Vietnam

Before I discuss my adventures in Vietnam I have a few side notes. There is only 6 weeks left of this trip. It is going by too fast. We will be in China on the 6th and then Japan right after that. I feel like after Japan this trip is over because we will be at sea basically for 18 days straight except for the 10 hours we will have in Hawaii. I don’t want this trip to end!
On Thursday October 30th we arrive in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam around noon because we had to go up a river to the port which meant we had to wait for high tide in order to reach the port without getting stuck in the river. I had an FDP at one p.m. for my International Business class. We went to the Nike plant. First we sat in a really nice conference room and listened to power point presentations about where Nike stands in relation to their competitors and how they run the plant. Then we got to tour one of the buildings which made the top part of the shoes. It was very interesting to see first hand how a plant is organized and the incredible amount of work put into one single shoe. There are between 35 to 85 different parts in a shoe and there are that many different stations working on a certain part of the shoe. There had to have been at least 1,000 Vietnamese people in this one building which was the size of a football field concentrating on sewing, gluing, or cutting shoe pieces. I did not realize that this many people actually made the shoes; I thought there were machines that did all the work and only a few people overlooked the products. I am glad I had the opportunity to visit the plant; it definitely changed my perspective on plant workers.
That evening I went out to dinner at a really fancy restaurant that was super cheap. After that I went to a club and danced for 4 hours straight, it was a really good workout.My roommate’s brother is learning Vietnamese with the help of a Vietnamese woman in New Jersey. This woman has a sister who goes to college near the Ho Chi Minh port where we docked. Friday morning my roommate, Amanda, and I went to visit her at the university. Her name is Tu and she was very shy at first because her English is not that good, but I tried to reassure her that we understood everything she was saying. Tu showed us around her campus and then we took a taxi to the Vietnam War Remnants Museum which instilled a feeling of uneasiness. It was ironic to walk around the museum side by side this Vietnamese girl and her not feel any resentment towards me or Amanda. I understand that it is not our generations fault but it was still interesting. I’m sure parents out there who fought in Vietnam thought they would never see the day when their children would visit Vietnam and see the results of the war, just like my generation can probably not fathom our kids going to Iraq in 40 years. I’ve never learned about this war in school and so going to the museum was a huge shock for me. I do not understand how our government could drop Agent Orange over Vietnam which effected many innocent people along with our own troops. The whole war just does not make any sense to me and I wish I had learned more about it in school before actually going to the country and seeing the Cu Chi tunnels and reunification palace. After the museum I went to the Ben Than market and bought a lot for cheap. It seemed like the further into the middle of the market I got, the more aggressive the sales people became. I was in one shop where the woman would not let go of my arm, I had to force my way out of her shop.I’m sorry but I am just not into writing this blog, I feel overwhelmed with emotion pertaining to the Vietnam War. I just sat through a session of my professors describing what they went through during the war. Many of them were college students at the time and participated in protests against the war. This was another eye opener for me because I was not sure of the American stance towards the war. Then my oceanography professor stood up and explained how he grew up talking about WWII and how his family culture thought it was a duty to fight for America. He choked up and had to take a second to regain his stature. At this point I was crying because this is a man who is very strong and you would never think of him to be the type to get emotional. This discussion brought out a lot of emotion from the professors and students as well. My professor went on to say we all need to go home and have a conversation with our fathers about the war. The whole session was very moving and just made me take a step back from the fast paced life I am living and reflect on what is important in my life. I will write more about my time in Vietnam in another blog.