First Full Day In Vietnam

Today was our first full day in Vietnam. Our day began with a huge breakfast buffet with an amazing variety in foods. They had everything from traditional "American" and Vietnamese breakfast, to fresh fruit, to "I don’t even know what that is, but I'm going to try it anyway." The best part though, was that in the corner of the bread table I saw a familiar jar.... brown and yellow, and to my surprise it’s Vegemite!!! I knew from that moment on that every morning would be fantastic.
Meeting the students from Hoa Sen University was great! I couldn’t believe how exited they were to meet us! I was even more surprised that they had tshirts for us, which was funny because we had actually brought them tshirts as well. They sang a song about washing yourself (a hint perhaps?), and introduced themselves. Their names were all really hard for me to pronounce, even the name tags didn’t do me any good! I realized that they love taking pictures, and are extremely friendly and talkative. The fact that they were so outgoing and eager showed me that they were geniunely looking forward to working with us, which definetly helped ease any akward barriers of communication that I would have normally otherwise anticipated for the first time meeting.
One thing in particular that I didn’t expect was how touchy everyone was with us and with one another. I was under the impression after what we read and learned on Vietnam that touching in any kind of way to new people and especially people of the opposite sex was frowned upon. After asking our tour guide about this, he told us that that was mostly older generation stuff and that things have changed a bit. The fact that they seem to be moving away from such conservative views and becoming more open minded as a new generation meant to me that things were changing for the better in Vietnam.
After the meeting between Universities, we went to eat lunch at PHO2000. This was my first time trying pho and I loved it! I wish I could find it easily back home! I also tried a “red bean drink” which I wasn’t as much a fan of, but drank anyway to be polite.
Once lunch was over, a few of us Rider students went to the Bến Thành Market , which I was particularly excited about. The market was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Completely packed and confined into extremely tight spaces, not to mention completely chaotic and unorganized! I think that I can only handle that market in small increments, because after about 20 minutes my I could feel my blood pressure reaching dangerous levels! I found a few things to buy and slowly developed my bartering skills. I still feel like I am getting bad prices though because I stand out as a tourist, but at least I’ve learned to tell them I’m Canadian when they ask, because anytime you say you’re from the United States, most will associate that with a giant “cha-ching!”.
Later on that evening, we had dinner on a boat which had traditional Vietnamese live music playing while we cruised along the river. They served customary Vietnamese food, which I really enjoyed. The only issue I have with the food here is that a lot of it is fried. Between lack of gym time and fried food for lunch and dinner, I have gained a total of 15lbs! Oh well, I will loose it all again once I get home and back to the gym. I still don’t understand how the Vietnamese can eat all this white rice, fried food, etc. and still stay so thin! Its like, un-human.
After dinner we went back and decided to go visit the night market which was near our Hotel. Walking in a group of three, we realized that it was much easier to bargain with the vendors. I think that we developed a good set of skills today that we can use on the rest of the trip. Lesson learned; no more bargaining alone!
Once I had spent all my dong and was eaten alive by mosquitoes, we went back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep.