So, remember how I said Hong Kong was my favorite port so far? Well, I lied. Viet Nam is now my favorite port I have been to and probably one of my favorite places in general. Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City was overrun by people on scooters which was ridiculous, and the amount of time I spent trying not to get hit by them was equally intense. I have no idea how people there get their drivers license, but they take a test for it and I am unsure as to if the test tests their knowledge of the rules or their ability to survive other drivers. It made me miss my car nonetheless.
On the first day Carson & I went to the Cu Chi war tunnels and explored the area and got to crawl around underground because we are little and fit very well in the tunnels; specifically I was almost walking and just hopped around inside while everyone else had to crawl on their hands and knees. We had the chance to shoot AK-47s but that was expensive and didn't seem to be an overly beneficial activity so I got ice cream instead, in amazement to all of you I am sure. The tunnel system was crazy underground and the fact that it was widened for tourists makes me wonder how small it really was during the war because not all of the group could fit into the original tunnel entrance even though I slipped right in. I thought about my uncle Paul while I was in the tunnels - he gave me a headlamp before I left for the trip because he is a firm believer that you should always have a headlamp, and idea that I thought was ridiculous but I went with anyways. Guess what? I used my headlamp.
Later, that night we went to a night market and I got some earrings and a couple of gifts for people. My maturity level has not improved much along my travels as I am under the impression that the fact that the currency is called Dong is hilarious. The currency conversion rate between Viet Nam Dong and USD was 18,000Dong to 1$ so at some points in the trip I literally was a millionaire. I am not sure that will ever happen again, but I can say it happened once for sure. Also, at the market they sold a lot of fake designer jeans but they were all skinny jeans which none of us really wear. Carson decided to try on a pair out of curiosity, but the more interesting thing, than how the jeans fit, was the dressing room; it was made out of the storeowner holding up three large button-up men's shirts around Carson. I attempted the same feat, but it was not successful - it is extremely challenging to try on skinny jeans outdoors when you are sweaty to begin with.
The next day I had to be awake in the Union ready to leave at 345AM, which I managed to actually do. My group flew to Nha Trang and arrived to meet our tour guide, Liem, who was with us all three days. We took about a 40 minute bus ride to the hotel to get breakfast, and then went to a Buddhist temple with a huge, white, seated Buddha on display above it that we climbed up to. We were dropped off at one end of a bridge and walked to the other to get photos of all the blue boats that lined the water. At the other end of the bridge we got to a palace made by an old hill tribe of Viet Nam which was extremely old but pretty neat. From there we went to a market for a while and I got some postcards, and then headed to lunch.
Lunch was at the top of a mountain and had amazing views of the water and had open purple-painted windows and a nice breeze. We ate spring rolls, ostrich [which I was not aware of until after the meal, but actually enjoyed], pho [which had octopus and other weird sea creatures in it so I picked through], rice, and prawn. Tiger prawn are huge money makers in Viet Nam and they were available everywhere. After lunch we went back to the hotel until dinner to do as we pleased after checking in. My roommates name was Amanda, and you will later come to dislike her as much as I did.
I went to the pool with a girl named Juliana to swim / read and met a girl named Katie and recognized the guy she was with, David, from my Child Development class because he brings us our overhead projector every class day. We swam and talked for a while about names that old people have and how weird it is that we are all connected but may not realize it until we get to the other side of the planet. The group leader, and my Biology of Sharks teacher, is Dr. Dan Abel - who shares the same last name as my sister Ashleigh's friend Natalie. Ironically I have been sailing around the world with Natalie's aunt and uncle, which is funny to me. David, from the pool, also has a time share in Myrtle Beach over the summer with his family; all of the relatedness is weird.
For dinner we went to an outdoor place and ate basically the same thing we had for lunch, except I sat with different people. George and Margie are one of the older couples that are lifelong learners on the ship - they are from England - who I got to know pretty well over the course of the trip. After dinner I went back to my room and gladly passed out until my roommate came in drunk and woke me up, just briefly around 4AM.
