Alexa Around The World: Good Morning Vietnam!

Good morning Vietnam! That’s what we heard on the loud speaker when we arrived in Vietnam along with a line of Vietnamese women holding a sign “Semester at Sea Welcome to Vietnam”. My trip to Vietnam was so interesting and fun!

Once the boat was cleared we went on a two-hour drive to Mekong Delta known for its floating markets. When we arrived we boarded a little boat and our first stop was the fishing farmhouses. They were just floating houses with cages where the fish were kept, farmed and fed. Next stop was a smaller village where we saw local honey beehives and were able to hold the part where the bees were making honey. Then we got to hold a python. It was really cool. The snake was kind of scary. His face would come right next to yours and you were supposed to just push it away. My friend Edmund’s facial expressions were priceless.

We tried so much local food. Sweet local honey, yummy banana chips, peanut brittle bars, ginger candy, dragon fruit, pineapple and watermelon.

Then we boarded another boat and went to a village where they made coconut candy. They gave us a warm piece to try which was so yummy and I don’t even like coconut.

We went to Diem Phuong Restaurant for lunch where we had elephant ear fish, which is a delicacy in Mekong Delta! It was served as a whole fish wrapped in rice paper layered with cucumbers, lettuce, rice noodles and the elephant ear fish with a dipping sauce. It was delicious!

The next day my friends and I went to Cu Chi Tunnels. They are famous for its 200-kilometer network of underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong forces during wars against the French and Americans. We crawled through tunnels that were literally 2ft by 1 ft. Hot, dark and one tunnel was so small we had to crawl on our hands and knees. At the end of one tunnel there was a room with a bed, a meeting room, kitchen, dining bunker and hospital.

There are rice plantations all over Vietnam. We watched a lady make rice paper. She had a big bowl of rice water, took a spoonful of that, spread it on a steaming cloth, rolled it off with a rolling pin looking thing, and put it on a mat made of bamboo and put it in the sun to dry. Pretty cool.

The best part of the trip was we got to shoot a gun! I shot an AK47! We had to wear noise cancelling headphones because the noise of the guns were so loud!

The next day was my Cat Tien Nationsl Park trip. When we arrived we were given our rooms, which were not very nice. After relaxing on hammocks we went on a bird watching boat tour down the Dong Nai River. While watching monkeys we noticed a storm behind us. Down came the pouring rain, thunder and the lightning that was so close. It was the worst storm I was ever in. We ran to a building for shelter. We went to dinner at a restaurant in the park with really good Vietnamese food. Because of the rain, termites hatched and were everywhere! It was disgusting! They were flying at us and in our food. The next day we hiked. The view was gorgeous and there were so many birds and butterflies. So my trip to Vietnam was so much fun minus the bugs and the lightning storm.

Me shooting an AK47!