Today we had our first day trip! Team
#YOLO headed to Vung Tau. Vung Tau is a beach town southeast of Ho Chi Minh
City. We took a hydrofoil to Vungtau. I did not enjoy the trip there because I
have a tendency to get sea sick. Instead I caught up on missed sleep. After
about an hour and a half boat ride, we arrived! The town was beautiful. If it
wasn’t for the constant stream of motorbikes I would have thought I was in a tropical
village somewhere in the Caribbean. The beach was so much fun. We did a lot of
chilling (felt like a native Vietnamese) and played some games with everyone.
We attract quite a crowd wherever we go, it’s pretty amazing. After swimming in
the beautiful water for a while, we drove to a seafood restaurant. I am not a
huge fan of seafood so I just ate rice. I am starting to really like rice but I
don’t know if I could eat it with almost every meal like they do here.
We finished our lunch and began our
trek up to a giant statue of Jesus on top of a cliff. It’s similar to the famous
Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro (I think that’s where it is). The climb up was
hot and tiring but it was worth it. The view from the top was amazing. But we
weren’t allowed to climb to the top of Jesus because we needed to be wearing sleeves
and long pants. I picked a bad day to wear my sleeveless Vietnamese flag shirt.
Speaking of my Vietnamese flag shirt, Reggie and I both wore them to the beach.
We got many stares as we were walking around. It must have been strange for the
locals to see white Westerners wearing Vietnam colors. It was funny watching
some of the Vietnamese’s reactions to our (limited) Vietnamese vocabulary.
Sometimes they were shocked that we could speak and some of the time they gave
us blank stares which leads me to believe that we still have some pronunciation
work to do. We made the long trek back down and got back on the boat for
another miserable boat ride.
Back at the hotel we all showered up
(we had gotten pretty disgustingly sweaty). Next up was dinner at the Black
Cat, a taste of American food. I was a little nervous though because American
food had not been agreeing with my stomach. What would normally be a small meal
for me made me feel stuffed. I could not even finish the burger, my diet really
has changed. After finishing off the American meal, we got a taxi and went to a
bar on a rooftop. It was very chill, we are becoming more Vietnamese every day.
After a relaxing and adventurous weekend we start up classes again tomorrow.
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