ungodly amount of goods and ate pretty much everything in sight. That
said, I did do some things that didn't involve flaunting my Americanism,
and overall had a much better time than I had anticipated.
In the midst of India and Singapore visits and planning for China and
Japan, I was kind of over Vietnam before it even started. I was excited
for China and more-or-less envisioned a whole bunch of rice fields and
stray animals. As it turns out, I was pretty wrong.
I woke up at 4am on day 1 because that's when we were going to be
entering the Saigon River, which I've heard is an absolutely beautiful
site. When I got up to deck 7 I was one of just three people there, and
it was pitch, pitch black. I mean, I probably should have expected that
but I guess I figured when they said "get up and see it" at pre-port,
they meant there would actually be some way of seeing it (silly, silly
girl, I know). So I went back to bed for two hours and came back up
around 6 when it was bright and sunny out. I stood outside for about 2
hours while we navigated our way down the windy river. It was a pretty
beautiful sight, but I think I enjoyed it more after the extra two hours
of sleep.
After breakfast Michael, Becca, Alex, Sam and I went on a dress & suit
mission. A pretty popular SAS thing to do in Vietnam is to get stuff
custom made because apparently it's really good quality and pretty
awesomely priced. At the beginning of the voyage, I really wasn't
planning on a custom dress but by Vietnam I was so excited and had
completely changed my mind. Becca had read up on where to go since there
are tailor shops just everywhere and had decided on one place to buy
fabric and another to get it tailored. So our first stop was a place
called Chi-Chi's. Chi-Chi's is a tailor, but also a huge fabric supplier
and when we walked in there was fabrics just everywhere. There were also
books of dress designs and stuff, but I had already gotten some options
and printed them out that I was still debating on, so I didn't really
need to add more options to the table. Anyway, after looking around at
all the fabrics we put some of our ideals in our minds and walked down
the street to our tailors. The place was really classy and we were
already happy with our decision to go here just because of the
respectable appearance of it, especially in comparison to the rest of
the shops we had seen. We looked through their fabrics and Michael, Sam
and Becca actually ended up choosing to use theirs. Their selection was
pretty limited, so I walked back over to Chi Chi's and picked the two
that I had fallen in love with over there. Then I walked back to our
place and used one of their fabrics for the third. We all went over our
preferences and prices with the tailors and set a date to come back for
a fitting. All in all, my three dresses and fabrics totaled $220, which
sounded just great to me. Suits were more expensive, about $150-200
each, but still way cheaper than in the U.S. And even though that only
took me a paragraph to write, the whole debating amongst fabrics and
getting measured and going over styles actually took us 4 hours and it
was already 1:00pm when we finished.
So after the tailors we went to get some Pho. Pho (pronounced Pha) is
the staple of Vietnamese cuisine. Literally, there are pho-shirts
littered in the windows of every store and sold on the side of the roads
and there is more than one chain restaurant named after the dish. It's
like Dunkin Donuts in Saugus, but multiplied by 3. Best of all about Pho
is that it is gluten free! The noodles are rice noodles!! I could not
wait to eat a traditional meal in port!
We ended up at a place called Pho 24/7, and their menu was literally Pho
and spring rolls...thats it. But the pho came in lots of different
flavors and I ended up ordering chicken. SHIT WAS SO GOOD I CAN'T EVEN
TRY TO WRITE IT IN LOWER CASE LETTERS. I WANT MORE. RIGHT NOW.
NOMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Not only was I eating the SAME THING as everyone at my
table, but oh my gosh was I happy I had just gotten fitted for a dress
because lord knows I was about to gain 10 pounds solely in Pho on this
trip. I NEED TO STOP TALKING ABOUT PHO NOW...CRAVINGSSSSSSSSSSS.
After lunch we went across the street to a little cafe to scope some
wifi and ended up ordering some gelato. The gelato was actually really
cool and came in awesome designs like snowman or crown or castle, but
since they all involved gluten of some sort, I went the boring route. It
was hard enough to have them not put a little sugar-gluten Italian stick
on it, though, that I'm glad I didn't try to test the language barrier
to say no cone.
Following our gelato we ventured to the mega market about 10 minutes
from the ship to do some exploring. Inside there were vendors just
everywhere and the walkways between rows was so small I doubt some
people on SAS actually fit. Our missions were to find backpacks, DVDs
and North Faces. NorthFaces were actually pretty hard to find which
surprised me but we did find a ton of backpacks and DVDs. I ended up
with a NorthFace backpack (probably fake) for $10 and a couple DVDs that
were 50cents each. On the way back we stopped a little shop and bought
Dre Beats headphones (probably still fake) for $10 each, and he let us
test them before we bought them to see the quality, which was really
good. I also got the entire series of Lost for only $20! I already had
it, but Dain didn't!
The first night in Vietnam we had dinner on the ship and then Dain and
Kevin joined the group and we all went out. First we went to the tailors
again because Michael was having his fitting that night and Kevin wanted
to order his suit. After that we headed to the night market. Basically,
the market that was inside during the day closed and the streets outside
became filled with booths. I had expected pretty similar products that
were sold but it was actually different. Here was NorthFace heaven.
Booth after booth of jackets (probably all fake, but whatever) and we
managed to find some pretty quickly. I got a blue waterproof jacket for
$35, and Dain got a similar one in yellow for $40. Kevin found a
ridiculously huge hiking backpack for $18 and Becca got a small one for
$12. It was a very successful day, and I am really happy about the
amount of stuff that was purchased for such a small price. Best of all,
I got to eat gluten free food AND the DVDs worked!
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