I woke up at 0700 on the morning of February 26 and looked out my window to see us about 25 meters away from a jungle covered coastline. I went up on deck for breakfast where I could see out of both sides of the ship and saw that we were actually heading up a river about 150 meters wide. We were going up the Saigon River up to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) which is located 37 miles upstream from the South China Sea. I got my breakfast and headed outside to the back deck to eat. When the sliding glass door opened, the air was like a punch to the face. Even though it was only 0730 by this point, it was about 85 degrees and about 90% humidity. It felt like I was breathing liquid; I am not used to this kind of humidity. I went outside anyway to eat because it was just too beautiful to eat inside. South Vietnam is very flat and covered with jungles, and from the 6th deck, we could see very far. I sat down at a table with my friends Corena and Shannon and we started planning what we were going to do that day. As we ate and planned, we were watching the spectacular view of our huge ship going up this little river. The river was also packed with smaller boats. There were cargo ships, little fishing boats, and I even saw two hydrofoil boats, which actually lift themselves up out of the water. We put putted along up the river until we reached the Port of Saigon, right on the edge of Ho Chi Minh. The ship pulled up, docked, and we all gathered in the Union for our diplomatic briefing. Before every country we go to, we have people come on and give us a Diplomatic Briefing, which consists of them telling us what is not socially acceptable to do and little words of wisdom for each country. In this briefing, we learned some key phrases in Vietnamese, how to tip, what to wear, and what taxis to take. After the briefing, we had cleared immigration and were allowed to get off the ship. Corena, Shannon, and I got off, ventured into the heat and humidity, and headed for the little shuttle bus that would take us to the Rex Hotel, right on the main street of downtown Ho Chi Minh. The Rex Hotel is also only about 50 meters away from Ho Chi Minh City Hall, which is a beautiful, white, colonial style building that is at the end of the main drag, diverting the street to the left or right. We got off the bus and the first thing we did was find a bank. Crossing the street is a real experience in Vietnam. Vietnam is in the “motorbike” stage of development. This means that their roads and infrastructure is developed enough, but the country isn’t quite wealthy enough for everyone to drive around in cars, so most people ride around on motorbikes. There were thousands of motorbikes everywhere you looked. Also, traffic laws are rarely enforced, and the only way to cross the street is to just walk into the swarm of bikes and just keep walking at a steady pace in a constant direction, and people will swerve around you. It is actually pretty fun. Once we found a bank and got some Dong (which is the Vietnamese currency, and yes, even us mature SAS students made a few jokes here and there) we decided to just walk around the downtown area and look for a good tailor to get a suit made. We started winding up and down the streets, stopping here and there to look in stores and check the prices at tailors. Vietnam is ridiculously cheap. It is about 18,000 Dong to the US Dollar. We round that up so it is pretty much 100,000 Dong is about 5 Dollars. A big meal would cost around 40,000 Dong and nice purses were between 60,000 to 80,000 Dong. We stopped by a few tailors and checked their suits, materials, prices, and asked how long it would take to get done, but we never really found anything we liked/was in our price range/could be done in time. After we shopped for a bit, we decided that we were going to head out and do all the tourist stuff. We headed to the other side of the city where the Reunification Palace was. The Reunification Palace was formerly known as Norodom Palace, and it was the palace of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It costs 15,000 Dong to get in (less than a dollar!) and we got to walk around for as long as we wanted. This building is the famous place where the North Vietnamese Army tank crashed through the front gate and took the palace during the Fall of Saigon. The palace was called Norodom Palace until 1962 when it was bombed by the North Vietnamese and almost completely destroyed. After that, the palace was rebuilt on its original location and named Independence Palace when it was completed in 1966. This palace survived a few bombings until 1975, when the North Vietnamese tank crashed through the gate, signifying the end of the Vietnam War. Once North Vietnam and South Vietnam were unified, the palace was renamed the Reunification Palace, which is still its name today. We walked through the front gate where there was a huge circular driveway and a giant fountain in the middle. Over on the side there were two deactivated North Vietnamese tanks, identical to the one that took the palace. There were bright red Vietnamese flags along the edge of the driveway leading the way to the front door. The palace was very open. There were no walls along the backside, allowing the warm breeze to flow through the hallways. The palace was a beautiful white stone building with elegant grey marble floors and lots of intricately designed rugs. On the first floor there were