Finally final day in Vietnam

3/31/09
24:00

I am going to finish Vietnam right now.

So on my final day in Vietnam I wanted to do something cultural.  The ship has a list of things to do independently while in port and Disha had seen something about a university visit to meet Vietnamese students.  She wrote down the name and Lia, Disha and I each hopped on a motorcycle taxi and asked them to take us to the address.   Our drivers took us to the correct address, but it wasn’t a university it was a middle school.   After talking with a school official for a bit, he gave our drivers an address for an actual university and they took us there.  This detour caused a discrepancy over the price for our rides, because motorcycle taxis are not metered…obviously.  We eventually got a relatively good price and headed into the university grounds.

We picked a fabulous day to visit this university, whose name escapes me at the moment.  They were holding a festival in the courtyard, there were booths of student projects, artwork, research.  It was actually kind of similar to a science fair.  We walked into the courtyard and all eyes were on us immediately.  I can’t imagine what people were thinking.

As we passed one booth, some girls offered us this drink.  And it was delicious.  It had some molasses-like texture mixed with water and then they put peanuts in it.  Yummyyy.  After the girl offered us this drink, other students saw that we were friendly and approachable and began to come and practice their English on us or take our pictures.  One guy took us to his booth and showed Lia how to tie really complex knots.  She struggled. We walked to a few more booths and then Disha exclaimed, “Hannah they’re painting over there!”

Well, we couldn’t NOT go over and check it out. Disha, Lia and I picked up a brush and began painting rudimentary pictures of our ship, or the world, or flags.  At this booth, one student introduced herself to us.  Her name was Nyung (sp) and we became fast friends.  She spoke English pretty well and is 20 years old, like all of us.  She was the sweetest girl.  So nice, always smiling, mild-mannered.  She watched us paint and then she saw me taking pictures of other students’ artwork.  She went over to one of the students who had painted the picture I was photographing and asked if I could have the picture.  She gave it to me and it is now in my art journal. How nice is that?

While Disha was painting she befriended a guy named Tan.  He told her that his name means “new” and her name means “direction.”  New direction.  I like that.  Very symbolic of the relationship Vietnam holds with the US, I think.

Once we had finished with our painting masterpieces, a bunch of students came out dressed in black holding long, wooden sticks and gave us a karate-fighting presentation.  And then another student sang a few songs.  So much talent.  Sooo glad we went to this school.  We asked Nyung if she would give us a tour of the university and she happily complied.  Students were playing carnival-like games in another courtyard.  Everyone was so joyous.  Nyung showed us the science wing of the school, as she is a chemistry major.  We walked past the parking lot that was brimming with scooters and bicycles.  As we toured the campus, Nyung told us about her family: two older sisters, one younger sister and one younger brother.  Her older sisters have both finished school, one studied to become a teacher and the other majored in economics. 

Lia and Disha wanted to get in some last-minute shopping on this day as well, so we told Nyung our intentions and she wanted to accompany us.  I’m pretty sure she didn’t have any classes that day.  Nyung took us to a really nice mall but since this trip, regular malls have become way too expensive for our standards so we only browsed there.  Then she took us to a store that was kind of like a Vietnamese Walmart.  On our way to this store we passed a store selling bubble tea/juice.  Bubble tea is the best thing ever.  You can get many different flavors of juice or tea and then there are big tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup.  We asked Nyung what her favorite flavor was and she said chocolate so we each got a chocolate bubble tea.  Soo good.

After our bubble tea stop, we decided to head back to the marketplace to do some cheap, cheap shopping. We all had gifts to buy and Lia and I wanted to buy big, fake Northface backpacks for our Japan travels.  The market was crazy as usual.  Hectic. The aisles in between shops are miniscule, which is fine for tiny Vietnamese people...but not for me.  Everyone was trying to squeeze past me.  I kept saying “uh oh traffic jam,” and Nyung laughed every time.  I loved making her laugh.  She was just so nice. 

Also vendors were hassling us constantly, “What do you want?  T-shirt?  I have t-shirt..sit down…try on.” Shut up.  Lia and Disha aren’t very good at saying NO.  If I don’t want something I just say no and keep walking, but they slow down and look around and then get roped into difficult situations.  One time a vendor held on tightly to Lia’s arm when she tried to leave without buying something.  I had to pry her fingers off.  After this situation I told Lia and Disha never to point to something they wanted, just to use their eyes. Disha walked around pretending she was blind.  Nyung loved that. 

After we had done a sufficient amount of shopping, while Nyung patiently supervised our transactions, we stopped at Pho24 for lunch.  Pho is a type of Vietnamese soup with noodles and meat.  You eat it with chopsticks and let me just say I am horrendous at using chopsticks.  I am usually a pretty fast and big eater, but chopsticks prevent my typical eating habits because I can only pick up like one noodle at a time and it takes me 5 minutes to pick up that one noodle.  Nyung thought my chopstick skills were hilarious.  We treated Nyung to lunch and thanked her profusely for coming with us.  There were hugs and e-mail exchanges.  And we said our farewells so we could go pick up our dresses.  Stupid dresses.  I don’t even want to write about that anymore, because I have spent enough time devoted to that dumb dress that didn’t even turn out well.

But I am so so so so happy that we met Nyung and that she spent the day with us.  She was so kind and helpful and open with us.  Do you think students in the US would just walk up to some stranger on their campus and show them around their school and city?  I seriously doubt it.  But now I want to do that.

Disha and I headed back to the ship, while Lia went off to run an errand for a friend from home.  We dropped our bags off and ran into Keith, Steve, and Hussain.  Disha and I had to go back out in the city one last time to pick up our dresses after the last alteration (last mention of stupid dresses) and Hussain wanted to come with.  The stupid dresses (now last mention) weren’t ready so we decided to go get more bubble tea.  We are obsessed.  The tailor directed us where to go and we set off to find bubble tea.

Well, I think the tailor had a lot more work to do or something because this bubble tea was like 2 miles away and since we thought it was close we had decided to walk.  We finally found a place that sold bubble tea, I don’t know if it was the place the tailor had in mind.  Disha and I got passion juice and Hussain got kiwi juice.  We liked Hussain’s better so we also bought kiwi and Hussain wanted to try strawberry so he got that.  A treat for later, right?

Our time was running out so we decided to take a taxi back to the tailor’s.  We saw a guy on a motorcycle who was accepting money from this woman so we approached him asking for a ride.  He listened to us and seemed to be nodding along.  We showed him the address we needed to go to and then asked if we could get another motorcycle taxi for Hussain or if we could all fit on his bike.  He, then, promptly started his bike and drove off.  Didn’t even look back.  We were all like, “What just happened?”  I don’t know if we offended him or if he even was a taxi.  It was nuts.  And hilarious.  So then we just took a regular taxi, picked up our stupid dresses and headed back to the ship, bubble tea in hand.

Great day.  Vietnam was awesome.  I would like to go back and do less shopping and more exploring.  Who’s with me?