Ho Chi Minh City Adventures: Day 39: September 28, 2014

This morning we had a group activity at the zoo. I had breakfast in my room before going, and for the past couple days I've been having a yogurt which I believe is kiwi, peach, and passion fruit flavored. It's very good, but the dairy products are quite different here. I have to shake my yogurt up before I eat it because of how liquid-y it is. I also bought more yogurt today, lotus flower flavored, so it will be interesting to see how that tastes.

When we got to the zoo, we were divided into teams with Vietnamese partners. Summer, Brian, and Wendy were on my team. The game we played was kind of like Amazing Race and there were two activities we had to do. The first one was our Vietnamese partners (Wendy for us) had to act out five pre-chosen animals and we had to guess what it was, in Vietnamese. Thankfully we had a sheet with Vietnamese animals on it so we could know their names.

After that game, the next one was like a scavenger hunt around the zoo. We had to take a video of us feeding the elephants, petting a giraffe, acting like a tiger, take a photo with a deer, and other things like that. Our group was the first one done (whoo!) so we headed back to the meeting location. The last activity was to pick up peanuts with chopsticks. Only one person from the team could go at a time, and we had to get 20 whole peanuts on to our plate. We started out in the lead, but soon the second team to come in caught up to us and ended up winning. While they won 500,000d, our team was able to win 300,000d.

After the games were over, I went to lunch with some of the partners, Vien, Wilson, and Dan. We went to a noodle place, but I was able to get fried spring rolls. After a rather lengthy lunch and talking to the partners, Poem gave me a ride back to the dormitory on her motorbike. Once back, I finally did some homework for the weekend and finished my first scholarship video.

Some funny things that happened while at the zoo: While we were trying to get a video of us feeding the elephant, a group of Vietnamese students descended on Brian and asked him for his picture. Some other people saw he was taking pictures with Vietnamese, so soon there were three groups that wanted a picture of him. While I was waiting for Poem to get her motorbike, I could tell that there were two guys behind me who were trying to nonchalantly take a picture with me in the background. Also, a guy came up to, stood super close to me, and asked his friend to take a picture. Just another day in the life of Vietnam.

Tonight for supper I went with Cate, Alex, Tori, and Summer to Ganesh, an Indian restaurant, where we met partner student Alex. We had butter chicken and some cheese stuff along with rice and naan. It was more expensive than the Mexican food but we also got more food so I guess it balances out. When we were done, we walked to backpacker street to get some ice cream and then hopped in a taxi to come back to the dorm.

Check out some pictures from Monkey Island below.