big meeting rooms for the president, vice president, and so on. The largest room on this floor was a big conference room where the papers were signed at the end of the war. There was a giant red banner at the front of the room and on one corner there was the yellow star that was on the Vietnamese flag and on the other corner there was the communist hammer and sickle. In front of this there was a large gold painted statue of Nông Đức Mạnh, who is the current leader of Vietnam. On the second floor there were more rooms including dining rooms, a bar, tea rooms, and so on. Up on the third floor was the president’s office, the map room, and the president’s lounge area. All of the rooms in the palace had really impressive furniture along with beautiful carvings and paintings. One room had two huge elephant tusks held up by a amazingly carved decorative wooden stand. After wandering around all of these rooms, we headed to the roof where you could see all around the front driveway and the surrounding gardens. The best thing about the roof was that there was a military helicopter parked on top that was used by the president. It was a fighting helicopter painted in the jungle camouflage and it looked really cool sitting on the roof. We headed back down through the palace and exited through the back door and walked through the gardens to the exit. We decided to head to the War History Museum that was only a couple blocks away. We made it over there and saw that the museum was closing in about 45 minutes, but we decided to go in anyway because it only cost another 15,000 Dong. Outside the museum there were a whole bunch of military planes, helicopters, tanks, artillery, deactivated bombs, and transport vehicles that were used in the war. It is funny because the Vietnamese do not call it the Vietnam War; they call it the American War which was weird to think about. We had a lot of fun taking pictures of the fighter jets and tanks and then we went inside the museum. The museum was a cube, two stories with one big room on the bottom and a whole bunch of art galleries on the second floor. We walked in and the first few display cases showed different types of ammunition and land mines and the like. The museum was mostly photographs with descriptions, and after walking around for abit, we realized it was very anti-American; nothing like the Hiroshima museum. All the photos and stories were of atrocities committed by American troops during the war. It was really interesting seeing this war displayed from a different perspective. There were lots of photos of people who were affected by Agent Orange (the defoliant used by the Americans to clear the trees and make it easier to spot the Viet Cong) and the napalm bombings. It was a really depressing museum, but it was worth visiting. We left when they started closing up the museum and started meandering our way back to the ship. We found a market that was on our map so we decided to stop by and check it out. The market was inside a big warehouse that I thought it was like an oven. We bought a big bag of Rambutan, which is a small red fruit with spiky hairs on the outside. You peel it open and the interior is very similar to a grape but it has a big pit in the center. We walked around the market for a bit and I bought a chopstick set that came in a nicely carved wooden box and it came with about 5 pairs of chopsticks and chopstick holders. I got it for 100,000 Dong, which was only like five bucks. I love the deals you get there. I was starting to get overheated by this point so we left the market and slowly made our way back to the Rex Hotel. We took the shuttle back to the boat, dropped off our stuff, took a quick shower, then headed back out for dinner. This time around it was Mike, Corena, and I and we just started walking around and looking for a place to eat. We stopped by an outdoor vendor that had a lot of Vietnamese people eating at it. We were about to get food when a man came up and asked if he could help us. Apparently we looked confused. We asked him how to order and he said that this was not the best place around to eat. He was very very nice, and he was apparently from the United States but he was back in Vietnam to visit his family. He gave us directions to an area with a whole bunch of good restaurants that was only a couple blocks away. We thanked him and headed off in the direction he told us to go. We found a good looking restaurant right where he said there would be some and we went inside and ordered some noodles. It was really good. After dinner I split off from Corena and Mike, hopped in a taxi, and went back to the ship. I met up with Carson there and we took a cab to a popular nightclub called Apocalypse Now. We weren’t there for very long, we made the rounds and talked with all the SAS kids that we knew, and afterwards headed back to the ship because we were tired and had to get up early the next morning. We didn’t have the most pleasant taxi ride back. I asked the driver how much it was and he told me a price, and I said ok, but when we got to the ship, he told us that it was per person, something he never told us before. We argued with him for almost a half an hour, before he started getting a little scary and we decided to just pay him and get out of there. He pretty much took most of our money, but I didn’t want to risk anything bad happening. We got back on the ship and went to bed, slightly disheveled from our taxi ride.
