Long Post.. during Vietnam

Day 1
After many months of waiting, the day we are leaving for Vietnam finally arrived. I was somehow excited about the trip partly because I am one of the planning committee for the trip and I am looking forward to go on a holiday with a bunch of friends. In the morning, few of us gather at Subang Jaya KTM station and take a train down to KL Sentral, where we met some of our other classmates there. When everyone has arrived, we quickly urgent to the bus stop where there are 2 companies who are “fighting” for us. After boarding the bus, which is cheaper than but not as nice as the other bus, we are on our way to LCCT. In the bus, the one thing that we have not learnt is to be considerate to other people. Throughout the whole journey there, we were making noise like nobody’s business. After checking in, entering into the waiting lounge, boarding the plane, sleeping in the plane, and finally, we reached to our destination. The colours of the lights from the plane really amazed me, as the whole city is lighted up with streets lights, which will be shown in my group’s photo journal. After coming out from the airport, we make our way to the restaurant to have our dinner. The dinner was one of the best meals in Vietnam, partly because I love to eat chicken and the fish is nice. Dinner time during that day is also where we have our “bonding” session with fellow classmates. Somehow I felt belong to this group of friends, which I normally don’t mixed with. After dinner, we went to the hotel and check in to our rooms. After that, the day has just begun for most of us. Firstly, we went to buy a cake for one of our friend, Jocelyn as her birthday is just the next day. We went to her room right after that to so call “surprised” her but, it was a failure I guess. After that, we make our way to the night market, after asking for direction from lots of people. After that, few of the guys went and sent the 2 year 1 girls back to their hotels, which after that, we sent our lecturers back there as well.

Day 2
After a tiring walk yesterday, I somehow managed to wake up early despite of the tiredness. After breakfast, we make our way to the orphanage which we are to help out with. To our surprise, the things that we are doing are different from the things we have planned to do with the kids there. Well, we don’t plan to bath the kids, we don’t plan to clean the toilet but in the end, we are doing it. The best part is, we are not doing it in our groups that we are in. So, few of us guys when and clean the boys block, which include the toilet, the corridor and the windows. Cleaning the toilet is somehow easy, as it is not as dirty as we expected in the beginning. The worst is cleaning the corridor as we are not allowed to spray water on the floor, and we are to use a small piece of scrub to clean it. As things are not communicate properly, we are somehow making things worse for them. Instead of helping them cleaning the place up, they are somehow actually helping us to clean it one more time after we are done. After lunch, we went up to their meeting hall to help them fold gift boxes. Since we do not know their language, we need the translator to help us interpret on how to fold the boxes. It was fun times chatting with friends while helping the orphanage do something meaningful as that boxes are one of their major source of income where 200 boxes are sold for around USD 1, which is very little. This reminds me of the documentary that Ms. Ratnes show us during our GBC class in year 1, where Nike is using child labour to reduce their cost. This is almost the same as the supplier of the boxes are “exploiting” the kids and paying them very little. After finishing most of it, the people suddenly told us that most of the boxes we have done are not correct. I suddenly felt so angry because why don’t they tell us that we are wrong when we ask them are we doing it correctly. I just don’t feel like doing it anymore and just sit around there and talk. As I was sitting down there and seeing most of my friends continue to do the job, changing every single mistake they made, I regretted on my actions and behaviour. I remember one of my objectives for this trip is to help the people in need here, and with me sitting there and do nothing does not seems that I am achieving my objective. Therefore, I begun to do the work again, does not really matter if we have to redo folding the boxes many times, my main purpose is to help every single need I can.
After folding the boxes, we have a light snack provided for us, which is the famous Vietnamese Spring Rolls and Malaysian Made Coconut Jelly, which we can’t find it in Malaysia. After snacks, we watched their performances, which are good, played some games with them, and giving out gives to them.
We urgent back to the hotel and get ready for the Networking Dinner where we are going to meet up with professionals from Vietnam. But, it was sad to say that I did not take the opportunity to talk to them, due to my laziness and procrastination. After getting a wake up call from Ms. Ratnes, we finally made our way to their table and talk to them. But, as there are much noise from all the performance, we can’t do listen properly to the things they are saying. After the dinner, we have our reflection session in the restaurant itself, being divided into 3 different faculty, we began to share our experience for the day and to my amazed, most of my classmates actually enjoyed the time with the kids despite having to redo the boxes again.
After the dinner, the night has just begun for most of us again, as we head towards the night market after changing to our casual cloths. This time around, we could not walk as much as yesterday due to the tiredness throughout the day. Therefore, my day end when I reach back to my room and of cause after taking a nice cool shower.

