Vietnam!

     Pulling into port here was the first time I truly felt I was not in American anymore. As we road down the river that would take us into port for four hours you had the distinct knowledge and feeling that you were in Vietnam. The scenery was outrageous. Palm trees and jungle is what lined the river.
        Deirdre and I woke up at five a.m. to watch us pull into the river. It was incredible to see at night because you could barely make out what was around you in the water – later you would find out it was floating motors all around you waiting in the water. Although we couldn’t see any of the scenery really we were able to witness the customs officials getting on the ship while both their boat and our ship were moving. They had driven their boat up right alongside ours and had made it so that the men would be jumping from their boat onto something that sticking out slightly from our ship as one of the crew members on our ship grabbed their arms and helped them on. It was nuts, they definitely had some courage!
        Later that day we headed to the Ben Thao market which is a market filled with cultural souvenirs as well as knock-offs. We bought so many souvenirs we had to drop some off at the ship before heading back out! DVD’s here were incredible here! Only 60 cents a movie! Needless to say I got 11.
On our way back to the ship, we passed our friends headed to where we just came from so Deirdre and I decided to go out to dinner. We got some terrible advice from the local shuttle man who told us that we should go to the floating dinner boats right across the bridge from where our ship was. He told us the bridge was unwalkable so we took a cab which ended up being completely ridiculous priced and unnecessary. Not only would we have been able to walk it, but we would have saved ten dollars as well. We definitely got taken advantage of because our ride took literally one minute total. When we went to try to eat on one of the boats we found that they would not accept dollars – they were the only place we encountered that wouldn’t take them – and that we didn’t have enough time to take their currency out of an ATM before the boat left for the cruise part of the dinner. Slightly frustrated we decided to check out the street across from the boat because it looked promising.
The traffic in Vietnam was completely insane and the road we needed to cross to get to the other street was insane. As we stood baffled looking at where we were supposed to walk we thought there was no way in hell we could cross without getting killed. It was a six-lane road, three lanes going each way, with no middle divider to wait on between each side and no traffic light to stop the movement of constant motorbike traffic. Finally an employee nearby came over and helped us cross the street telling us to keep at his exact pace. Once we made it to the other side we were cracking up and so relieved because there was no way we would have survived that on our own.
     Eventually we figured out we were right near the Rex Hotel – where the free shuttle from the ship dropped us off to get conveniently into town. We had heard of a place called Pho 24, which served the infamous pho of Vietnam.  It was absolutely delicious!! Pho was described to us as a comfort food in Vietnam and kind of like our chicken soup. It is soup with noodles and beef, chicken, or the type of meat you choose. We each got some pho as well as sprig rolls – which to our surprise had meat in them but were still very tasty – and a papaya smoothie. It was so delicious we took our friends there on the last day as well right before we got back on the ship!