Vietnam part 2

Day 2 in Vietnam started bright and early… aka 10 oclock ish.  Hahah.  That day it was me, Sarah and Megan.  We decided we were going to go to the market first and then go to the beach which was apparently nearby (according to Sarah) but it wasn’t.  It was like an hour boat ride up the river.  So we went to the market anyway.  And when we were walking there we were crossing the street and a man was walking towards me and I thought I was seeing things because it was hot out and I thought maybe I was dehydrated… but as he got closer I saw that my eyes were not lying and his face was in fact all burned.  He had no lips, his eyelids drooped all the way down…and it sounds mean but I don’t know how to explain it besides he basically didn’t have a face.  Like it was there, but it was just all burned away.  And it was so upsetting.  It wasn’t something I was ready for.  And he like walked right up to me and I stepped away and he said something but I think he was just begging for money and I felt so bad and wanted to cry just right then and there. 
I also wasn’t ready for the markets.  It’s so hot in there and small walkways and the smells in there in some sections are overwhelming.  There is like a market in one section of it and we wandered onto it and there was meat and fish and dried shrimp everywhere and the smell was not pleasant at all.  After the market we stopped to get a bottle water and we encountered another person with a deformity I guess you would say?  Well whatever you would call it, the man had no arms and had planks of wood from the elbow down.  And also in the market there was a man with no legs just chilling there in the walkway.  Like I said before, Vietnam was the first place I felt like a foreign country, and I don’t think I was prepared enough… I didn’t think people would still be so affected by the war as they still are.  And that was shocking to me.  But it’s still such a beautiful country and the people there are very nice… or at least the ones I encountered were. 
After the markets we were wandering and stopped and got some lunch at Pho 24.  I got Pho Ga again, hoping that it would be better than the night before and it was!  It was much, much better than the night before!  I also got fried spring rolls that had pork and mushroom in them with fish sauce to dip them in and they were amazing also!  The food in Vietnam was just amazing.  When we were at Pho 24 we ran into Eric, Ngyuen (pronounced Wing, he is the Vietnam inter-port student) and some other kid whose name I don’t know.  And we asked Ngyuen what to do and he started listing things to do and he told us to go to the zoo and botanical gardens which we ended up doing.  We met up with another girl who came with us to the zoo.  And it was so fun to be at a zoo, especially in a different country.  I saw elephants, monkeys, bears, ostriches (which are sooooo ugly), hippos, a regular tiger and white tigers, apes, rhinos, zebras and giraffes.  When we were in the zoo we got asked to have our picture taken.  I don’t get why they wanted a picture with us because we literally looked like hot messes.  I had chocolate down my white t from my ice cream cone, we were all sweating profusely, and we all had our make up smeared all over our t-shirts from wiping our faces.  Who knows, they probably just wanted a picture with us to make fun of the way we looked. Hahaha. 
After the zoo, we went back to the ship and went swimming and laid our for a little.  We grabbed some dinner and then got ready to go out.   
Today we are actually docked in Singapore.  We didn't get to get off the ship, we are just refueling here.  It looks like a pretty place though!  haha.  because we stopped here, we lost an hour of sleep which totally sucks, but luckily we gain it back very soon.  Hopefully tomorrow night.  haha.  I'm just so glad that we always gain an hour instead of always losing one.