Back in 'Nam: Day 1

Hello family and friends who've cared enough about me to read this on my travels!! Let me preface these travel chronicles by saying while part of the reason for this blog is to keep you updated and assure you I'm still alive, the main reason is selfish: it is so that I can remember everything, everyone, and every place. And with that I want to remember all that I feel and what I think, so a disclaimer: don't judge or be surprised when my unfiltered thoughts are embarrassingly ignorant, ashamedly mean, or sarcastically caustic.

Here...we...go!

I don't think I've ever been fed as much as I was while flying to Seoul and Vietnam, so thank you Korean airline! All the flight attendants look like something from a KDrama, not that I've seen any...recently. After nervously waiting in line for customs, then getting a new SIM card (and possibly ripped off..how much is a Dong in USD again?? Yikes I keep forgetting), I got picked up by SJV. After a painfully long and equally silent cab ride (the driver and I do not speak a a common language) from the airport, we arrived to this building at like midnight, and it was dark like do-not-let-me-out-of-this-cab dark. But soon enough I was greeted by SJV coordinator and he took me to where all the other volunteers are staying. There's currently a Scottie, an Aussie and me-the ABC.

Seeing as how I slept like 14 hours in a plane and Ha Noi is like 13 hours ahead, I hardly slept and there was incessant noise from when I went to bed  to when  I actually got up which was like 6am. Here's the view from my window when I woke up:

Laying in bed, I was drenched in my own sweat so I decided to take a shower. Shower: 1; Alexia:0. The bathrooms here, or at least where I'm staying, there is no divider between the toilet and the shower area. So right across from the toilet, 3 feet away is the shower head- no wall, no elevated floor or divider and the drain is in the opposite corner...soooo yeah. There were little tub buckets so I was like maybe I'm supposed to stand in it and have the water go in there. Basically the water went everywhere but in the bins... Water on the toilet too. Last I checked, there's still water there which was like almost 12 hours ago...

Today is Independence Day here or something like that which means I celebrated by doing nothing. I ate their sticky rice which is just rice with dried egg or something on top, then chilled at a cafe cause it had wifi(!!!!!!!!) then had pho for lunch, which was kind of disappointing (ain't got nothing on my grandma's and mom's. *cocky sniff*). After, I walked down the streets with the other two ladies to look at all the stores. So from our brief treacherous walk of getting nearly run over by motorbikes and cars, there are approximately a million little shops but there are only 7 types of shops: convenience store, clothes, motorbikes, salon, furniture and food. Plus or minus the extraneous ones like curtains or something.

One thing I didn't expect to see were house pets like dogs! I was delightfully surprised to see a few really cute dogs just cause pets seem so out of place here, plus I don't remember ever seeing dogs in China when I went like 10 years ago or in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Anyway, this feeling that only comes when a person sees cute puppies quickly dissipated when I saw not even two stores away, a food store- more specifically a meat store :(

As tourists, getting stared at by locals is a given. However, I couldn't help but feel I myself garnered longer stares than my fellow volunteers. My enthusiastic and cheerful volunteer coordinator did make a comment that my racial/ethnic ambiguity made him very curious. Am I Vietnamese? Or am I Chinese? And the fact that I think I probably exude that sense of well-fed American (dang it korean airline!) or maybe it's cause I'm not wearing long sleeves and jeans when it's freaking 90 degrees outside and humid!!! I guess I could try and blend in by buying a straw hat and like wearing jeans and a snow jacket...