Day 46: October 5, 2014

What was supposed to be a casual Sunday quickly turned into a Sunday full of events. I had made plans to meet Yen at 11am so she could help me interview people for my research project. We first grabbed lunch across the street, where I ordered a beef bot chien. This is an egg dish served with cubes of rice flour, green vegetables, and in this case beef. The man working asked if I wanted spice in my soy sauce, and I said yes. As he put two spoonfuls of chili sauce into the soy sauce I saw him laugh, and I'm pretty sure he put in some extra just to see what I would do.

Lunch was fantastically delicious, and it was then that we decided to start interviewing people. My research project is on how Vietnamese get drinking water, and my plan was to interview 5 local people, 5 street vendors, and 5 businesses. Only one local person (aka somebody we saw on the street) turned us down because he didn't want to be on tape. A few street vendors turned us down because they were busy, but the surprising part was the businesses that turned us down. It was almost like they had something to hide that they didn't want to be interviewed about where they got their water, but all of the people said it was up to the owner to decide and that he or she wasn't around.

We ended up interviewing 4 street vendors, 1 business owner (who actually gave me his water bill from last month), and 3 local people. The most interesting answers came from the local people, who mainly got their drinking water from the tap. When asked if they thought it was safe, they replied yes because they pay for it and they have not been sick yet. Ignorance may actually be bliss in this case.

Our whole journey was on the way to Yen's friend's coffee shop, where we took a break from the sweltering heat. I had a passion fruit smoothie and Yen got a milk tea and a yogurt drink. Her friend was super nice, and he gave me some dried fruits and vegetables from his home city of Dalat which were very delicious. On the walk back, Yen took me to Bach Khoa's campus and showed me the lab where she does her research on waste treatment.

As soon as I got back to the dormitory, I met up with Thao and she took me to the English club her sister works at. I asked her to take me here simply because I thoroughly enjoy talking to the Vietnamese and sharing my life with them as well as getting to know more about theirs. The session ended with karaoke, which I'm still not a big fan of, but the day was really fun. I had plans to be at Chris's house at 5pm, so we left a little early to go get a quick snack.

We ended up in front of a Co-Op with tons of kids playing outside. There were street vendors EVERYWHERE, and most of them were actually selling corn. We ended up getting some mini banh xeos from one street vendor, some corn from another, and bot chien (yes, the same thing I had for lunch) form another. The mini banh xeos were 5,000d for three and the bot chien was 10,000. The corn was the most expensive at 15,000d. I was shocked when he said the price was 15,000, simply because I haven't paid more than 10,000 for corn yet. However, when I tasted the corn I knew it was worth the extra 5,000d. It was super sweet and simply the best corn I've probably had so far.

After getting our snacks, Thao took me to Chris's house. Chris had invited all of the Loyola students for dinner and to watch a movie about Cambodia before we leave Wednesday. He made Paula Deen's fried chicken for us with green beans and mashed potatoes. Such a Midwestern meal and oh so good. Since Vien's birthday was yesterday, he also made a triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and served it with ice cream. My system is going to be on sugar overload from this weekend but it was so worth it. The movie we watched was called "The Killing Fields" and was about the war that occurred in Cambodia during the 1970s. Very interesting and it makes me more excited to learn about the history of Cambodia while we are on our trip.

When I got back to the dormitory around 10pm I Skyped with my family and also got to see Rose, Rex, Kya, Abby, Elea, and Grandma. It was so good to see them and the fact that they are picking pumpkins makes me kind of miss fall. Oh well, I am having lots of fun here!

Here is the second video I created for my scholarship about eco-tourism in Vietnam. For some reason in the last video I made it was hard to hear my voice, so hopefully that's not the case here. Enjoy!