Day 8: So thankful

Day 8

After experiencing what I felt like was one of the best parts of Vietnam yesterday, today felt like a large contrast. Today we started out with language class as usual and then continued the day in a low key way just experiencing the city. 

First, we visited the Reunification Palace. The architecture, interior design, and view of this building was beautiful. It was nice to freely be able to walk around although it felt as if getting lost was going to be extremely easy. The part that I felt was most interesting was seeing the bunker in the Palace. Since I had seen an American bunker in the past it was very weird comparing the two. 

After this we went and visited the market in China town. At this point the inner tourist in most of us was ready to just souvenir shop, however China town was not a tourist place. The way the UEF students described it is it seems like the sellers at China town sell items in bulk to other retailers. Other items they sold were just cheap knockoffs or clothes that seem like they came straight from the Salvation Army. Therefore, I was very uninterested in this visit. In addition to all this, the market was extremely dirty and smeller and the sellers were mostly half naked picking at their toes, being very dirty, and seeming to have unusual medical defects. Initially this just grossed me out and made me want to leave ASAP, but after awhile of seeing these people sitting on the ground eating unsanitary food and sleeping on bags of clothes and seeing the Vietnamese students as grossed out as I was, the experience really just made me thankful to be an American. I felt so bad for the market sellers that they didn't seem to have them same medical benefits as people in America or the same service of housing or food stamps. All things that I had never had the need to use to be thankful for until now. I was also thankful for the FDA for all their health regulations so I would never experience something so dirty in American or eat food that had been sitting outside all day. 

When we got back to the hotel I went shopping down the street from the hotel to stores that were much more expensive. After buying a few things I was even more overwhelmed with thankfulness to be able to buys things that I wanted and not be a child at the market begging people for money. Although I am still regularly reminded of how lucky I am to be able to swipe a credit card for things I need even in America, experiencing such a large scale contrast of the daily life I am used to has been the largest culture shock I have experienced and I hope I will never forget this and will never take everything I have from the hard work of my family and from being lucky enough to be born in America for granted!!!!!