The Rest of Vietnam!!!!!!

Hey everyone. It is now November 11th, 2005 and we are steaming towards Hong Kong which is one of the top ports that I am looking forward to most! We have has two full days of classes since we left Vietnam. Actually we had to be onboard the ship on the 9th but the ship didn’t actually leave until the 10th around lunch time. Classes are going well, and for most like Strategic Management for example we are getting into the heart of the class.
Well a lot has happened as usual since I last posted in the blog. Vietnam definitely got better as time went by, and I am sure my dislike at first of the port was me being so sick there for about 24 hours or so. I was just looking around on the International Herald Tribune (the online newspaper that we can view on the ship) where I came across the following article http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/10/news/burma.php I am not sure weather or not you will be able to view it or not. But it talks about how all of the sudden the Myanmar government decided to change its capital from Yangon in a convoy of trucks at precisely 6:37am to a protected compound several hundred kilometers from Yangon. This article kind of begins explaining the emotions that I felt after leaving the country. And the seemingly “foggy existence” that I have felt since leaving or about half way through our stay in Myanmar. At this time it just seems that I have been sort of overwhelmed by all of the different cultures, experiences, and I guess overwhelmed is probably the wrong choice of words. But more the sense that mentally I have taken in soo much, and my brain just seems to want to say no to anything else. (does that last couple of sentence sounds like I have been doing a lot of drugs or what, well I haven’t but I will try to go on with the blog)! Like I said I am very much looking forward to Hong Kong and will continue to tell about my time in Vietnam from where I left off.


November 7th, 2005 (continued)
So I left off right when we were headed down another little stream in the boat when we came to the fruit farm. We made our way down the dock and path to a courtyard area with several different cages. Where our guide got out a massive boa constrictor probably one of the largest that I have ever seen. We he left us take photos with it, and let it sit on our shoulders. It was very heavy probably a good fifty pounds or so and seemingly gentle all though you never know when it is going to wrap around your neck and cut off blood circulation to your head. After that he showed us some of the regional squirls, a duck that was in a cage that we stayed away from (have you been reading about this hole bird flu thing), I bet Chick fil a is doing great in Asian countries. As well as a box full of bees, where they pulled out a card looking thing that was covered on both sides with bees. Then she got a spoon and got us all some honey off of the box to eat. It was awesome, the most natural tasting honey ever (the funny thing was it was clear, not like that processed stuff we get in the jar). Finally they took us to a table where they brought over monkey bananas (the small ones), papaya, coconut, pineapple, and a few other local fruits like lemons that looked like key limes but had an orange center. As well as hot tea, that they sweeten with the natural honey. Then our guide (Who Billy will remember and others who have heard the story reminded us of George the Belizean cab driver) wanted us to walk down a path and explore the city. Well we walked down the path and the city was made up of just a few houses and a shop selling local fruits and supplies. There was a mom who wanted to show off her little baby taking some of his first steps. Which is kind of funny, because in Vietnam and apparently other Asian countries when kids begin learning to walk they wear these special shoes that every time the kid steps down in squeaks.
After this our guide wanted us to hang out for another couple of hours to see the fire flies on the delta. But seeing as we had seen fire flies before and the drive was about an hour and a half back to Saigon we wanted to head back to the main land. So we headed back down the stream out to the delta, and back to the original dock, where they put us on a taxi to go back to My Thou where our taxi was. The drive back was much longer because it was dark and there were at least two wrecks we saw on our way back to the ship. On our way back to the ship we stopped off at a local restaurant where one of the owners is supposedly American for a real American hamburger. It was great it was a lot like Five Guys and it had everything from Avocado to mushrooms on it.
That night we got back to the ship and got ready, then headed out pretty late to a club where a lot of our friends were supposed to be Underground and when we got there, there was no one there. So we went across the street to Rainforest which is a really cool dance club that plays mostly house music. And compared to the last club we had gone to the first night it was mostly Vietnamese. The club closed around 12 so we were only there for a short time, it was actually kind of funny because it was a full club and they were just closing it didn’t make any sense business wise but it must just be a cultural thing. So we decided to go back to the Phan Lou street which is the backpacker area where we spent the first night. And the restaurants, bars, and most of the businesses here do not ever close. So we ended up at one of the livelier places on the street called Eden’s Garden (much different from Rauls Rose Garden though Billy). They played good music and we had a really good time. Typical for the area we meet a lot of people from all over the world this night from: Switzerland, UK, Canada, and Ireland. I ended up calling it a night much earlier than most of the group that I was with although it was even that early by American times more like QM2 times though.