The next day I got breakfast and was ready to head out at 9AM for a day on the water, the whole reason I had picked to go to Nha Trang in the beginning. We went to the pier and rented snorkels for 10,000 Dong - about 50 cents, which is exactly what they were worth in the long run - then got split up into two groups on two boats even though we went to the same place. We stopped less than a football field length away from an island that appeared to be uninhabited aside from people selling drinks and renting sea-doos, parasailing trips, etc. I climbed onto the top of the boat with a few other and jumped off -what would be the second story of the boat had it not been a roof - into the cool, clear water.
On the boat they were doing manicures, pedicures, and massages for very cheap - 5$ each - so I got a pedicure before going swimming again. Juliana and I swam around for a while then she went to snorkel while Mrs. Abel and I got our toes painted. The Stephen, David's roommate for the trip, and I talked for a while in the shade of the boat to avoid burning [which only worked for me]. Later David showed up and we all sat around hanging off the side of the boat or swimming until we made our way to the next island.
We went straight to lunch, which was the same as every other meal -very good but very repetitive - and David and I enjoyed our rice and watermelon together while letting the various scallops / octopus / prawn pass us by. After finishing we went on an island adventure and found a guy at the top of the island taking a dump in front of a really pretty view. Since he seemed to want to be alone we went exploring somewhere else and found these rocks painted like faces. In a failed self-timer attempt two Canadian-Vietnamese guys took some pictures for us and then asked how our honey moon was going, which was slightly confusing since we had only known each other for about 24 hours. We explained the program to them and then bummed around in the shade for an hour before going swimming again. After the second island we took the boat back to the pier, then the bus back to the hotel.
After another very cold - and very short - shower I decided I needed food that did not involve anything that at one point in its life had been swimming. David and I Googled pizza places in Viet Nam and passed on the final group dinner. Instead we wanted to ride the cable cars - which we later learned were more than just cable cars - which we learned is the longest cable car over water in the world. The cable cars lead to VenPearl island, which is apparently a theme park - sweet deal for us. We took the cable car over and discovered small windows at the top which we decided to stick our heads out of - what seemed to be a good idea at the time, until we realized how "big" our heads really are. They came out though, and we got to VenPearl and decided that the rollercoaster needed to be ridden.
It was a 40 second ride that was not the most thrilling ride ever, but I was totally entertained by the idea of the park so we kept on going. We rode mouse bumper cars - which was odd because it seemed weird to hit the Vietnamese people who also seemed to be initially hesitant to hit us as well; we both got over it eventually - and got ice cream before trying to find Underwater World. When we found it the sun had just finally let the sky go all black, as our cable car ride was during sunset which was awesome. In the aquarium we touched a stingray and a nurse shark and went through one of the moving floor tunnels to see all of the sharks and rays.
When we got out we saw fire and heard weird noises so we ran towards them - which would instinctively seem like a bad idea, but it was not in this case. We found a fantasia-esque show where the lights and water were choreographed to match the music being played. It was very cool, and from there we went on some more rides. I rode a panda on the merry-go-round and he rode a giraffe; the point of the merry-go-round was to ride it because it played techno music. After that we rode Evolution, a thrill ride that was not the best decision I have ever had. It swung you back and forth like the ship rides do, but also flipped you upside down while spinning in a circle and hanging you face flat to the earth. Afterwards I ran to the swings - a kid's ride, you would assume that would be a nice recovery - that also spins you around in a circle. That was the end of our riding adventures; we hunted a bathroom then took the cable car back to the main island.
We found a taxi and went to La Bella Napoli, a legit Italian restaurant with pizza! Salvation! We got Orangina drinks, and fries, and a pepperoni pizza, and chocolate cake, and it was glorious. Afterwards I needed ice cream as I had not had any yet that day which is not acceptable so I got some from 7-11 while he got gummies. On the walk back to the hotel I killed the cone fast and got another one -real scoops, not from a gas station - and was actually really disappointed with it and trashed it. His gummies were also nasty but instead of him trashing them he just threw them at me, which I didn't appreciate because they were hot and sticky and gross.