        I woke up the next morning at 0630, showered, and packed for my two night trip to the Mekong Delta. We all met in the Union and took roll. Once everybody was there, we left the ship and piled onto a bus. There were about 30 of us total on this trip. Our first bus ride was about two and a half hours up to where we met our boat. We stopped once at an extraordinarily nice rest stop, designed for tourists. There was an artificial pond with lots of lily pads and flowers all round. Surrounding the pond was thatched roofed huts that were restaurants and gift shops. We spent about fifteen minutes here while people used the bathroom and hopped back on the bus. We drove the rest of the way through jungles and small towns until we got to the delta. We got off the bus in a town called Cai Be and headed down to the pier where we applied mosquito repellent, more sunscreen, and got on our boat. Our boat was about thirty feet long, eight feet wide, and made completely of wood. There were rows of folding wooden chairs that ran the length of the boat on both sides. We pulled away from the dock and headed up stream a bit up to a small floating market in a small town. The delta is a huge maze of rivers, creating many islands where small towns reside. We wound our way through a tow, through a floating market. Floating markets are where people fill their boats up with their product, such as fruits, vegetables, and fish. Every boat has a tall pole on it where they hang their product to advertise. For example, if it was a pineapple boat, they would have a single pineapple hanging from the top of the pole. They bring their boat out to the middle of the river, throw out an anchor, and just sit and wait all day as people come and go in their own boats, buying their product. We wound our way through the boats into the center of this town where we docked and walked around. We walked into the heart of the town where we got to go inside a rice net paper factory. Rice net paper is a thin white net-looking pancake made of rice, that you can use like a tortilla. There was about a group of 30 women, sitting in front of small stoves with frying pans on them and a bowl of white liquid between their legs. The white liquid is just rice mashed up finely with water. They have a can with a few holes in the bottom where they scoop up some of the liquid, and drizzle it through the holes over the frying pan. They spread a thin layer over it, let it cook for about ten seconds, then sweep it out with a brush. Each woman made about 2,000 rice net paper sheets per day. It was like an oven in that building and I was fairly grateful when we left. We walked down the street farther where we went to see a coconut candy factory and a popped rice factory. When I say factory, you probably imagine a big brick building with lots of machines and conveyor belts. These factories were just wooden huts, that were open to the air and only had a few machines because most of the work was done by hand. For the coconut candy they cut a coconut in half and grind it up against a twirling grinder where the coconut meat gets finely shredded. When the meat is fine enough, they pour it into a bowl with water over a fire. It is cool to see because they use the leftover coconut husk to fuel the fire, they don’t waste any part. They simmer the meat with water and add in a lot of sugar. It turned into a molasses type fluid which they pour out and let harden and cut into small pieces. We all got to try a piece and it was delicious. After the coconut candy factory, we went right across the street to the popped rice factory. Here they had a huge bowl that was filled with super heated river sediment. They reuse the sediment every batch so it is very dry and burned black by the heat. They throw in a normal pile of rice, and it pops open, just like popcorn. It turns into pretty much Rice Crispies. From there they put it through a strainer where they separate the rice from the sediment. Once the popped rice is separated, they put it into a big bowl where they pour a sweet molasses over it. They then stir up the rice, spreading the molasses evenly making it stick together. They then press it down into a mould and cut it up into little squares using two large sword-like knives. After we saw this demonstration, we got to sit at little tables where we got served tea and little platters of assorted candy. They had coconut candy, ginger candy, rice candy, banana candy, and others. We also got to try Snake Wine, which is made by taking rice wine and putting a whole snake in the bottle. The venom from the snake is dissolved by the ethanol of the rice wine and is rendered harmless. The bottle looks rather scary, the one I saw had a snake that was posed in a curled position and they