How to Vietnam @kvinsaigon-blog - Tumblr Blog

Map of the places I stayed, ate, and saw during my time studying in Saigon, Vietnam.

The best way to see Cambodian countryside is to drive through it yourself. Mom, don't worry...we had driving lessons AND wore helmets.

Update from our traveling seminar...we found another beach.

Discovering more corners of Saigon

Vung Tàu

Abby, Liz, Emily, and I decided to take advantage of our first weekend after spring break to go on a beach vacation to nearby Vung Tau. I was eager to check out this beach town because my older sister lived just 20 minutes away. I had heard about the beaches and giant Jesus and Indian food and was finally able to experience them for myself.

We took the hydrofoil boat from Ho Chi Minh City to Vung Tau. Only one and a half hours, compared to the 2 hour bus ride.

The beach was very crowded an littered with garbage, but the water and the sun made it worth our while.

We climbed 900 stairs to the top of a hill where Christ the King of Vung Tàu stands. It is the second largest statue of Jesus in the world, 6 m shorter than Rio’s Jesus. Unfortunately, we were all wearing shorts and were not able to climb up to Jesus’s shoulders, as it is a holy site. The views at the base were beautiful, nonetheless.

Our Easter morning consisted of climbing up to see giant Jesus and eating French toast at an Australian deli -- pretty perfect!

Ninh Binh -- I spent most of this leg of the trip sick in bed

Ha Long Bay

Hiking in Sa Pa

Today was our first day back to May 15 School, and the kids wrote this on the board for Emily and me!

Train to Ninh Binh

Another vacation

It seems that many of my friends and family think that I am vacationing for four months. I assure you that is not the case, but sometimes it feels like that. This past week, the five girls on my program have been traveling throughout northern Vietnam for our spring break - Ha Long Bay, Sa Pa, and Ninh Binh with many stopovers in Hanoi. So far we've taking one taxi, one plane, three trains, one boat, and four shuttle buses. This is in addition to the 30 miles we hiked in Sa Pa. And we're not done yet! We're currently on our train to Ninh Binh, where I assume we will do a lot of relaxing.

The war preserved

Yesterday, all of us American students and our Vietnamese went on a day trip to Cu Chi with our program director. Cu Chi was one of the main sites where the Vietnam War was fought. The National Liberation Front, or the Communist guerrillas, created a system of tunnels in the area outside of the town. Because of their invisibility in this region, it was near impossible for the Americans to fight them. The United States declared these area to be a free fire zone. As a result, the ground is dotted with bomb craters, and graves to soldiers and civilians alike. We were able to crawl through a small portion of the tunnels (although widened for the convenience of large tourists) to get a sense of how the guerrillas lived. I still had to double over in order to walk through the tunnels, and at times the only light I had was the flash of my camera.

Visiting this site as an American student was a harrowing experience. It gave us the chance to see the conflict from the Vietnamese point of view, complicating the situation even more. It was very interesting to have our roommates there to share what they had been taught about the war, as opposed to what we had learned. The site had reconstructed the villages as they may have looked during the war. Part of this reconstruction included the creepiest mannequins I’ve ever seen. I don’t really understand why this was necessary, and the schoolhouse full of plaster children really freaked me out. It was as if they tried to preserve life and accomplished this is the creepiest way.

Below is a market scene featuring real, fresh fruit and its inanimate vendor...

This was definitely a very interesting visit, but I feel like it leaves me with more questions than it answers about the American/Vietnamese conflict, and it was obviously sobering to be in the spot of so much fighting and death. Time for some more research. I realize this is a creepy, depressing post, so I leave you with a picture of adorable little boys playing outside of a theater showing a documentary of the war.

These are some of the weirdest photos taken while in the Mekong Delta, but they are also my most favorite.

Sad to be going back to classes tomorrow morning, but happy to be back in the air conditioning.

Back to being tourists

After two weeks of feeling like a real Saigoneer - going to classes and teaching at May 15 -- we returned to the lifestyle of a tourist. Thursday afternoon, Christophe took those of us in the Visualizing Southeast Asia course to the Reunification Palace. This held the offices of South Vietnam before the end of the war, and it is infamous for the picture of gate-crushing tanks that reunified North and South Vietnam. These tanks are now displayed in the palace's front lawn. Now tourists visit the palace, as it is no longer used by the government. Christophe encouraged us to take lots of pictures of the building and its rooms -- very 1960s, very imperial. It was a very strange place to visit, but we enjoyed snapping photos and photobombing (Liz) strangers and security guards.

The next morning, the five Americans, Nghi, Phuong, and Vu (our program coordinator) headed off to the Mekong Delta for the weekend -- again tourists. The Delta may be my favorite part of Vietnam I've seen yet. We stayed at a rural homestay located right on the Mekong River, and we used a boat as our transportation. We spent two days biking around islands, eating and learning how to make local delicacies, listening to traditional music, learning about the lives of Mekong locals, and mostly, relaxing in the homestay's hammocks. I was very happy to have a short break from the city life, but now we're back in Saigon for two more weeks of class before spring break!

Teaching English at May 15 School

Pre-sunburn smiles

Tét Holiday and other adventures

The celebration of Tét, or the Lunar New Year, is the equivalent of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years celebration rolled into one week of food, drinking, and family. Saigon has been decorated in lights and flowers since I arrived in Vietnam, but the street life changed drastically because of the holiday. For the week of Tét, families left Saigon for their hometowns in order to celebrate the new year with their families. Most businesses and restaurants are nonoperational for these days, and as a result, our neighborhood in Saigon was deserted. We struggled to find meals, but luckily, Lotteria, a Korean fast food joint, was ALWAYS open.

Liz, Emily, Abby, and I decided to ring in the Year of the Goat from Phú Quóc Island. A Vietnamese island located in the Gulf of Thailand. It was beautiful -- I'll post lots of photos soon! Right now is peak season for Phú Quóc so we were surrounded by tourists, both Vietnamese and foreign, but were able to enjoy the beaches and the jungle around us. A highlight was taking a boat tour off the southern coast to snorkel and fish; although, it did leave all of us a bit sunburned. Worth it.

My favorite moment of the holiday --

Our boat tour was lead by some very charismatic Phú Quóc locals wearing polos and straw hats. Cooler, the most outgoing of the guides, made it his goal to make me laugh every time he spoke to me. One of the many times, he handed me the yellow flower pictured below. It is a symbolic flower of Tét featured in street decorations for the holiday. He told me the flower would bring me good luck and prosperity in the new year. Cooler then proceeded to invite me to his parents home where I could celebrate the new year with singing and dancing. I turned him down on this invitation, but it made me and the other girls laugh, nonetheless.

I pass along this luck to you all --

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới, or Happy New Year!

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