From there we played a pool tournament, which I won 2:3 because I am awesome. Then we went swimming until it was cold - an odd feeling in the 300degree weather of Viet Nam. I went back to my room and changed then we played bejeweled twist for a while and used You-tube [something so simple is amazing when you cannot get it for free for weeks at a time] until about 330AM until we found his roommate missing half of his shorts passed out in the hallway under a chair. I went back to my room to go to sleep and my roommate was not back yet so I showered and got in bed.
I woke up around 5 to the sound of her voice accompanied by the sound of some guy I did not recognize, who later I discovered to be some guy from Russia. I fell back asleep and woke back up around 7 when she was puking, which she continued to do about every 30 minutes for the rest of the morning. She had drank a bunch of blended drinks [bad idea when ice is made of water which is made of nastiness in Viet Nam] and left her money and clothes by the pool to hang out with some Russian tourist. When she came back to her clothes all that was left were her shoes - her dress and money was totally gone. Then she puked for the rest of the afternoon so I went to find breakfast. David and I found a place that serve chocolate pancakes which we ate quickly in order to get back to the hotel in time to get the bus to the airport by 1PM.
I slept on the bus to the airport, on the plane, and on the bus back to the ship since I hadn't slept much that night. When I got back on the boat Carson and I got dinner and hung out for a while until I passed out. The next day I woke up to the lifeboat drill horns sounding around 9AM so I figured it would be a good time to start my day. We walked all around Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon until about 5PM. We got DVDs - I got all 4 seasons of Dexter - [for about 50 cents each], t-shirts, dresses, and a lot of really cool gifts. For lunch we had strawberry tarts, pizza bread things with hotdogs on top, and cheesy bread stuff.
I had to get a new camera because mine finally gave up on life. The lens wouldn't close anymore which has lead to a giant gray spot being in all of my photos - which I obviously want to come out nice. It came from a legit camera shop so it was slight pricey, but it works and it was new; I got an updated version of the camera I had to begin with that lasted for about 3 years that way I wouldn't have to relearn a new camera on the trip.

We also went to the war remnants museum after we went shopping. It was an interesting experience but it was very hard to walk through. I am not a huge fan of war to begin with, but the photos in the museum are very graphic and there were just a lot of displays that were hard to look at. For example, a preserved glad case holding two, dead Siamese twin babies that were a result of the Agent Orange used during the war. I didn't make it past the first floor because it was too much for me and I just found myself getting mad. The Vietnamese people surprised me, a lot of them that I talked to said they preferred Viet Nam with the US soldiers in it - but after looking at what some of them had done, I was uncertain.One of our days in global studies class before we got to Viet Nam two of the vets who were professors or worked on the ship spoke to the class about their experience which I spent most of the time crying through. Seeing how effected they were by the war, especially the fact that they did not have a choice as to whether or not to be there, was hard to see - just as had as it was to see the pictures of what some of their fellow soldiers had done.
After our shopping day we went back to the ship for dinner, which we ate with the Abel's. I got Finding Nemo for Dr. Abel because as a marine biologist I felt that it was extremely important that he had seen the movie, which he hadn't. Carson & I went back to her room to hang out until Lydia came back, which was entertaining. Lydia bought a new pair of pants in a market where she could not try things on, and when she came back with them Carson and I both got in the and hopped around for a while until we stumbled upon Collin who was coming to visit us. We got out of Lydia's pants and hung out a while more until I went to bed in an unhappy mood because I did not have any desire to wake up for class in the morning, although I did.
Now we have 6 days until I get to India. During these 6 days we have a middle school dance, which should be interesting, and the Sea Olympics at night or in between class days. I am proud to say that I do not have malaria and have yet to get traveler's diarrhea or puke at all on the whole trip. I am indestructible - maybe.