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Published: April 30th 2009
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After the temple tours, we were hot and exhausted. It was around noon and I really didn't want to be in the open sun with my already extreme sunburn. We went to eat at a cute little place. I ordered the alligator, which tasted like chicken. Mostly, it was just nice to get out of the sun and just sit down and relax. We got on the computers to check in on facebook - of course!
After eating we will had 5 hours until we had to be to the airport. We were hot and tired and it had to be over 100 degrees. We decided to pay 15 bucks to go on a tour of a floating village, which so far on this trip was the most expensive tour. We took the half hour tuk tuk ride there and then sat in a dingy boat on a muddy river. It wasn't even a river. It looked like a man-made water hole, type thing, or a wide ditch that filled up with water. We went for a while without seeing anything but mud and a few floating houses. Then we came to an opening where the sky and the water
seemed to become the same dingy, clowded color. It was weird, it was as if we had actually reached the end of the earth, and if we went forward a few hundred meters we would just...fall off into space. It was an eerie feeling, especially looking back at how far, and how many modes of transportation it took us to get here.
The place where the sky and water became one consisted of all floating homes. They were all small one-room areas for lots of people with a porch on the front. I'm amazed that they even floated. I still don't really understand how they were made or where they got the materials from. It was all from wood, but still, it was impressive that their lives lived on these floating houses. There were naked babies hanging out and waving to us everywhere we went. As we went by in our boat we saw into people's homes. They waved and their children waved. I couldn't imagine having people drive by in a boat looking into your home.
We made a pit-stop to buy some notebooks and pencils for the local school. It was a total ripoff. It cost
us like 30 bucks to buy 20 notebooks and pencils. I wouldnt' have minded giving the money if it weren't to a little store there, but directly to the school. I was attacked by a second monkey too. He broke my purse and stole my water bottle. Monkey's just loooove me here! When we gave the books to the teacher at the school he seemed uninthused. Im sure there are a million other things the school needed more than the notebooks and pencils the tourists send them. The kids were jumping rope and playing. It was their break time. There was a little boy there that was so adorable, he just leaned against the wall with his hand in his mouth and looked at us. Another little girl was crouched eating raw ramen off the dirty floor.
At one point a woman came up to us in a boat with her three children. They were asking us for money. It was the saddest most depressing thing I have ever gone through i think. These little girls were beggins us for "one dollah, pleeeeaaaseeee, one dollah" If I had to guess, they lived in that boat, all four of them.
Eventually when our driver came to the boat they left us, the woman lighted a cigarette holding her baby lopsided in her lap....sounds like a lot of poor mom's here in the US...cigarette in one hand baby in the other. Only this family lived on a canoe in the middle of a lake. I just didn't know what to do....
We got back from our tour and walked around shopping. There were a few items I was determined to get. Some homemade baby things for those two people in my life having babies! Some other things for friends and family. Everything was so cheap. I wish i would have had more room to take things home. I really wanted a wooden carved statue for in our house, but i didn't have room for it and they NEVER would have let me carry it on the plane. I regret that I didn't get anything, but there's always next time.... Leslie discovered the art of two person haggling. The one thing I bought she said "5 dollah" and leslie said, becky no it was at the other store for like 3. "ok, you get same deal, 3 dollah" haha Works every
time!
We had a few minutes left so went to an internet cafe to check to see what our men were up to! haha Right when we were getting ready to leave, it started DOWNPOURING...i mean like a wall of rain came thundering down on us! As we ran to our tuk tuk in the rain it felt sooo good! Before we got on our flight for this trip, we checked the forcast and it said pouring rain and thunderstorms every day. This was the first time it had rained. (it rained one other time when we were on the bus, but only for a little) We got so lucky with the weather, it was absolutely amazing and perfect. A little hot, but perfect!
We got to the airport and had some Dairy Queen haha. It tasted so good :-P I repacked my bags and we checked in. As we were about to go through security they said "oh no, you need to pay the leaving fee" They hit us with a 25 dollar leaving fee. After all the stinken money we spent in that country on airfare, and bus tickets, boatrides, tours, shopping, and before we leave they slam us one more time, we were SO annoyed. It cost us 50 bucks just to get in and out of that country, just in visas/leaving fees...UGH!
We chilled in the airport talking about our trip. We were so sunburnt and tired and hungry and dirty and smelly. We couldnt' stop laughing thinking about the monkeys and everything else that happened. People were probably giving us looks and commenting in their language whatever it was how aweful we looked. But it didn't matter, the trip was absolutely amazing, and i was so sad to have to be going back to Korea. I figured we would be on a puddle jumper for the 45 minute flight. But we walked outside to our legit plane. Plus they gave us a meal and drinks on it. It was nice...for 170 dollars! haha We were seats 3A & 3B in my mind...that was first class, we were so close to the front! haha Even though there were no class sections everything was the same.
Landing in Ho Chi Minh was crazy. Instead of seeing the lights from cars packed on the streets it was of motos. It looked completely different. I wish i would ahve had my camera out to take a picture. We landed and then sprawled out on the seats at our gate to wait for our 24:30 flight back to south korea. We landed in south Korea at 6:30 in the morning and I ended up getting to my 8:10 class 20 minutes late. But she understood when I said my plane landed a little late! When I went through security getting off the plane, we were again sent through the quarantene. Scanned by infared cameras and filling out yellow papers. In hein-sight I know that if i would have had swine flu..they probably would have caught it there!
But in conclusion, this was by far the best trip i have ever gone on. I finally got to go on the trip that I have been searching for in all my years of traveling....
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Laura Melber
non-member comment
mom
Absolutely amazing. Alligater for dinner? Sleeping on a net covered bed on a boat floating down the Delta? What next. Keep exploring. Life comes at you fast. Go at it just as assertively. See it all while your there.