Good morning Vietnam! :-)

Hi from VIETNAM!!!!
We got into Ho Chi Minh city yesterday morning, it was pretty cool actually, we went down the Saigon river in order to get to the pier, so we got a really great view of everything on our way in. We got to the pier around noon. We had an awesome greeting with some women wearing the typical sort of flattened cone-shaped hats made of straw and beautiful Vietnamese dresses and they were standing on the pier with a huge sign that said “SEMESTER AT SEA WELCOME TO VIETNAM”. Oh and of course Bob, the guy who makes announcements over the loudspeaker on the ship woke us up yesterday morning with “Gooooooood morning Vietnam!!!!”haha. Cute. Bob was in a good mood because his wife was coming to visit him in Vietnam, as were the parents of some of the students, so it was an even better welcome to see the parents and other family members of people on the ship waving and cheering and holding signs with their kid’s name on it and whatnot as we came in. I hope it’s like that when we get into Miami at the end!

So once we got off the ship some friends and I immediately looked for food. We ate in a fodcourt of a sort of mall-ish place and I had some really good Thai food. Then we did some wandering around and shopping. The city is really cool! I like it a lot so far! It’s very hot and humid, and it rained really hard late in the afternoon. While it was raining we found a little ice cream shop and sat and ate ice cream and watched the millions of people go by on motor bikes. The traffic in Vietnam is the most shocking part I guess. It’s a lot like India but faster moving. I think the traffic laws are more abided by in Vietnam so there’s less congestion from people ignoring lanes but there are still SO many people that it’s quite exciting trying to cross the street. We figured out that the trick is to either watch the locals and walk when they do or else just start walking, walk at a slow and steady pace, don’t stop and don’t turn back and they just kind of go around you on their bikes, haha!

So we did some shopping, wandering, and crossing streets most of yesterday, and then in the evening I went to a jazz club which is owned by a friend of one of my professors, it was SO cool! Amazing performances, good food and drinks, it was awesome. I had a great time. Then last night I got to use some free internet on the ship to register for my classes and do a little chatting online with friends, which was good :-) sooo yesterday was a great day! Today we are going back out to do a little more shopping/looking around and maybe going out for dinner or something. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day I’ll be going to the war remnants museum here in Ho Chi Minh which should be really interesting! It’s so strange to be here in Vietnam…and think about what it must have been like here around 50 years ago with the war going on, and protests going on at home…crazy. It will be interesting to see the museum and what they have there.

Oh yeah and I got some of my Malaysia photos up on flickr so go check them out!

Bye for now!