On day 2 in Vietnam the first thing I did was go with Dain and Becca to
the War Remembrance Museum. This is a museum dedicated to the Vietnam
War. We only had a couple of hours because we were all on a trip
starting at 1, but we tried to make the best of it. The museum was
actually incredibly fascinating. Understandably, it was an ode to "I
hate America" but it was so, so different to see the conflict from the
opposite side. Knowing a lot of the facts, I could tell some of it was
quite exaggerated, but I also understood that the version of history I
have been taught is the American-sided one. This being the Vietnam-sided
story, it was really cool to see the comparisons and start to try to
figure out what is truth and what is fact, looking beyond the lens of
America I've been taught about for so many years. Initially, our plan
was to visit the museum and the re-unification palace before our trip,
but it turns out we didn't even have time to see the museum in its
entirety, so we just went back to the ship for our trip instead. Our
trip was to a Vietnam School for the Deaf. We would be visiting the
school briefly and then taking the kids to the zoo.
At the school, one little girl seemed immediately drawn to me and
grabbed my hand and took me over to her spot. We sat down and started to
color. It took a few minutes, but we got into the swing of things and
started drawing a story about, what else, a princess and a castle. This
girl, Tho, was so adorable and she kept running around to show all of
our pictures to her friends. Everytime another kid tried to come color
with us, she basically shut them out to keep coloring with me. Awwww.
After about half an hour we were taken downstairs and shown a few things
that the kids made the school tries to sell to raise money. The school
would like to operate without charging its students, but it does
currently charge a small (less than full tuition at a private school in
Vietnam) fee to enroll. Immediately, Dain and I spotted wooden Mickey
carvings, and that's pretty much all the motivation we needed. Two
wooden Mickey's heavier, we headed for the zoo. When we got there, we
sat down and ate a meal that the ship had packed for all of us and the
kids (and by we ate a meal I mean everyone else ate a meal and I drank a
caprisun). We then had only 40 minutes to walk around the zoo before we
had to leave, but it turned out to be long enough. The zoo was nothing
special and was really run down and dirty, but obviously this trip
wasn't about the zoo and it was nice to be able to just take a child's
hand a walk around a zoo without constant SAS-supervision.
After the zoo it ended up taking us an hour and a half to get back
because of all of the traffic, but eventually we made it and we sat down
for dinner on the ship quickly and then headed out with Lexi and Jacob.
We had two goals for that night: Dain's suit and Lexi's tattoo. Dain
ended up really regretting not ordering a suit the day before, and we
read on the white board in Tymitz Square about a place with really good
prices so we decided to check it out. It was a bit of a walk from the
ship, but after about an hour we found the suit place. The place was
definitely less-impressive than the place the rest of us had ordered
stuff from, but not too unimpressive that we would turn around. Dain
ended up getting 2 suits for only $195 which was pretty much what the
boys and Phan whatevertherestofthenameiscalled paid for one. I wouldn't
have felt comfortable at Dain's place, but he didn't care too much.
After what seemed like forever deciding colors and fabrics, he picked
out two fabrics and got fitted. Then we went on a hunt for Lexi's
tattoo. She had wanted to get it done in Singapore, but ran out of time,
so she had looked up some legit places in Vietnam and we were trying to
find them. The one place we had intended on, Saigon Ink, was closed, but
we ended up getting lost in the backpacking district and found another
place. I know absolutely nothing about tattoos, but Lexi seemed
confident in this place after asking her series of questions. So the
rest of us sat and watched while she got it done.
I don't have any tattoos, and I never intend on doing so, and I'm
assuming this was the only experience I'll ever have in watching someone
else get one, so I tried to keep watching despite my cringing.
Thankfully, there was no blood because I probably would have puked, and
it was actually a lot quicker than I thought. Still, I have no desire to
ever get one of my own.
After getting her tattoo, we all went to this rooftop bar that we found
in the district. To get up there, we literally had walk up 7 flights of
narrow and kind-of sketchy stairs, but it was pretty cool once we made
it up. It was rather empty, but we prefer that rather than going to the
same place as all of the other SAS kids would be at.
When we decided to go back to ship, we started to have a bit of a
problem since English is pretty much nonexistant and even when we showed
cab drivers our green sheet with the name of the dock they seemed to
have no idea what we were talking about. But, lucky for us, after about
half an hour walking in who knows what direction, we ran into some
Americans who just happened to speak Vietnamese! Thankfully, these
people helped us get a cab and give them the right directions and we
made it back safe and sound. Another good thing about this is that the
cab driver wasn't familiar with SAS and therefore wasn't charging us an
outrageous price like the drivers at the dock were.
Day 2 in Vietnam was pretty full, but not full enough. I wanted more pho.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
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