Goodbye Vietnam...

Well my adventures in Vietnam are coming to an end. We all have to be on the ship tonight, as we are leaving Vietnam tomorrow morning at 6am, which is actually tonight for all of you…oh yeah, that reminds me, Happy Election Day! :-) Make good choices! Hehe. I’ve heard that we’re going to get some kind of live coverage or updates of the election while we’re at sea, but it will take a few days anyways for the final decision to be made so by the time we get to China (on Thursday) maybe we’ll know who our new president is!

So I visited the war museum here a few days ago, it was very intense, interesting, depressing, inspiring…everything. There were some really good photos as part of the displays that I thought was the best part. There was a section dedicated to victims of Agent Orange, which was very sad. And I found out that in fact there are still many people affected by it because for one thing it stays in the soil and when it’s turned for crops and stuff there’s still Agent Orange properties released and children are still being born with pretty horrible birth defects. In fact I saw a few people on the streets begging who I think must have been victims of Agent Orange poison. It’s very sad to see. And awful to think that something bad like that is STILL causing pain and suffering for a lot of people years after the war is over. Anyways there was also an interesting section of the museum that was dedicated to photographers during that time who were killed. Their photographs were displayed and there were little biographies about each photographer. I also really enjoyed seeing the section dedicated to the protests and resistance to the war that was going on all over the world. It wasn’t just Vietnam and the United States either, my friend from Bangladesh recognized a poster written in Bangla, which was promoting peace that was hanging in the museum. There were photos and posters and flags from lots of different countries! Another cool part of the museum was a room filled with artwork of Vietnamese children portraying war, peace, and their views on how war affects the world. It was very cool.

The same day I visited the war museum, I also went to the Notre Dame cathedral downtown, which is a smaller replica of the one in France! It was pretty cool. Then I spent a day on the ship, catching up on homework…it wasn’t the most fun day but it was good to get stuff done. I still have a lot to do but hopefully I can get more done in the next few days. This morning I visited an elementary school as part of an SAS trip, and that was pretty fun! It was a pretty nice school actually. It was the nicest one I’ve visited in any of the countries so far. The kids seemed to get a lot of good resources and materials. They had a computer lab with maybe 60 or 70 computers, where they were learning typing and also working on English. The kids learn English and French for about 30 minutes every day and the rest of the day they are taught in Vietnamese. We got to play with the kids for a little while and then we sat in on a couple classes, just kind of observing from the back of the room. The kids kept asking us to sign their notebooks, like we were celebrities! After the school visit I came back to the ship, ate lunch, took a nap, and then went back out for a few hours to use internet in the food court of a nearby mall. I haven’t been able to post my Vietnam photos yet but hopefully soon! Then I went out for some “Fo”(pronounced something like “Fah”) which is a great Vietnamese dish. It’s kind of like chicken noodle soup but with more exciting things added to it, and you eat it with chopsticks. You can get it with chicken or beef, and it’s very good! After that we returned to the ship, because we are all supposed to be back by 9pm. So tonight I’m just working on some homework, emailing, and writing this blog. I’ve got 2 days at sea and then we arrive in Hong Kong Thursday. We spend 2 days there and then move on to Shanghai.

I guess that’s about it for now…I hope everyone at home is doing well! Keep those emails coming :-)