More Than Halfway

After our weekend, Dr. Berman went easy on us for a day. We started out with a language class, and then we had a tour of Ho Chi Minh City. We stopped at the major monuments, including the Reunification Palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Post Office. The Palace was grandiose and gorgeous. I went to the top where there was a fantastic view looking down one of the main streets of Ho Chi Minh City. All over the city there are pictures of the North Vietnamese tank breaking down the front gates of this palace, and so actually being here was another time of reflection about the war. This is an important monument, because its where South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam, and finally put an end to the war. 

Reunification Palace

The tank breaking through the gates

Here are the same gates, tens of years later

Notre Dame Cathedral

Post Office

After this, we went to an authentic Vietnamese market in the Chinatown of Vietnam. This was quite an experience. It was a big indoor thing with a bunch of stands set up, and we were the only white people there. In class we were taught how to bargain with the sellers, but when we went to this market, every stand basically had a fixed price and you could maybe get things down 50 cents. Not at all what i thought it would be like. It was really interesting to see the lifestyles these people live, though, and I found myself thinking about how lucky I am. We saw some deformed people, and learned that this could potentially be from agent orange, even though its so long after. It was a valuable experience and really authentic. 

The tourist market is called Benh Thanh, and this is much more what I was expecting. A stand was selling shot glasses for 150,000 Dong each, and I bargained it down to 6 for 250,000. Felt pretty good about it. I got some souvenirs for my loved ones but still need to go back because I ran out of money pretty quickly. After this, we went to a phenomenal French restaurant called Titi. I have yet to have a bad meal here, by the way. Every place we eat is delicious. Especially the different places we go for dinner. The lunch at UEF is getting old, but so does anything after having it multiple days in a row.

So yeah we went to Titi, and I had some ostrich, which tasted a bit like beef, but was just a bit more tender. So good. We were planning to do something fun after this dinner, but we came back to the hotel after and I lay in my bed for a few minutes and passed out for the night. Found out the next day that this happened with just about everyone else. We have really tiring days, even when were having fun.