May 9th, 2016 - My Current Attitudes and Beliefs Towards Travel

After a long 30 hours of traveling, we finally arrived in Vietnam. I have traveled abroad before but I have never been on a plane for 16 hours like we did for this trip. Before this I had been on vacations to the British Virgin Islands and Dominican Republic with my family. I have also been to China in high school with a travel organization called People to People. I went with 30 other students and we learned about the history/culture of China. This experience has helped me prepare for Vietnam and even after just one day of being here I have seen many similarities. Before coming to Vietnam I did not know much about the culture and did not realize how much of an influence China has had on it. In both countries the people were very inviting, the food was delicious, and the traffic was crazy. However, despite this past experience my first day in Vietnam was already a culture shock. 

We started the day off going to a welcome ceremony at our partner university, the University of Economics and Finance. All of the students were very excited to have us here and we got to hear more about their education system. They even gave us flower lei’s as we stepped off of the bus and helped us in our first language class of the trip. The second half of the day consisted of a tour of Ho Chi Min City and it was interesting to see all of the international influences on the architecture. Since Vietnam has been under the control of France and China in the past, we saw Chinese Temples and French inspired Churches scattered around the city. We had the chance to tour a temple and it was interesting to hear about all of the aspects of Chinese worship. There were many symbols and every object seemed to have a deeper meaning. I am excited to see how much of this international influence still exists today as we hear from many development companies later in the week. These companies have a big influence on shaping the landscape of Vietnam and it will be interesting to see where Vietnam is headed culturally. Thanks for reading!