even put a scorpion in the snake’s mouth. It didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would, but it’s still not my drink of choice. After this small break, we walked down a couple houses to a Fish Sauce factory. I am not the biggest fan of fish sauce and the smell was overwhelming. Fish sauce is made from letting fish ferment and adding salt. Some different types use other herbs and spices, but not all. We saw big barrels of this stuff, about eight feet high and six feet in diameter. We walked around for a bit, but there wasn’t much to see because it was just fermenting fish. We walked out of the factory and the boat came around to meet us right outside of the Fish Sauce factory. We re-boarded our boat and it took us down the river a ways where we hopped off again and went for a brief walk. We walked down a small dirt path that followed a small tributary of the delta. The river was on our left and local’s houses were on our right. The houses were all fairly small, but decorated very nicely. They all had big front gardens with fruit trees and flowers. Along this walk we crossed a few small footbridges and got passed by a few motorbike riders. We walked for about twenty minutes until we got to a small restaurant type relaxation area. We sat down and we got plates of fresh local vegetables. We got watermelon, jack fruit, mangoes, and other fruits. After we tried these delicious fruits we got about twenty minutes to take a break. There were hammocks spread everywhere so most of us laid down and rested. I sat in the hammock for a bit before getting up and exploring the gardens around the rest area. When it was time to go, we all walked back to the small tributary where we got to go for a rowboat ride. It was three people to a boat, that was built like gondolas from Italy, and in the back a Vietnamese person stood up and rowed with oars that were attached to posts on both sides of the boat. I rode with Carson and Sarah and about halfway down, Carson asked if she could try rowing. After a wobbly exchange of places, Carson tried to get the boat moving but somehow the boat ended up in a tree that was along the bank. With a little help from the guide, we got back into the middle of the river and we zigzagged our way down the river a bit. When Carson was done Sarah got up and gave it a shot. Sarah was able to go a little straighter than Carson, but she was much more wobbly standing up in the back of the boat and almost flipped it about three times. Boats started going by us so our guide took over again so we wouldn’t get in their way. We got back to where our boat was where we did a mid-river transfer from our little rowboats back onto our motorboat. We were served coconuts when we got back on board and made our way to where we were spending the night. We spent the night in a bungalow on one of the tributaries of the delta. It was family owned, and they had about three houses with beds for all of us. The building was literally over the river, and they had a big outdoor deck with tables and hammocks where we all hung out. They also had a huge garden with many fruit trees and other plants. I could hardly tell what any of them were. We all decided to go for a swim, which probably wasn’t the best idea due to the leeches and all the other dangerous critters that were in the water, but most of us hopped in anyway. There was a small pier that we could jump off of, and the river was about 5 meters deep, which is a lot deeper than I had expected. We had so much fun swimming around, taking pictures and videos, and jumping off the pier. We swam for about an hour before getting out, rinsing off, and changing back into our normal clothes. That swim was much needed because it was unbearably hot and humid. After our swim, we all played cards for a bit and walked through the garden. Dinner was served to us out on the deck overlooking the river. We were served fish, prawns, soup, and other traditional foods. It was all very good. The fish was very big and it came whole, with its head and fins and everything. It was placed in the middle of the table and we had to peel off the meat we wanted. After dinner a local Vietnamese band came and played traditional music for us. All the songs they sang were also stories, and the two singers, a man and a woman, acted out the stories as they sang. One story was about a man working in the field and the wife bringing him lunch and another was about the man and woman meeting. We could not understand the lyrics of the songs, but our guide gave us a brief synopsis of what each song was about. After the music, we played cards for a bit longer before heading to bed fairly early. We all talked in our rooms for a long time before we actually fell asleep. It felt a lot like summer camp.
