I am convinced Tuan is the best guide we could’ve had for some of our trips this week. He has a lot of knowledge on the history and statistics of Vietnamese culture and lifestyle. He also has so many funny quotes or stories and sometimes we can’t even tell if he is joking or being serious. He was telling us a story of how rice is life and the western Vietnamese have rice during all meals of the day, and when someone dies, they say that they can’t eat rice anymore. Hence the name of the title to describe this weekend, because I am dead. This was a very tiring weekend with lots of activities and all of them outdoor in the heat. However, this was definitely my favorite part of the trip so far. It was a great bonding time for the Pitt students on the trip, and we got to really connect with the UEF students that accompanied us. But where did we go you may ask, the Mekong Delta! 

We stayed at a really nice resort where we were greeted with lunch when we got there. The highlight of this meal was trying jackfruit for the first time. It was so sweet and delicious, and they grew the fruit right there on the resort. After eating we got to chill out in the pull for a while before we were going to play some games. This gameday was much better than the last because it was obstacle courses and games over water. My favorite game was the water bridge where our goal was to be the last team standing. You had to push the other team off or stay on while the whole bridge was swinging. I even got complemented by one of the UEF advisors for how good I was at balancing and getting other people off. There was extra motivation not to fall in because of the murky and mud filled water that we were falling into. After this we went to an area where there was a small area filled with water and fish. Some of the students went down and were catching them with baskets, plopping the basket down when they thought they saw one and then reaching in to pull it out and put it in a bucket. All this was done right across the road from the resort at a theme park area. After this we had a ‘gala’ dinner which was again great food but nothing really special to name it a gala, other than the amazing karaoke that mostly everyone participated in after. Chris and I ended up singing Rich Girl by Hall & Oates and it was super fun. After this we all hung out playing games and getting to know each other more, Pitt and UEF students together. Kaelyn is one of the UEF students and I want to give her a little shoutout because her English is so amazing and a lot of us thought she wasn’t completely Vietnamese because she even has a very good American accent. 

This morning, we had the earliest wakeup of the trip where we had to meet at 5:30am. It was well worth it though because this was the first day we got to see some of the sunrise and we were going to a floating market. The market was a whole new aspect of a culture that we are still learning. Seeing all the homes that the people have on boats along with the abundance of fresh fruits and goods. When tuan was describing them, he said that they are like the wholesalers in America because people buy from the floating market to resell. Some of the smells were interesting in the market from the fermented fish and frog that was laying out.

We went back to the resort to have breakfast where I ordered an egg bahn mi which is a sandwich with a baguette brought over when the French controlled Vietnam. We had a little bit of time before having to check out of the resort, so CJ and I went back to the theme park to go feed/fish crocodiles. This was super fun because there were just so many of them and it was cool to see them slowly approaching the meat that we were feeding to them and then jump and snatch at it. Later I realized we were actually feeding them chicken head which is funny because that was one of the things in the CultureSmart book, but it said it was a delicacy. We were going to leave then but then we saw Hannah (one of the UEF guides that has been awesome to get to know and exchange pieces of each other’s cultures). She asked if we wanted to go through the 18 levels of hell and I got to say that I thought she said health at first and was confused when there were some demon things at the start of a haunted house in the theme park. We got a kick out of one of the other UEF guides getting jump scared when we went around a corner. Then we took her to try the crocodile feeding and she was pretty scared at first until it came up and quickly snatched the meat and the experience was over. Her look when she said, “Wait that’s it?”, was hilarious. Then we shot some pop cap guns at a little arcade game stall which was of course rigged just like all of America’s games. I hit the can and it moved to the edge of the platform but obviously it did not fall off. We had a great time there and it was packed with a bunch of people whether that was families or larger groups of students or teens. Sometimes it feels like we are the tourist attraction with all the random people that came up to CJ and I and asked for pictures before Hannah was there. It was like we had a bunch of fans that followed us around for a bit before and after crocodile fishing. 

We made our way into Can Tho city which was right near the resort and about 4 hours away from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). A bunch of us tried durian which is a controversial fruit because people either love it or hate it. When asking the UEF students most of them love it but there were a few that don’t. Personally, I thought the smell wasn’t bad, which is what gets most people to not like it, but the texture was terribly mushy, and the flavor wasn’t really fruity. At least I got to wash it down with a mango smoothie before we left to go get lunch.

A variety of food for lunch and I got some great suggestions for food from some of the UEF students and camera men to try this week. I thought there wasn’t anything too new at lunch until Min asked me if I wanted to try cartilage. He took it out of one of the meats and it looked exactly like a tube of cartilage. So, I tried it and had a surprise when the outside was very tough to bite into, but the inside had an interestingly good flavor. They explained that rich people will buy meats just for the cartilage because I guess that is an actual delicacy. 

After the 4 hours bus ride and going through some tropical storms we made it back to Saigon and I had a different type of banh mi delivered to the hotel because I didn’t feel like going out to get anything because of how exhausted I was, even though I slept on the bus. I’m trying to get some rest before week two of learning, exploring, and eating, so goodnight.