Day 1 Vietnam-3/22/09

I woke up at 7 am to a beautiful morning as we were making our way up the Saigon River into the port at Ho Chi Minh City.  It was a very busy morning with all of the small boats bringing their goods from the Mekong Delta to the market in Ho Chi Minh.  As we approached the port there was several women in traditional Vietnamese clothing and hats waiving and carrying a banner saying "Semester at Sea: Welcome to Vietnam."  After our ship was cleared we headed off with no real plans for the day.  The port was right in the heart of the city, unlike many of the ports we had gone to in the past.  The street was packed with motorcycles, the main mode of transportation in the city including taxis.  We got on some motorcycles and headed out to get suits and shirts custom made, something Vietnam is famous for.  We headed out on the crowded streets by motorcycle and it was really cool/overwhelming at first because of how crazy everyone drives and the mass amount of people, cars and motorcycles on the street (don't worry Mom I wore a helmet and made a video for you saying how you would kill me if you saw me on it).  Our drivers took us around to a few places as we tried to find the cheapest place to get suits made.  We finally found a place and spent an hour there looking at different fabrics and getting our measurements taken.  We paid for half and then he told us to come back in a few days to pick up the stuff.  We then had our drivers take us somewhere for lunch and we had a ton of food for about $3 a person.  After lunch we headed back to the ship to figure out where to go from there.  After a half day of driving around, total cost for the taxi was $3.  The US Dollar is readily accepted in Vietnam at everywhere from taxis to all of the restaurants including KFC.  One USD equals 17,000 dong, many people used USD the whole time but then you get ripped off because say something is 20,000 dong then they would charge you $2 and you would be overpaying by 14,000 Dong so the best bet was to just use an ATM and use the local currency.  We got back to the ship and decided we wanted to go to the movie theatre as there wasn't that much else to do in the city that we didn't already have plans to see in the days to come.  The movies were about 3-4 months behind and we had never heard of the movie that was playing at the time when we got there.  The movie ticket was only about $4 and I think we say "Unseen" or something like that, I don't even remember that’s how bad it was.  It was supposed to be a scary movie but we sat there and laughed the whole time while all the Vietnamese girls were screaming.  We also went to a market that sold all these "authentic" Zippo lighters and other American soldier war mementos but almost everything there was fake or really expensive if it was real.  They had airplane instruments, pilot manuals and night vision goggles all for sale.  That night Phil and I had plans to go to dinner with Kayla and Sam.  We met up at the ship first and used Wiki travel which is on our free sites on the ship as a resource to find a place to eat.  We picked a place called "Huong Dong" that was recommended as a place to eat.  We took at real taxi there (a car) because there girls weren't ready to brave the motorcycles yet, but knew after a few drinks at dinner they would.  This was our first meal with waiters in Vietnam and it was very overwhelming, we had 3-4 waiters at the table at all times waiting to serve us and wouldn't leave until we decided what we wanted to eat.  We wanted to try something crazy so we ordered fried frog legs which you could see the toenails and the whole leg.  They weren't good but they weren't bad either, not something I would ever order again though and very chewy.  Our meal ended up being about $8 a person and we once again had way too much food as well as beer, liquor and wine…what a bargain.  After dinner, the girls were ready to go on the motorcycles and we headed out to a bar listed on Wiki travel and when we were leaving we passed a travel agency that was still open so I went in an inquired about an overnight trip we wanted to go on to the Mekong Delta and Cu Chi Tunnels.  They had a really good price and we told them we would come back the next day to book it all since some of us didn't have our credit cards.  Then we went to Apocalypse which was a club listed on Wiki travel and where about half of Semester at Sea ended up.