We woke up early the next morning and had a delicious breakfast of freshly baked rolls, eggs, and fruits. We hopped back on the boat, waved goodbye to the owners of the bungalow, and headed downriver. We went back to one of the main rivers where we stopped at a brick making factory. There were huge furnaces for heating the bricks and it was all really impressive. They also did decorative pieces there and there were cats, dogs, fish, and other cool statues. We got back on the boat and made our way to a big town where we disembarked and walked through a market. This was a very traditional market with lots of things you would never see in the United States. There were rats, ducklings, snakes, pigs, squid, crabs, and a plethora of other items. We walked through the market out to the street where we met our bus which took us to our hotel, about two hours away on another island. We had to take a car ferry across which was pretty cool. There were tons of people just crowded in this portal to be allowed onto the ferry which sometimes took half an hour for them to get through. Once they were allowed to cram on to the ferry they got the pleasure of sitting with lots of other people in the heat. Most of these people were wearing long-sleeves, something that I really couldn’t understand as I was sweating in short sleeves. There was one old man on the ferry that was blind and the way he made money was by playing a guitar type instrument that was made out of a stick and a metal bowl (and obviously some strings). It took about 10 minutes to get across and meet back up with our bus only to find out that some people had just stayed on the air conditioned bus the whole time and rode the ferry while inside of the bus. It was quite an experience. We went from the ferry to lunch which was in the second story of a nice open air restaurant. We got the usual: soup, chicken, fish, all in different sauces. The main desert was Banana Flambé which came out on a plate that was still on fire. After lunch we made our way to Soc Trang, a town farther inland where we went to a Buddhist temple, which was probably one of the strangest things I have ever seen. It wasn’t a temple like you would expect. It looked more like a crazy religious carnival. There were a whole bunch of brightly painted shrines inside a big one room building. There were Christmas lights and flashing lights everywhere. It was very noisy and jammed packed with people. Outside was the main statue of the Buddha and other smaller shrines. It was very busy and I think this was mainly because it was still the end of Chinese New Year. This was the most colorful temple I have ever seen and it looked like a funhouse. After this temple, we went to another one called the Khleng Pagoda on the other side of the city that was much more like I pictured a temple to be. It had big spires and was donned in gold trim. We went inside where there sat a giant golden Buddha and incense and candles in front of it. The walls and windows had intricate pictures and carvings of plants and animal looking things. We left the inside of the temple and walked to the side, where we accidentally came across a funeral. It was very very sad and I felt awkward for being there, but it was interesting to see other traditions. We left this area fairly quickly and headed back to the bus. We drove back to the hotel, which was called the Ninh Kieu 2, where we checked in and then we got the rest of the day until dinner for free time. My roommate for this trip was Kevin, a hilarious and quirky guy. Carson and I went across the street to the local supermarket where we bought avocadoes, spices, limes, and chips because we were really craving guacamole. We came back to the hotel room and cut up the avocados only to discover that they are not the same as they are in the US. They were hard and tasted funky, they could have just not been ripe, but they weren’t suitable for guacamole. We cut them up, and tried to mash them with a fork, only to discover that it was incredibly hard and when I tried to mash them, they would slip out from under the fork and go flying across the room. We eventually gave up on our experiment and as we were cleaning up, some friends knocked and we let them in. We hung out in the room with a couple more people until it was time to go to dinner. We went to a very nice riverside outdoor restaurant. We got served mango fish, soup, prawns, and more. The food in Vietnam is very sweet. They use a lot of fruits and sweet spices in their cooking which I thoroughly enjoy due to my unquenchable sweet tooth. They also use a lot of mint in Vietnamese food, and the combination of mint and sugar is quite good. After dinner, the majority of the group decided to walk back to the hotel which wasn’t very far away. We wandered up and down a local market that sold mostly clothes. After exploring the street that followed the river, we stopped in a local bar where we got a quick drink. We sat around and talked for about a half an hour and then decided to make our way back to the hotel. We got back to our rooms, chatted for a bit, and then went to sleep.
