Click here for current times in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and the East Coast of the U.S.
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(note: this is one of my pre-scheduled posts set to appear at 5:00am EST each morning I am in a port city. I will post follow-up information about each trip once I am able to get back on the computer.)
- I plan on just walking around Ho Chi Minh City today since I haven't had a chance to really do that at all yet.
Update:
I woke up at 6:45 am today to try to sell my Cu Chi Tunnels trip ticket (the trip was leaving at 7:00 am) - I knew I didn't want to go on the trip since I haven't had the chance to walk around the city at all yet. Luckily there was a student in the Union who was looking for a ticket so she bought it from me. Part of the reason I also didn't feel like going on the trip is that I have had a cold for the past few days that I guess I acquired in Cambodia. I have been congested and had a sore throat for the past day or so and I still feel sick. I went back to my room after selling the ticket, took a shower and then went back to sleep.
At around 9:00 am, Julie (the ethnomusicology professor) knocked on my door to see if I wanted to go into the city with her. We had both been on the Mekong Delta trip the other day and I knew she was planning on walking around so I was expecting her to stop by. She said she was planning on getting the shuttle bus at around 9:30 am. (Semester at Sea arranged for a bus to take people back and forth between the ship and the city center every half an hour for free.) We did that and then hit some stores that Julie knew she wanted to go to. We took those motorcycle/scooter taxis to the big market in town - the Ben Thanh Market.
Ben Thanh Market reminds one a lot of a place like Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, but it's much bigger and the smells in the market are enough to make someone nauseous. Particularly pungent in the market is the smell of a fruit called durian which is known for its stench (it smells a lot like medicine). Combine that with the smell of seafood, meat and other random odors and it didn't make me want to stay there very long. As you walk along, many vendors have a very aggressive approach too saying to you one after the other "Madame, you need a shirt?" or something along those lines as they shove it in your face.
I stayed at the market long enough to buy some coffee beans (Julie was getting some and I wanted to use up my Vietnamese dong before leaving so since the coffee is supposedly excellent in Vietnam, I thought that would be a good use of my money...so when my dad reads that, that can be his little gift from this trip. I'm really crappy at buying stuff - other people buy until their heads explode and I have been hard-pressed to find something I absolutely MUST have. I always knew I didn't like shopping.
I decided to leave Julie on her own since she had a bunch of other stuff she was looking for and since I couldn't stand the odors anymore, I decided just to walk around on my own since it felt quite safe. I hit the supermarket that someone told me was in a nearby mall-type building and used up another good chunk of the small amount of money I had left and then I went into a cafe to get an iced coffee and a grape juice.
video in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam
(click here for bigger version of the video)
I got back on the bus that was returning to the ship and then have been on the ship for the rest of the day since noon since I've been feeling crappy with my sore throat.
We have a faculty meeting tonight at 9:00 pm.
The ship is scheduled to depart on Saturday, April 14 at 0900 from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. NEXT DESTINATION: Hong Kong, China, on Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at 0800.
Click here for current times in Hong Kong, China, and the East Coast of the U.S.
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