November 8th, 2005

Today we ended up sleeping in and wanting to go and explore China town which was about 20 or so minutes away from the ship that we had seen on the way to the delta. We tell the driver that we are wanting to go to China Town to buy guys clothing, so in his broken English he tells us he know just the place. On the rid there we pass several places that seemed like good spots but he insisted that he was taking us to a particular place. When finally we pull up to a large Chinese warehouse looking building that is very busy people selling and doing things everywhere. As we go in we undoubtedly realize that we have underestimated exactly how busy this place truly was. It was two stories and built in a square that was sectioned off by product, from knock off hand bags, to kids clothing, womens clothing, shoes, food etc etc. Where each vendor had a little shop that they pilled as much stuff in one place as physically possible. And in many cases the shop owners could not walk into there shop with the back wall being ten or so feet away because they had soo much stuff pilled in there. And it would all be different. For example in the shoe booths they would probably easily have 2,000 different styles of shoes. All extremely reasonably priced about half or so the going rate of the NYC China town stuff. This day we were so shocked at all of the different things that we didn’t even buy anything. After exiting the Hong Kong market we just started making our way in the direction which we thought that we had seen the guys stores on the way to the market. But of course we never found it, but we did have a good chance to get to see a lot of the locals day to day lives as they do their shopping and go about their business. One thing that is not lacking in Vietnam is cell phone stores, there are millions of them and they are everywhere.

Finally we gave up looking for the stores that we had seen and finally let some of the taxi drivers take us around town to explore. We thought that they understood us when we told them we just wanted to drive us around, but we kind of just went straight back to the backpackers area. So first I stopped off at the store where I had talked to them a couple of days before about having them make me a suit. Well as we thought might happen the SAS kids flooded the market and the price to have one made went up $40 US but after bargaining with them as they had already told me the price was $65 they gave it to me for $75. So they measured everything that they could possibly measured and told me to be back there by 5:30pm the next day to have it fixed before I needed to leave. We also went by one of the shops that had copies of all the different DVDs and CDs for really cheap. I ended up only getting about five not knowing if they would play or not in my DVD player. Tonight we ended up going back to the same restaurant for dinner and had a great time. We got them to put in one of the Bob Marley CDs that I had bought earlier. One thing while there I noticed was what all these little tickets people are walking around selling (usually with disabilities) they ended up being lottery tickets but not always for money, sometimes for cars or different random thing. I think that it is private businesses also not just the government who puts on these lotteries. We made our way back to the ship again, and got ready to go out.

We had planned on going to the same clubs as the night before, but I saw the club in top of the Sheraton Hotel and wanted to go there. So that where we started out. It is called Level 23 on the 23rd floor. It was really cool it had an outside wine bar, and then the inside club is actually two stories, with a live band from Jamaica that can play all kinds of different music. It reminded us a ton of the club on the QM2. After getting tired of the expensive drink prices we went to the Rainforest again where there were a ton a SAS people there including Ammo, Noel, Crystal and other friends. And even a few of the students with their parents who were still in town for the parents trip. AJ ended up introducing me to some of the locals that were in the night before that travel to Hong Kong all the time on business and gave us a few recommendations. One thing that I noticed at all of the places we went to this night was all the older Vietnamese men, with very young looking dates. And it wasn’t just a few of them it was 85% of them or so. There were mixed opinions among the SASers if they were prostitutes or not, I know that the Vietnamese women age very gracefully but I can’t help but think that a lot of the women weren’t working for the evening. And we weren’t even a seedy places these were nice places like the Sheraton and such. Anyways just something I noticed. As usual the club closed early and we made our way back over to Eden’s Garden where even more SAS people were and a few more new friends were made from Denmark and Kenya of all places. This ended up being a very late night, although I think that this is typical among the backpacker crowd and the SAS students who don’t want the good times to end. Either way it was a defiantly interesting mix between the two groups.