We woke the next morning and had a very nice breakfast on the top floor of the hotel. We could see over the whole city. When we were done with breakfast, we hopped on the bus, went down to the river, got on our boat and headed for the Cai Rang floating market; it’s one of the busiest in the delta. There were hundreds of boats anchored in the river and even more smaller boats darting form anchored boat to anchored boat. I was amazed how well our boat captain was able to navigate so well through all of them. Also, people don’t really care too much if you hit their boat, so there was a fair bit of bumping going on. We meandered our way up the maze of boats and back down. We pulled up next to a big pineapple boat where they were cutting up fresh pineapples and selling them for just 10,000 Dong. They would cut the skin off the pineapple and cut out the little spikes, and give you the whole pineapple on a stick. It was delicious, fresh, and juicy. We pulled off from this boat and weaved our way to small tributary where we stopped by a local house. We went inside and saw how they made rice noodles. It is very similar to making rice paper: they use the mixture of rice and water, spread it into a circle, steam it, then let it dry out in the sun. When it is dry, they put it through a shredder that cuts it into long noodles. In the back of the house they had one huge female pig that was probably about six feet long. There were also about eight or so smaller pigs in other pens. After looking around we got back on the boat and went back to the pier where our bus was. We drove back to the hotel where we checked out and had lunch down in the lobby. We hopped back on the bus and it was time to head back to Ho Chi Minh. The bus ride back was over five hours, most of which was spent in line for the car ferry. This time we stayed on the bus because it was very busy and the bus had to get on and off the ferry really fast. The rest of the bus ride back was fairly uneventful, going through jungles and small towns along the way. We arrived back in Ho Chi Minh around 1800 and re boarded the ship. I took a much needed shower and cooled off in the air conditioning for a bit before Carson and I headed out to the market again. We took the shuttle to the Rex Hotel and walked down a block to where there was a whole street filled with movie vendors. Each movie was 10,000 Dong which is only about 50 cents. They had hundreds of movies including new releases. They also had seasons of TV shows for sale. I ended up buying eight movies and the Simpsons box. I got 20 seasons of the Simpsons for 440,000 Dong, which is about 22 dollars. That is slightly over a dollar a season. I wish I had bought so much more. After we were done buying movies we walked back to the main street and looked for a place for dinner. I really wanted Pho (pronounced Fuh), which is a Vietnamese noodle soup, and it is apparently extraordinarily tasty. We found a restaurant that we had heard about called Pho 24 and we sat down and got a bowl. It was just as good as everyone had said. I thought it was delicious and afterwards we hopped back on the shuttle and went back to the ship. When we got back we just went to bed because we were really tired.
The next morning I woke up at 0600 and got ready for my trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu Chi Tunnels are the tunnels that the Viet Cong built during the Vietnam War and the soldiers pretty much lived in these expansive tunnel networks performing guerilla style warfare on the Americans, then quickly disappearing back into their tunnels. We got on a bus where I met the new interport student from India. Before every country, we get a new interport student that travels with us from the country we were just at to their home country. The interport student’s name is Vikram, and he is a third year medical student in India. He had just gotten on the ship the day before, so he didn’t know anyone or too much about SAS. We sat together on the bus, and we talked for a bit before we both fell asleep. It was still really early. We awoke when the bus stopped at a rubber tree plantation. Our tour guide wanted to take a quick stop here before we got to the tunnels because rubber is a big export of Vietnam. There were hundreds of trees, all planted in rows, as far as the eye could see. We gathered around one and our tour guide took out a set of keys and scraped a line into the tree with one of the keys. A white viscous fluid started seeping out, which he explained was the main component for rubber. He said they cut holes in all of these trees and let it seep out into buckets that they collect it in. We wandered through the trees for about fifteen minutes before making our way to the tunnels. We arrived and it was actually pretty crowded. There were a bunch of other tourist busses there. We entered the main area and we all sat down and watched a video about the tunnels. The video was made during the Vietnam War and it was very anti-American. It was really interesting to see, and they talked about stories of hero American-killers. After the movie, we walked along the path of the park, stopping at all the little exhibits. The first place we stopped was an un-altered entrance to the tunnels. It was incredibly small, designed so American soldiers could not get in. We all got to take turns sliding down and take turns with our heads popping out. I barely managed to squeeze into the hole, but coming out I got stuck. I had to undo my belt because my buckle was