' reactions.Not all of the students on my trip, but a good number of them didn't have any real interest in learning about it and all they wanted to do was shoot a gun at the firing range there and take cute pictures smiling in front of the booby traps and blown up American tank remnants. I know that it is beyond a distant memory for them but I don't think it even registered to these students what we were experiencing…that the guns they were firing and the traps that they were seeing were used to kill American soldiers.It was one of the more complex issues for me to process and I don't think I'm done learning about it.

Gangway Duty at the end was pretty crazy! There were tons of people late and a huge line of students waiting to get back on the ship. Overall, I really enjoyed our port stay in Vietnam. It was a comfortable place to be, plenty to see and do, very inexpensive and a lot to learn.