Vietnam

  “Back in ‘Nam” has been the slogan around here and most everyone on the ship has taken a chance to talk to their grandparents about being in the war and what their experience was like. Lately, the ICU has been slow with only a few patients each day. Today we are at zero patients, and although it is not a bad thing to be patient-less, however we still need to staff the unit in case of an emergency. Therefore our unit decided to play a game of physical fitness challenges including 100 pushups, 100 sit ups, and 30 pull ups a day, which usually we complete one set of 10 reps every hour or so until finished. I still have two more sets to go today but I am NOT doing the pull-ups as that is just way too comical  to observe!

Yesterday was a day of Liberty on shore in Vinh, Nghe An, Vietnam, the first country in which we have been provided liberty while in a working port.  I had a great, super sweaty, but oh-so-much-fun day! The groups of people with liberty were quite random because the staff are assigned liberty days by department, thus I ended up in a group of 5 guys. We took the bus from the ship for an hour until its last drop off location which happened to be a mall, but we had an inside source and knew there was an open-air market nearby. It was nice being with a bunch of guys, because they were all gung-ho about exploring the town, yet we certainly stood out in the crowd. Imagine in a sea of golden brown skin and beautiful black hair are five tall white men and a blonde white girl with a butt! 

Yes, even my butt stood out, the women would just walk up and pat my butt as I walked the market. My crew of guys started getting protective but overall we just had to laugh it off.  In the city no one spoke English and limited communication with the locals other than exchanging greetings!  Often you heard “Hello giggle giggle giggle”. At the market locals were found sewing on soles of shoes, adding branding logos to shoes and shirts, as well as full on tailoring of dresses and suits!

The highlight and joke of the day stemmed from walking past the neighborhood pharmacy. Its counters were filled with drugs of every kind on display, in fact Viagra was right on top of the counter next to the pain medication. Our crew had a field day discussing the access and sheer availability of Viagra! Later we walked out of the market and all of a sudden saw a grown man just bathing in the water fountain, as if it was very normal and he bathed there daily! From the market we walked about 3-4 miles to Ho Chi Min Park where a large statue and flags were on display along with some pretty green grass, where we took a break from the sun since it was incredibly hot. According to our map, we thought the Park was much closer – luckily there were some great shops along the way and we purchased every cold water bottle (because its about 107 degrees out)  we could get our hands on. I bought a pin wheel in remembrance of my Guam roommates and our adventures, throughout the day I took pictures like the pig in the Geico commercial all over Vinh City.

Our local cook of the rice crepe

One of the guys, Chris and I decided to be adventurous and tried some local grub, in reality we had no clue what this lady was cooking, but it looked like she poured a white rice paste over a cheese cloth and steamed it. Once she removed the cheese cloth from the steam bath, the rice paste came out looking like a thin crape or even transparent paper.  Seating was a bit odd, Chris and I sat in these child sized chairs and ate the local food with chopsticks. The cooks brought out a fish sauce or dip and then some chopped chili and lime, I started to squeeze the lime over the ‘rice crape’ and the locals started to laugh and pointed at the fish sauce. Thus, in goes the chili and lime into the fish sauce and Chris and I ventured at our first ever ‘BANH MUOT NONG.’ I asked a translator on the ship today and she said it translates into hot rice cake. My sister did a quick Google translation and she got ‘hot smooth ball’… hmmmmm…  Well it did not taste like much, but the experience was fun.

After our food incident, the rest of our group was waiting and looking for the liberty bus, yet it never passed by, so we waved down a cab to get back to the beach which became an interesting endeavor, as we did not know the name of the beach. Similar to our experience in the city, our taxi driver did not speak an ounce of English, I showed him a picture that I had taken along the way and he was like ‘oh oh oh oh’ and nodded his head as if he knew which beach we were aiming for and ushered us into his cab. Impressively, our gang made it back to the right beach which happened to be 30 minutes away! By the time we arrived, it was dark outside and there was a techno show of lights all around. Such a spectacular site, everything around us was lit up: the statues had lights, locals were selling glow sticks and fun glowing toys, and each of the golf carts/mopeds were all decked out in lights that flashed to the techno music! 

Dinner was our next adventure and it became a game of charades. The guys and I would point at a picture on the menu and pray that something edible would arrive! I ended up with the best plate of food out of the group, it was ramen like noodles with beef on top. Ultimately, the server arrived and everyone at the table just pointed to my plate and pushed their plates away.  Overall, my Liberty day was so refreshing and the laughter was never ending!

Also - here's a link to to the Pacific Partnership's latest blog