Vietnam

DAY 3

This was a day full of missions. Surprisingly we managed to accomplish all of them and then some. Our first goal of the day was to find out when the water puppet show was. I needed something to write about for 5 pages for my world music class. We figured that the best bet was to ask the tourism information center. Needless to say, we were sorely mistaken. When we asked them about it, they didn’t know the times but they said that it was at the zoo. One woman told us to go to the bookstore that was down the street and ask. So we went and asked them there and either they didn’t know or they didn’t understand what we were asking. I decided to try and look in a tourism book. No luck. We went back to the tourism center to ask again or to see if we could use a phone to call the zoo and ask. This time she said to go to the theater, which after two attempts to try and find it, we finally found it… right next to the bookstore. Why she didn’t say theater first is beyond me. Even after all of that work, the theater looked a wee bit sketchy so we didn’t even bother asking. We went and shopped some more figuring we could just head over to the zoo after lunch and hopefully we would catch a show. We went back to the market in search of a few specific items. Unfortunately, we entered right in to the smelly food area. I just about lost my breakfast as made our way through it. It was lunchtime by the time we were done at the market. We wandered until we came across a good-looking restaurant (which doesn’t take long in this city). I satisfied my Wisconsinite craving for cheese with a pizza. It was the most westernized food I have had in an extremely long time. I think my stomach was relieved to get a break. Afterwards, we took a taxi to the zoo. We made it there and asked the gatekeeper where we were supposed to buy tickets for the water puppet show. Apparently, they are sold at the history museum. We looked at the map and saw that it was somewhere down the block or around the corner. Should have been easy to find right? Wrong. We had rounded the corner and walked a good block and didn’t see it anywhere. We asked several locals for some guidance. The first time we asked, we were directed right. The second person we asked directed us left. Either we had missed it or they don’t know what they are talking about. After laughing a lot and walking around in some more circles, we found it. It ended up being pretty much next to the zoo entrance. Go figure. It was actually a building that Mary Alice had made a comment on at the beginning. We were just happy that we found it, and just in time to catch a water puppet show. For those of you who don’t know, a water puppet show is where elaborate wooden animal puppets dance/move in a little pond. The pond is located in front of a little building where the puppeteers are. They are actually standing up to their waste in the water behind a mesh screen so that we can’t see them. It was actually pretty awesome. This history museum its self wasn’t that great. It had a lot of pots. The coolest thing was a woman mummy who died in 1890 and was discovered in the 90’s. We decided that we wanted to go to the War Reminisce Museum too. We piled two of us (along with all of our bags) in to a tiny little man-powered rickshaw. Hilarious. The poor guy had to pedal us all of the way there. It took us a while to get there but after many laughs, close calls, and stares we made it. The museum was incredibly moving. It was basically consisted of a lot of graphic pictures of the war and the victims. It read just about every caption of every picture in the entire museum. There was one particular photo that I don’t think I can ever forget. It was a picture of a US soldier holding up the top half of a Vietnamese civilian, as if he (or now it) were a prize. The only thing that made it recognizably human was the head/face. The rest of the torso was just shreds. One could see the rest of the body in a shredded heap on the ground. There was also a comment book which contained a lot of hostile/negative entries towards Americans, Bush, and Iraq. That was the Debbie Downer portion of the day, but I am so glad that we decided to go. We went back to the ship, showered, and went back to Chi Chi for our dress fitting. 2 of mine were ready. The black one turned out great! I just had them adjust the length. The turquoise satin one turned out as well. Don’t worry mom, it’s not that bad. You’ll probably just say it looks like lingerie like you always do. I was very happy and couldn’t wait to see the last one the next day.

Next on the list was shoe shopping. I bought a pair to wear with my dress to the ambassador’s ball because I left all that type of stuff at home. As normal, I was given the shoes in a bag and handed a receipt. We had started to leave when I realized that I had never actually paid for the shoes. We turned back around, found the two girls helping me, and asked them where I would go to pay. They were SO confused. Eventually the two security guards came over to see what was going on. No one seemed to understand that I needed to pay. When they finally understood, or seemed to at least, the response was “come back tomorrow.” What? Come back tomorrow? Seriously? I had to pay for them now since I was going to be busy all day tomorrow. The girl then told us to follow her, and she took us to a bank. I already had money. I just handed her the money and the connection was finally made. I’m pretty sure that I could have left from the beginning with out paying. It was weird. After some DVD shopping, we were on our way to dinner when I looked in the shoe bag and saw a hat too. I started laughing and was like “where the hell did this hat come from?” Mary Alice cracked up and was just like “oh Vietnam, always an adventure.” So now I have a baseball hat and I have no idea where it came from. Everything we have done in Vietnam has turned in to some kind of story, hence why my entries are so long. Dinner was great. I had calamari and some beef thing that I couldn’t get myself to finish. We then went to an Internet café and had some coffee. We were getting ready to leave when the power on the entire street went out. I just turned at looked at Mary Alice and said, “it’s because we are here.” Again, we just laughed because when we left we saw that it was only our little shop that still didn’t have power. What a fitting ending to a crazy day.