Vietnam

I am sorry, but the blog posts for Vietnam are going to be shortened a bit because once again time has flown by and we arrive in China already tomorrow!  I would love to tell you more, and if you want to know anything, just email (amdryer@semesteratsea.net). My Vietnam trip was much more amazing than it sounds below, but I thought I should at least give you a taste before I move on to the next thing!


Nha Trang:  My trip to Nha Trang was a great adventure!  The first day was a very long day though! We had to be in the dining hall at 3 45 am!!! Our crew is so amazing and they got up early with us in order to make us a hot breakfast at that time of the night!
A tropical storm had just passed through the day before, so we were a little worried that the flights would be overbooked from people who had gotten flights canceled the day before. We were lucky though and were able to board our flight no problem!  The flight was SO quick, it was only 37 minutes of actual flight time! . We were all very tired and we climbed aboard and got comfy and slept for the whole flight. It was the first time in my life that when they announced it was time to descend I felt like saying "just a few more minutes". After we left the airport we met our tour guide Liam.
Our first day in Nha Trang was a cultural tour day. We visited ancient temple ruins, a pagoda, a giant Buddha statue, an old Cambodian temple, an aquarium, and more. We ate lots of seafood! By the end of the time in Nha Trang I was very sick of seafood!  In the afternoon we had time for a little nap since we had gotten up so early, and then we went out to dinner for more seafood!  We got to watch a song and dance performance after dinner.

The second day in Nha Trang was a really fun day. Our group of 24 students went out on a private boat to hang out near the islands all day. We traveled alongside these uninhabited islands (there were 19 total) and we got to jump off the boat and swim.  We could not go up onto land because the rocks near the shore were covered in barnacles and sea urchins that were sharp and dangerous, but we got to swim out in the open. We even got to climb onto the roof of our boat and jump into the ocean from the top platform of the boat. It was very fun!  We spent most of the day swimming and then moving to a new area to explore! We had lunch on one of the islands that recently has opened up for tourism. The island now has a theme park and a big resort on it! Imagine one of the Apostle Islands with roller coasters and waterslides! They even built a gondola to take tourists over to the island.  In the afternoon we did more swimming and jumping! We were hoping to snorkel, but since the tropical storm had came through, the water was not so clear. In the evening we had more seafood!

The third day in Nha Trang was totally open so that we could plan something on our own. Myself and 3 friends talked a tour agent down the road into bringing us into a village. We were so pleased with how it turned out. We ended up more or less renting a car, and a guide/translator to bring us around for the day. He brought us into a very poor village. The people did not know any English, but it was still fun to interact with the children. Our guide helped with translation so we could speak to the families a little bit. One of the families invited us inside to see their home. It was simply a cement floor with brick walls, and that was it!  The government actually had built them the home because they did not have a home previously!  We also got to stop at the village school to see what that looked like. Through our translator we learned that the tropical storm had hit hard in the area we were in and many of the students had not yet returned to school. Some of them simply could not get to school with the amount of flooding, some had to stay home to help with sick or injured members of their family, and there were some that the teacher did not know why they had not returned to school yet.  I really hope that all of the students were safe and would be back to school once it was safe to attend.  I was very glad that I had visited the village, it was a great way to see more of Vietnam. We also went up to some waterfalls with our guide since we had more time before we needed to return to the hotel for our flight. When we got back into Nha Trang we got some lunch and then headed to the airport for our flight back to Ho Chi Minh City. It was fun to run into some other semester at sea community members in Nha Trang waiting for the same flight. A family that is onboard with us had traveled to Nha Trang and was on the same flight back to Ho Chi Minh City. It made me realize how much we take each country by storm that we could even recognize people in the airport that we had not even docked in!!

The last day in Vietnam I went to the Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta is a region that is along the Mekong River. The people who work in this area depend on the river immensely. They use the river for everything from washing to drinking to cleaning to fishing.  Every day they bring goods to sell to a ‘floating market’ in which they go to an area of the river on their boat full of something to sell and trade with the other people’s goods in order to get a variety of food. I wish that we could have seen the market. We did not get to see the market but we did get to ride by the small boats down the Mekong River. That was pretty cool.


That’s all about Vietnam for now. Sorry I did not get to say more. I need to pack for China tomorrow already!!!