getting caught on the lip of the hole. Once I did that, I was able to slide back out again. The next exhibit we saw was a leftover booby trap; it was one where there was a teeter-totter trap door covering a hole with spikes at the bottom. I would not want to fall into one of those. We walked along the path some more through craters still left over from bombs that were dropped on the area. We saw some other tunnel entrances and even a air vent cleverly disguised as a termite mound. Along the path there was a building with demonstrations of a whole bunch of different types of booby traps. They all looked excruciatingly painful and effective. The spikes were also lined with a neurotoxin, so if the trap didn’t kill you, you would still be poisoned. We walked a ways until we got to the main visitor center and shooting range. At this shooting range you could shoot pretty much any gun used during the war. They had AK-47s, M16s, M1 Garands, and Brownings. You had to buy ten bullets minimum if you wanted to shoot one, so me and five other people decided to share a clip. We bought a clip for an AK-47 and we were escorted down to the range. I just wanted to shoot one bullet to say I shot an AK. Down in the range it was deafening. There were other guns going off, and I had no idea how loud these guns actually were. The worker put the bullets into the gun and we all took turns firing. It was incredibly loud and the recoil was stronger than I expected. My right ear was ringing for a long time afterward, and I can’t imagine being in an actual war with those going off all the time. We came back up from the range, but we couldn’t find our group. From this point the trail branched off in many different directions and we just guessed which one our group went. We wandered around, looking for our group but had no luck. We decided to explore on our own and we found an entrance to a tunnel that you could go all the way through. It was a lot hotter than I expected in the tunnel. I thought it would be cooler because it was below ground, but it was probably a good ten degrees hotter. You couldn’t stand, and you either had to crawl or walk whilst being bent over. It was really dark in the tunnel (there were scattered small lights) and to see we used the flashes from our camera to get quick glimpses of where we were going. We emerged from beneath the earth about 100 meters from where we started. We slowly walked back to the entrance and where the bus was, stopping at exhibits, and looking at the scenery. We exited the park and sat down and waited for the rest of our group, and they came out about ten minutes later. We got back on the bus and went to lunch in a village about an hour away from the tunnels. We had another delicious meal of soup, spring rolls, chicken, and noodles. After lunch, we walked around the local village, visiting with two local families. The first house we went to was very small, and only really one room. There was one bed and the toilet was outside. There was no shower and only a big tub outside for washing. We talked with the woman who lived there and found out that she only makes 50,000 Dong per day, which is not even three dollars. The next house we went to was just as small. There was only one woman there, and her husband had died a few years ago, so most of the house was dedicated as a shrine to him. There were photos and little trinkets with candles surrounding them. Out in the street, there were little kids playing. We played with one kid who was riding his bike around. He only had one training wheel so he leaned far to the right as he rode so he wouldn’t tip over. My friend Sarah had little toys that she was giving to kids she saw. She gave this little boy a bouncy ball and a rubber lizard. He was fascinated by the bouncy ball but didn’t really know what to do with the lizard and he dropped it on the ground to play with the ball. An older kid, around our age, came up behind him, grabbed the lizard and put it down the smaller boy’s shirt. The little boy freaked out and started spinning, trying to get the lizard out. We all had a good laugh before continuing onwards through the town. We walked along a dirt road to the other side of the town while being followed by little boys and girls. We got to the other side of the town where there was a huge mint farm. There are many types of mint plants and the ones we saw were young and not more than two feet tall. The field was very extensive, and way on the horizon was a tall egg shaped mountain, in fact, the only mountain I had seen in Vietnam. Southern Vietnam is very flat and mostly jungle and marshlands, while Northern Vietnam is very mountainous and hilly. We met the two ladies who watched over the farm and walked around a while. Afterwards, we made our way back through the small town and got back on the bus for our two hour ride back. I sat with Vikram again and I got a really awesome private question and answer session the whole way back. I asked him all about India and learned more about it in that two hour bus ride than I would have learned from hours of schooling. We got back to the ship about thirty minutes before on-ship time so I just stayed on the ship and relaxed. I talked with my friends, discussing what they did in Vietnam, before heading back to my room and falling asleep.
The ship departed the next day at 0600. I had an 0800 class so I was up by 0700 and watched us make our way back down the Saigon River. We got back to the open ocean and headed south to get to India.

