Who Needs Chinatown When You're in Vietnam?

Today I woke up at 6:30 am and got ready for class. My roommate, Jill, had gotten sick during the night and, as some of you very well may know, the sounds of her retching were nowhere near loud enough to rouse me from my slumber. She decided not to go to Vietnamese class, so I went with some others from the group and found our noodle, spring roll, and fish sauce lady. Of course we stopped to grab an iced coffee with condensed milk on the way. I ate my breakfast in the VLS office (Vietnamese Language Studies) and then it was off to class for the usual four hours! Today went a lot better than yesterday and I'm back on track again. For lunch, I took Jackie and Leah to the youth center's food court across the street from the guest house. We had some decent fish and rice.

Before I went back to my room, I took a bunch of pictures in the front of our guest house. I went to my room for about 20 minutes before going with Jill to meet the rest of our group in the lobby. We got on a bus and rode a half an hour away to Chinatown. Now I don't know if anyone else finds this odd, but there is no need for a bit of China in Vietnam. That's like having a "Britaintown" in Boston. The influences are already there, which renders virtually useless the small inset "town." We first visited a temple for a Chinese water goddess, and that was amazingly beautiful. There were incense, statues, and colors all over. It was peaceful and I was enjoying myself. Of course it started to pour down rain during the walk through the temple, but it was very appropriate for the temple of a water goddess. We stood on the front porch of the temple for about 20 minutes and took pictures of little Vietnamese boys playing the in the rain. We started to walk around as a group and it was still pouring. We took pictures on the way, and I even found a dead rat on the side of the street. It's the size of a decent-sized cat, though. I won't post that picture, since my mom and a few other people would not appreciate that.

We walked for a few blocks and, just as my sneakers started to expel gigantic amounts of water with each step I took, our bus pulled up and we boarded it in a hurry. It took us to a giant, famous market that was absolutely packed with people selling stuff. You could find everything from thousands of pairs of flip flops to fruit to children's toys to tupperware. Those markets are always so overwhelming. We wandered around in there for half an hour and then I took a bunch of pictures of people in front of the market. By then, it was about 4 pm and the bus took us back to the guest house. Even though it was only 5:00, Jackie, Leah, Jill and I ventured out to find some food. We found fried rice at this nicely air-conditioned restaurant and it was amazing. You know you're good at using chop sticks when you can use them to shovel rice into your mouth. :)

I came back to my room and did some language homework before my Vietnamese friend ZeeZee took a bunch of people to go get desserts. Of course, it started pouring again and my shorts and sneakers (the same wet pair from before, thank god) were sopping wet quickly. We got to the restaurant just when it stopped raining, and I ordered a coconut flanh, which is basically coconut pudding. It was really sweet and was just what I needed. Then Jackie, Leah and I walked back to the guest house and stopped at the small grocery store on the way back. Back in the room, I threw on a yellow polo shirt with my mesh shorts and found Brian and ZeeZee and we rode to this awesome jazz bar with live music. It's called Sax and Art and Brian even got to play the saxophone with the rest of the band! I get nervous for him, for cryin' out loud. I'm about to go to bed, since I have to leave for a long weekend field trip tomorrow (Thursday) through Sunday afternoon. I won't have my computer, but I'll be keeping track of my daily activities and, of course, my photos.

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