Viet Nam
Trip Start
Feb 04, 2007
1
10
Trip End
May 14, 2007
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Thursday, May 3, 2007
We got to Danang at about 6am and took a taxi to a city an hour south called Hoi An. We checked into a hotel and at about 8am went to explore the city. Hoi An is known for it's tailors that line the streets. They are EVERYWHERE. That's also the reason we came to the city in the first place. For some reason whenever SAS goes to Vietnam, a majority of the people get clothes made. Rachel and me went to one tailor and Ryan and Andrew went to one down the street. We could have them make anything we wanted and had a multitude of fabrics to choose from. It took us about an hour to get measured and choose what we wanted made. We had to go back later that day at 5 for fitting and then they would have the stuff done the following morning. Then we just walked around the city, which I fell in love with, and got massages. I also found a shoe store where they made me three pairs of shoes for very cheap. We went to a travel agency to get flights out for the next day but found out that the only flight we could get on was that night. Because of that we had to run to our tailors to have them finish all our stuff by 4pm that day, which amazingly, they did. After eating and exploring a little more, we all went back to get fitted for our stuff. I had three dresses, a suit, and two wool winter jackets made. It all only cost $172. One of the jackets alone could have been $200 in the States.
Immediately after get screwed by the hotel that wouldn't give us our stuff till we paid for the room we weren't using anymore, we got to the airport for our flight to Hanoi. We got there kind of late and got screwed yet again by the Vietnamese scams. The taxi driver called a friends hotel who would pay him a commission, told the guy there to tell us they were the hotels we asked for. Needless to say, we stayed in a sketchy area in a sketchy hotel which where we got ripped off. We walked around that night to try to find food but all we could find was street corner vendors selling cooked chicken fetuses, pigs feet, chicken feet, some sort of brain, and many nameless other animal parts. Finally we found a random burger place and ate there. The next day we headed to Halong Bay, in which the hotel screwed us over yet again and made us pay more for the tour than other people were charged. We were supposed to stay on a boat in the bay but once we got on they informed us there was no room, so we went on the bay tour on the boat than they dropped us off on some island, made us wait an hour and drove us to another hotel. It actually ended up being really fun. The boat was cool and the bay was ridiculously beautiful. It's a bay where all these thousands of limestone islands jut out of the sea and the water is an incredible emerald color. Unfortunately it was rather cloudy, but still pretty. On our two we met two guys from Ireland and a British couple and went to dinner with them and to a club later. Even though the club was completely empty besides us, it was still really fun. The next morning we got back on the boat, back into the van for the two-hour ride back to Hanoi. Needless to say, we did not go back to that first hotel. We ended up staying right in Old Hanoi in a really cool area. We spent the rest of the day walking around shopping, buying several more fake North Face backpacks, and eating. We went to another club that night which was really weird because of all the prostitutes and creepy old European men with them. The next morning we got up really early to get onto our third flight in three days back to Ho Chi Minh. The last day there was really rather uneventful, we just went back to the same market we went to the first day and went back to the ship pretty early.
I apologize for this all being so brief. As you can tell we really just kept going for five days straight seeing so many different things. It's hard to elaborate on them all because we spent so little time in each place. It definitely has been one of my favorite places on the trip. One interesting thing is that the people there were the rudest people I have met thus far on the trip. I felt like everyone I came across was constantly trying to rip me off, which happened quite often. The great thing now is that I understand that it is just culture differences. When we did meet a friendly Vietnamese person, they were some of the nicest people I have met on the whole trip. It was really weird that there wasn't much of an in-between. The group I was traveling with was great. It was just four of us; two girls and two girls and the dynamic were wonderful. Really overall, even with all the setbacks we encountered, we all still made the best of it and just accepted the things that were going wrong. I'm really happy with how things turned out.
The thing about Vietnam, although, is that the whole time I felt really strange about being there. Regardless of the fact that almost all the Vietnamese people we met reacted positively to us being American (I'm not sure if that's because they legitimately like Americans or if they saw us as walking wallets), it was still hard going to the country that had such an effect on all of our parents generations. The stores selling old GI Zippos and war memorabilia made me really uncomfortable, as it really just didn't seem right. So many people on the ship bought shirts that are really just big Vietnamese flags, hats, and other various other items that I just couldn't bring myself to buy. I really don't know if I was being overly sensitive to the subject, or if I was being naïve to the current diplomatic situation, as I know it is currently a friendly one between our two countries. All I know is that I simply couldn't walk down the street in America wearing something like that. Am I being ridiculous? I'm ecstatic that things for the most part are good between the two countries. I just finished a book I bought off a man in the street called The Girl in the Picture, which gave really awesome insight to the political situation right now. I'm so glad that I learned more about the things that went on there and that are still going on. Vietnam is definitely high on my list of "go back to."
