Day number 4. Tuesday june 22nd 2004

Aug 07, 2004 01:43

Well, today, we woke up in the crisp hour of 4. This is Normal for Co Minh. He's a doctor. He works at the free clinic Far far away from home, and he goes for 4 hours every single day just to help people for free. This man is someone I can look up to. Today was like take your nephew's to work day for him, haha. I would say we were all tired when we woke up. We seriously just put on our shoes and went right away. We had Ly tag along with us. It was a neato experience to be walking in the streets in the early morn. It was beautiful how there were little to no motorcycles on the street. We walked for aout a qtr of a mile. And then Co Minh decided to call a cab to drive us to the bus stop. We took the cab and it was much easier. After the 5-10 minute cab ride, he dropped us off at the bus stop. We waited for 5 min. Bus came and it was packed with farmers and people who sell their products. We hard a hard time fitting inside. In vietnam, they do not have a "seating capacity" They will fit as many as they can as intricately as they can in order to make some money for themselves. 15000 dong is equal to 1 dollar if you'd like to know. The bus ride was,say about 20 min, and we came to the Mekong River(i believe) and bought Banh Bao. It's like meat and eggs stuff into a dough and then steamed. Its really good if you are wondering. Ly bought the tickets for the ferry across the massive river. seriously, probably a 10 min. ferry ride. Co Minh said something interesting. During the dry,warm season, the Mekong River is salty. It takes in ocean water and becomes salty. During the rainy season (there are only 2 seasons in Vietnam) the water is fresh because the rain and water washes out all of the minerals and salts. Anyway, we cross it, we walk and we chill for a little bit until the mercedes taxi van comes. Almost all taxi vans are mercedes. As usual we are stuffed in. And we were in for a 3 hour ride to Co Minh's hospital/clinic. My brother took some pictures and we enjoyed the bumpy road. They are planning to build new highway at that route we're going. This is the first time i'd seen real straw huts and poor homes. I felt like noone's taking care of the people living in them. Left to die with no clean water or electricity. I didnt tell you this but on our first day here, we bought about 200 can openers in america and gave everyone we knew a can opener. And to my surprise, they've never seen one before. They used to open up cans with a knife. It goes to show how fortunate you are when you're living in the U.S. But here's one thing I see in all poor people in poor countries. They're happy. I don't know exactly why, i jsut think they are happy because they have what they need, which is community. As long as they have someone to talk to or play with, they dont want anything else. And I think thats admirable. I see here that we in America complain about every little thing. It's like that one qquote I hear alot "You're throwing away all that food when children in Ethiopia are dying?". Well, back to the trip...i'll add on to this later, i'm just tired right now.
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