November 9th, 2005

My last day in Vietnam AJ and I decided that we wanted to go back to the Hong Kong Market this afternoon. After a crazy ride there we finally made it to a place that the taxi drivers insisted was the Hong Kong Market. Apparently Hong Kong Market is not a place, rather a style of market or where all the stuff in the market comes from. This one was very similar to the last and it even had some cool guys t shirts which the other one didn’t. Some really good knock off D & G shirts etc. but of course all the sudden we were going to get to pay foreigner prices. I mean $10 a shirt there is no way they sales those shirts for more than $5. But consistently we got turned down. AJ ended up getting an LV rolly duffle bag and a really cool painting. We then headed back to the Sheraton where we had heard stories of big wines of several SASers in their casino. It was pretty small, but nice. The casino had several very quirky rules such as when you sit down at a machine you can only put in denominations of $10 although the bets can vary. And all of the machines are electronic so like the roulette, the black jack all were electronic but they had a dealer there that in ways simulated the dealing of the game but all of the bets were about $10. AJ played the video blackjack as usual and only ended up loosing a little (he said that it was a little messed up on how they did some of the payouts). And I played a little roulette as usual, I did pretty well it was hitting consistent reds and odd numbers which is what I was betting on (I know I know you only hear about when people are winning). Either way I ended up walking away with around $50 or so more than I walked in there with, but only because of luck.
On the way to the store where I was supposed to pick up my suit we stopped at a few small vendors where I bought a couple of cool paintings as well as some old money that come to find out is mostly Cambodian old money but still cool all the same. It reminded me of when we oust to go to Mexico and they would always have the old coins for sale. Much to my surprise they to me two different occasions that my suit was being finished with extra care. Finally almost two hours late it was done. Although I was a little scared because one of the kids suits we had seen on a previous visit couldn’t of looked any worse.
But when she pulled it out of the hanging bag it was perfect. Three piece black with white pen stripes, I was very happy with the suit done exactly to my specifications it looks just like the one in the GQ magazine I gave her. So we made our way back to the Sheraton for the sunset but it was too late. So we just hung out there before making our way back to the ship. Where we in line around thirty minutes before the on ship time. And still didn’t end up making it on before the 9 oclock deadline. I was a little upset about the whole thing at first, but it is just one of those things that you can’t do anything about. Another SAS policy that you might not agree with but have to follow. So we ended up getting two hours dock time, which means that we have to be back on the ship at 7pm instead of 9pm on the last night in Hong Kong. Which I guess isn’t that big of deal because the last hour we would be spending waiting in line either way and it will ensure that we don’t have any dock time in Japan.
As far as things going on the ship. I found out that the day we pulled into Vietnam the Conduct Officer Dan whose job it was to work from 8pm til the late hours and any other time he is out and around ship that students follow the policies in the student hand book. Mostly generally dumb rules like making sure the smokers only smoke in a certain area, making sure people keep their feet off the furniture, people are quite, no one is drunk running around the ship etc. etc. I had actually never really gotten to know him. Once he made a rather rude comment to me and Alberto about having our feet on the furniture, but I mean it was kind of his job so no hard feelings. The unofficial story I got was that the Dean wanted him to treat us more like kids, and he refused to saying that we were young adults and deserved to be treated that way. I mean looking at it we have just under a month left, and most of it will be spent traveling from Asia to San Diego which would be him working and apparently he was unhappy getting gripped at, and having to. Soo, we miss him and are sorry that he won’t be with us the rest of the way but you have to do what you have to do.
Also we got our new music teacher replacing professor Strumpf who had to get off the ship in Myanmar because of medical conditions. Well I think that sums it all up for Vietnam a nice place, with nice people, and definitely no lack of motorcycles. A country who is trying to figure out how they are going to compete in the global market place especially with big China above them. Saigon is building up and up and is definetly promising but still has a ways to go to catch up with other Asain countries around them.
One story that I did forget to mention was a taxi cab driver on the last night we were there. He was 56 and had fought in the Vietnam war like many Americans. He had a defiantly interesting story especially after he kept asking if I was American. The man had been shot three times once in the mouth, and twice in the stomach. And was still standing today, pretty amazing. Especially to think that in just the past couple of decades these things were going on here and how things have changed. Just an interesting thought.
I got several great emails, and cards while in Vietnam which defiantly brightened my day. I hope everyone is doing well as you are in my thoughts and prayers daily. I especially liked the cards from Erin, Lexi, Heather and Ashton. Your thoughts, prayers, and Ashtons drawings mean a lot to your Uncle Chad I miss you and can’t wait to give you a big bear hug when I get home.

Love always,
Chad