Vietnam Day 22 (2/29/09)

My room was like grand central station this morning. Before my alarm even went off, I’d received three calls and two texts. I’d given my number to one of the girls from skating last night and she wanted to invite me out again, and I think to practice her English. I might try to go again but I think it would be better to try on beginner’s night.

I wasn’t feeling too well today. I don’t know if it was the yogurt I ate last night or the crushed ice in all of my drinks in Cu Chi but I was a little queasy the whole day. It wasn’t a big deal though because I had a lax schedule today. We’ve been unable to get any of the hotels to let us interview the guests, so Van Anh and I are spending the day analyzing the data we have so far. After we finished, some of us went to a kooky t-shirt shop that Hieu recommended. A few of the shirts were normal but most of them were too crazy for me to pull off, many of them punk and others with vulgar messages on them. It felt as though they were trying to copy western styles but got a little too outlandish with them. Hieu pulls this kind of clothing off like a pro but I don’t think it would work as well in the U.S.

We walked out of the store and realized we were in a much less touristy part of town. I’m sure it was still pretty safe, but we were the only foreigners around so we held onto our bags a little tighter. Still, we were curious so we wandered around for a bit. The most fascinating thing we found was a church with architecture like a pagoda (in fact we thought it was a pagoda until we got a little closer and saw the crosses on top). It just goes to show, there are interesting things everywhere, even on the “wrong side of town.”

When we got back, the others had just gotten back from going to dinner without us so we gave them a hard time and went out for banh mi. The four DukeEngage girls ate ours at the cafe and tried fresh coconut milk (for the first time in my case). It comes in the coconut itself, which is shaved and has the top cut off so you can stick a straw in it. It surprised me how little it tasted like coconut. I guess I’ve always just had dry coconut, but this was like sweet water and very good (again a surprise because I don’t like coconut the way I know it). After dinner and a desert of heavenly banana pancake (made like a crepe with big chunks of banana in it and chocolate sauce on the side) I started getting sick. I don’t think it was from anything I just ate – I’d been feeling sick all day and it was finally coming up. My money’s still on the yogurt from last night, but whatever the cause, it was a pretty rough night for me.