Well, we did it. I actually was able to get up at 5:30am and go for a run. Did not go that long but like I said before I just wanted to have Vietnam as one of my locations in Strava. Went for a little over a mile before coming back to the hotel to meet up with Daphne to continue running but make our way to the Trung Nguyen Legend coffee and we got lost for a bit. I don’t know where the GPS was taking us, but it was not to the coffee place, but eventually we found it and the place was beautiful like so many other places we have been. I got an ice-blended coconut coffee, and it was good and the display was fun, but yesterday’s coconut coffee was definitely a little bit better. Great way too starts off a day though, right? Well, it gets better we went to the pool after we got back and it felt so nice and refreshing and included a good view of part of the city. I love sleeping but the feeling of already accomplishing something that early in the morning is a great feeling too. 

We started our scheduled programming with another language class at UEF, this time focusing on the alphabet and phrases that we can use while bargaining with people in the markets. Their language is also unique and more confusing because there are no masculine or feminine versions of words or plurals or tenses. Instead, it is a tone language, and it makes it a lot harder to learn because some of the words can mean completely different things just based on your pronunciation/pitch of voice. It is fun though to learn and hear the UEF students laughing at us and our goofy pronunciations or our heavy American accents.

We then received our Áo dàis which are the traditional Vietnamese suits, and they are so cool and I’m excited to wear mine tomorrow. Then we were tasked with painting on rice hats, and I am not that artistic so I was very scared that I would ruin the vibes of the hat. So, I went for a simple painting of fish in a river because we have gone to the delta and also just seen so many fish this past weekend in every pond or river. It actually turned out really nice in my opinion, but I wish I had a little more time to paint it on the other side too. 

We got pizza for lunch from an American restaurant, and the owner was super nice from San Antonio. Fun story about the place was that one of the UEF advisors for our trip’s husband was his first customer. It has been great to run into random people like the owner who speak English and we can connect and have a great talk for a bit. The 4 cheese pizza did not sit well in my stomach though and the US consulate may or may not have suffered from it. 

After lunch we traveled to Banh Thanh Market so if we wanted to buy anything we could try and bargain for a better deal. I personally would just go and try to get stuff for as cheap as possible because it’s like a game to me and I like playing it. I was successful in all my bargaining this trip, the first purchase I got for 21% of what they were asking for and then the second purchase I got down to 29% of the original price. When talking with Min after to see if I got a good deal or not and he was shocked at how cheap I got one of the items. This was fun but the stalls had so much of the same stuff that it got very boring very fast.

Then we went to the US Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City and again it was great to hear full English but to also hear about some of the interesting jobs of the consulate. One of the questions she asked us was why we chose to come on this trip and other than gaining an experience that is not so readily available I also talked about an interest in NFL global marketing. She then told us that they held some super bowl parties in Vietnam, but she said she was not up for it which is fair because it was at 6am. Got me thinking about how much it would suck to constantly be at a different time from all friends and family. We also talked about how Vietnam wants to turn into a high income nation by 2045, and I personally don’t see this happening. A lot of their wealth has been accumulated from the manufacturing and changing this or creating a new industry could mess up the whole economy of Vietnam for a while.

Finally, to finish off a very busy day we had a water bus tour which was fun for me because I got to take a lot of pictures of cool city views. The whole city and bridges lit up when the sunset and it was great to get the site from the other side of all the main buildings. I also don’t know how I finished this because I am so tired and wanted to go to bed an hour ago.