Right after we got off our flight into Ho Chi Minh City and got our checked luggage from the airport, we walked outside and were instantly hit with a blast of humidity. Realizing how much different the weather was going to be made me nervous at first, but 30 seconds later we were greeted by two people from UEF. This put into perspective how welcoming the people of Vietnam really are, and it made me excited to meet the students. I woke up bright and early and went down for breakfast. Me and about 6 other guys finished our food early and decided to walk around the city for a bit before our tailor visit. The streets were already busy at 8 in the morning and the number of motorbikes definitely did not disappoint my expectations.
Throughout the day I met a lot of different UEF students, and it surprised me how much English most of them knew. I was in awe at how some of them even sounded like it was their first language. I talked to some of the students about many different topics, but another thing that stood out to me from the conversations I had were that they were really keyed into similar things that Americans know. For example, just like K-Pop in Korea, there is V-Pop in Vietnam, but many students listened to music that I listen to, and I was also told that there are a ton of Taylor Swift fans in Vietnam. Also in general with the driving I saw during the city tour, the streets were mainly filled with bikes and I would often look around and think I’m looking at complete chaos. But in reality, these people have been dealing with this type of traffic for decades and they’ve just become used to it.
When driving through the city on the bus tour, we crossed some bridge and went into district 1. When looking at the buildings that were present in this district along with the infrastructure, it was clear that there’s been major development since the unification of Vietnam. The district was filled with some huge company buildings, nothing like New York City, but you can see the progress that Vietnam has made over the past few decades. Also, a lot of the time there would be signs that were written in Vietnamese, but it would also be accompanied with English because Vietnam is starting to become much more globalized. Many of the Vietnamese people I talked to today that weren’t UEF students were able to hold conversations with me in English and it was really impressive to see that almost a whole country could globalize and develop this fast.
During the lunch and the dinner, there was at least 3 foods that surprised. One of the dishes that intrigued me both times was the dessert. They both involved some type of seafood and broth and they were nowhere near a traditional American dessert. Although it was something out of the ordinary for me, there was no way I couldn’t take at least one bite out of everything that I saw because I’ll never know if I’m ever coming back to Vietnam or not.
Overall, I thought the first day went incredibly well and I’m super excited to see what Saigon has in store for me tomorrow.