Today is the last day on the ship before we get two India, and a few noteworthy things happened on the journey travelling on the South China Sea, through the Strait of Malacca, and across the Bay of Bengal to India. The first cool thing was we had to stop and anchor off the coast of Singapore for a whole day as we refueled. We anchored among about ten huge tanker ships while a smaller fueling vessel came up and latched onto our side. We were surrounded by small islands, and on one of the islands there was a huge oil refinery. I am guessing this is a main refueling port for ships going from East Asia to Africa or India. The coolest thing about this was that where we were refueling was a main area for pirate attacks, so all day we had a military warship circle and protect us. It had two huge front cannons and a whole bunch of side turrets. Not only was there a warship circling us, but we occasionally got a flyover by military reconnaissance planes. We were well protected. I spent most of this day up on the 7th deck, swimming in the pool, lying in the sun, watching the ships and planes. Another awesome thing about this area was that in the oil refinery, there were a few smokestacks jutting out from the complex. One of these smokestacks had a small flame coming out the top, and about every twenty to thirty minutes a huge fireball would erupt from this smokestack. The fireball would erupt about 200 feet into the air and then burn out into a thick black cloud. It was really awesome. I tried to take pictures, but it was so hot and humid that the air inside the lens of my camera condensed the water due to the difference of temperature and fogged up the lens. We spent all day anchored there and pulled out around 1800.
The next notable event was the Sea Olympics. This is a huge event on Semester at Sea, and how well you perform determines when you can get off the ship back in Florida. My sea, the Mediterranean Sea, is composed of most of the rooms on the third floor port side. Our color was green and we all represented. I wore a green shirt, painted my face green, and wrapped up uncovered limbs with green yarn. The other seas are the Caribbean, Baltic, Arabian, Adriatic, Red, Yellow, Bering, and, since the kids and lifelong learners are not part of any sea, they created their own team called the Salty Sea Monkeys. There was a whole bunch of different events like crab soccer, dance competitions, relay races, and tug-o-war. My event (the best event) was Synchronized Swimming. We had to make a three minute routine and perform in front of the whole ship. The song we chose was a spliced up compilation of Bella Noche, Cha Cha Slide, Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy), and more. My friend Natali and I were the main choreographers and we preformed with my next door neighbors Anela and Ashley. It was really fun performing in front of about 500 people, showing off my amazing synchronized swimming skills. The events were all day, from 0930 to about 1800. My event was at 1400, and I spent the rest of the day going from event to event supporting my teammates. All day the Mediterranean Sea was in third place, battling for second or first. The way the scoring works is you get certain points for getting 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, and you get more or less points depending on the event. They displayed the scores on the TVs around the ship so you could see who was in which place, but there were certain events, like Synchronized Swimming, Lip-sync contest, and whatnot where the scores were not told until the closing ceremony, which kept who was going to win a surprise all day. The closing ceremony was at 2000 that night, and we got our scores. My synchronized swimming team didn’t place, but we didn’t really care too much. Our dance team got 1st place which is probably the main event so everyone went crazy when we heard that news. The last thing they announced before they said who was the final victor was the Spirit Award. They had secret Spirit Police going around the ship all day looking to see which sea had the best sportsmanship , who supported their teammates the best, and who just was overall the most into Sea Olympics Day. In many people’s opinion, this is one of the best awards it win, considering the whole day was based around spirit. It turns out that the Mediterranean won that award which when announced made everyone go crazy. They then announced the final standings and the Mediterranean ended up getting 3rd place overall. It was an exhausting day, but well worth all the spent energy.
The last cool thing that happened on the trip to India was we passed through the Nicabar Islands, one of the most isolated and undeveloped island chains in the world. They looked like normal islands, but apparently it is almost impossible to get there. There are no airports, and you have to get permission from the Indian government to go there. The cool thing was, we circled one of the islands (it looked like a normal island) but it had a huge shipwreck sitting on the beach that had gotten washed up by the 2004 tsunami. It was a giant passenger ship that was probably the size of our MV Explorer, and it was amazing to see it sitting on its side on the beach. It really showed us the power of the ocean. The rest of the crossing was uneventful, filled with classes and sunbathing. I am really excited for India and I will update again when I get back on the ship!