Oh dear, i give up...also, good morning, Vietnam!

So i’m pretty much the most behind person that ever existed.

Except for everybody else on this ship. but i think i’m even more behind than a lot of them.

For one thing, i haven’t even finished my journal entry on China, let alone uploaded the pictures, or even thought about writing about Hong Kong or Vietnam. at least they weren’t as interesting as Japan. but not that uninteresting.

my executive decision has been to just start over, right here and now, and backtrack later. one of the advantages of this plan is that nothing is, in fact, going on right now, so i don’t really have anything to write about. except that my tummy really really really hurts sometimes, and i don’t know why. i won’t talk about it any more, because i know that you all don’t necessarily feel the same way about poop that i do. feel free to ask later. a fun thing that is happening is that (and you didn’t hear this from me) Katie, one of the shipboard counselors, who was an SAS student a few years ago, showed me this awesome activity - when we’re in port and no one’s at the computers, you can sometimes find really entertaining emails that people have just saved on the desktops and not deleted. sometimes they’re pretty juicy!! yesterday i found a particularly sweet/scandalous set from a boyfriend that were all like “i can’t get a job! i did this yesterday. i love you so much. i can’t even believe how much i miss you, or that i could miss someone so much. also, i owe my ex-girlfriend $400”). RATHER entertaining.

ALSO, i’m awkward. we should just mention that. especially around previously mentioned boys. with one of them, it was rather pleasant when we were just friends, and now i spend most of my life running away from him for no particular reason. 25,000 tons sounds like a big ship, but it really isn’t. the avoiding is actually going ok - except that in two days were going to Thai English camp together, along with all of his friends who intimidate me. (once he told me that, sadly, he just wasn’t good with kids. and then he told me he was doing the camp, and i was like - well, that doesn’t make sense. and he was like, gotta start somewhere! he’s a really good guy. and relatively stable and not destructive compared to similar past situations. that doesn’t really help though.) sometimes i pretty much hate my life.

what’s interesting is that this whole trip, both in country and on the ship, is starting to really make me realize what a loner i am - i like people, i don’t like being alone all the time, but i also don’t like being noticed or picked on or standing out; i’m scared of how people perceive me and it’s just must less stressful to try to deal with just myself. i get much shorter with people than i mean to when i’m bumping into them all the time. one of the reasons that i’m so excited about Thailand is that i’m getting out of the city.

another exciting thing that happened today was that a tugboat pulled our ass 180 degrees around on the Saigon River, which is just about as wide as the Explorer is long.

so then maybe i should just write about YESTERDAY, that wasn’t that long ago. yesterday was our last day in NAM and i took a day trip to the Mekong Delta. We went to all these touristy hut-things, which was kind of weird. but it was GREAT to get out of the city! and be on the water. and our tour guide was awesome. she sang. and she made us sing. there was also some dancing.

and on that trip i met a girl i’d never met before, named Becky, and we talked for a really super long time - just, like, girl talk, you know, but it was nice; it’s been forever since i've had a long time to talk to ANYONE, and she tried to convince me to come her to her techno dance party. it didn’t work, but she’s still fun to talk to.

before the delta trip, i went up north to Hanoi and Halong Bay. Halong Bay is SO cool and full of rock formations that would make my roommate just DIE of excitement (almost as much excitement as Camden would’ve had about the acrobat show in China). it was also rather pleasant to spend 3 hours in my own little world on the bus - you can’t do that on the ship, really. on the first night some of us went to the touristy little night market, and then my friend Eva and i walked out onto the pier where some people tried to talk to us, and we weren’t sure if we should say hi or be terrified that there were going to push us in. erring on the side of caution, we went back to a little store, marveled at Vietnamese snacks, and then went to bed.

then we got to spend the WHOLE next morning cruising around Halong Bay on a big junk - we went to a cave, and past a floating fishing village and between all of these super-cool rock islands. our group was a hoot - we had all the crazy profs and Lifelong Learners, including Patricia, who’s usually rather unknowingly falling out of her blouse, and Stuart, who i think might be Santa Clause’s older brother but is infinitely more cynical and entertaining. they ended up giving us a chance to go swimming off the side - i didn’t bring a bathing suit, but i finally ended up jumping in anyway. it took me way longer than the moms (we had parents on our trip) on the other boat. after that we drove back to Hanoi and checked into our hotel. we had some time before we met for dinner, and Eva and i were going to go out, but we were really tired and turned on the TV, and there was this totally weird movie with Vietnamese subtitles in which Mel Gibson’s character had started out in 1939 and gone through some sort of time warp in which he ended up in whatever year Elijah Wood was 10. it was crazy. it ended, and then we watched the end of a really weird Al Pacino movie. Vietnamese subtitles are funny. they’re very liberal with their punctuation, especially exclamation points.

our pre-dinner entertainment was a water puppet show - a traditional old kind of Vietnamese puppetry in which the puppets are on a water surface, and with lots of traditional music. kind of hard to describe, and a bit difficult to follow - there isn’t really a plot so much as little vignettes in which children chase frogs, or birds mate.

then we had a really delicious tofu-filled dinner - at least other vegetarian Margot and i did. after dinner Amanda, Jeff (an LLLer (lifelong learner), Eva, weird Patricia, Megan, and a couple of others went out for ice cream and what Eva has discovered to be VERY strong Vietnamese coffee. then we went for a walk around the big central lake/make-out-on-your-motorbike spot (we did no such thing) and then went home. for bed.

on the last day we visited poor Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to be cremated but instead got waxed and frozen and stuck into a giant mausoleum. the most entertaining part of that trip was the game we played to pass the time that i can’t for the life of me explain. then we saw Ho Chi Minh’s house, and the one-pillar pagoda, and a big temple, and then they dropped us off for lunch back at the lake. Amanda, Margot, Nicole and i went to a European-y cafe and got pizza, because it was the only thing that we knew was vegetarian. it was rather pleasant. we strolled a retail street for awhile, but i just hate being accosted by people, and it makes me really uncomfortable. the absolute worst was this women who came up and put her hat on my head and banana thing on my shoulders and then started pulling bananas that she tried to make me buy, along with a “picture fee”. i wonder how much they make for gimmicks like that.

then it was off to the airport. i spent the airport being entertained by the people freaking out about the rat/mouse/creature running around. as for the flight - WELL. so it was an A330 (and A330?! Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City? REALLY?!) and i was in the middle of the middle, totally freaking out, yammering totally out-of-controllably to poor Coulter, who had been stuck next to me on the LAST flight, poor kid (trust me, he’s not the kind of guy that you look at and are like “hey, he’d listen to my problems!” he’s actually an English major and very friendly, but i was a lot to put up with.) i was going to distract myself by making a birthday card for Benjamin, and i was like “heyhelpi’mreallynervousaboutthisflighti’mtryingtomakeabirthdaycardformyfriendwhatshouldido?shouldiwriteasuperherostoryhowboutasonnethowdoyouwriteasonnnetagain?huh?huh?hangoni’mgoingtotakemyhard-coreanti-anxietydrugsnow!” i’m amazed that he still says hi to me in passing. i think we have a special bond. and then...we’re back to the Delta trip! yay. i made it through Vietnam! i should probably also mention that Vietnam is full of this addictively beautiful embroidery. sometimes they took us to these random huge areas that were rest stops but really embroidery and clothes-manufacturing workshops for disabled children, and you would stand and watch them and feel awkward, and not knowing if buying it was supporting a good or bad thing (something for disabled kids to do/gain a marketable skill? or evil child labor?) and then you’d buy some peanut butter and chocolate oreos in which to drown your confusion.