Day 3
After another tiring day we had yesterday, which is Day 2, we begun our day with another wonderful breakfast in the hotel. We quickly urgent to one of the local universities there to have cultural exchange and university visit. To our amazed, only one student from the local university came to listen to the talk. It is quite pointless when we listen to the presentation from the local university and from ACCA Vietnam, as we have gone through similar talks back in Malaysia. Ms. Ratnes also presented on Taylor’s University College, but, it is pointless as well because only one student is present there for the talk. After the talk, we went and visit the university, which somehow makes me feel grateful for the facilities we have in Taylor’s. The only interesting event that happens in the university is to see a dancer practicing his dance steps, and he is good. After the visit, we went towards the post office and the Notre Dame Cathedral. The post office was awesome as it looks like an old building from outside, but inside is fully modernize. The cathedral was amazing too as can see from the photo journal that we have done.
After these visit, we headed for lunch. After lunch, we have our reflection session there. Ms. Vinitha ask us of our opinion where she is planning to start an accounting office in College with the helped of some professionals. It is a good idea for me, but it does not serve me any purpose because I will be graduating soon. I just wish the plan could have been implemented way before this. We also learned a lot from on how employer looks for their future employees. Besides on academic results, they are also looking on other soft skills from employees. As I was not a really good student and my results are not really pleasing, it gives me some hope as to improve my communication skills to have a different value for myself. After lunch, we headed towards the Tian Hou Gong temple for visit. After taking pictures of the temple, we make our way to the lacquer factory to see the production chain. As the factory we visited is quite small, we had a hard time going through the processes and did not learn much from that visit. After that, we head towards the Opera House. After these visit, we head back to the Hotel and get ready for our Ben Thanh Market tour. It is similar to our Malaysian “Petaling Street” where we got out goods cheap and good quality. After that, we move towards our most delicious meal in the whole Vietnam trip, which is the Mushroom Steamboat. As I am not a mushroom freak, I also enjoyed eating these mushroom as it is awesome. Some of us also planned to franchise the business back to Malaysia as it has not been started by anyone here. A good business plan I suppose. After dinner, we head towards for the famous Vietnam Coffee and Coconut Ice-Cream. It is one of the best desserts I ever had in years. The coffee smells nice, the Ice Cream is awesome, and the company of cause is entertaining. It has also in our planned to franchise back this business as well.
After these unhealthy foods that we had, we decided to go for an exercise and walk to the night market again. This time around, we got most of the stuff that we want cheap. After reaching back to my room, my leg began to ache badly due to the long walk that I had for the past few days. Well, it got me thinking into going on a diet soon. Day ended when after I shower and headed to bed.

Day 4
I struggle to get out of my bed because of another tired day I had, but when the morning call came, I know is time to get out of my comfort zone. After washing up, I quickly packed my stuff as we won’t be returning to the hotel anymore. After breakfast, we check out from the hotel and headed towards the famous “Chu Chi Tunnel”, which the real pronunciation is “Gucci” Tunnel. During the journey there, I slept because of the tiredness and the journey is 2 hours. We head towards the rice paper factory first to see how rice paper is made. We realise that it is not easy to make a nice rice paper as hard work need to be done. We from the city sometimes take things for granted and not knowing how much effort must be done. After that, we head towards Chu Chi Tunnel and see how the Vietnamese at the time fight with the American during war time. We get to see the documentary on how intelligent the Vietnamese are during those times. Using simple weapon such as bamboo sticks, they are able to kill thousands of American. We also get to see real machine guns and traps used by the soldiers last time. Some of the people also bought bullets to try using these guns and shoot. After that, we went inside the tunnel to experience how they had experience last time. It is not easy for me as my knee hurts due to much bend walking. This experience got me thinking of times where I complaint about unfairness and difficulties that happened in my life. After this experience, I realise that I am not that bad after all. Other people have worst experience than me, and they did not complaint about it and move on quickly and face their problems with strength. Well, I think I got to learned not to complaint so much and be contented with the things I have.
After the visit, we headed towards restaurant for lunch, where we had our Vietnamese cuisine. It was nice as compared to the Vietnamese food that we had back in Malaysia. Since I don’t have space with the gang I usually sit with, I sat with the lecturers and the year 1 students. It was fun entertaining because my lecturers are people who are energetic and outgoing. After lunch we headed to Ben Thanh Market to do last minute shopping, but most of us who has done our shopping, we head towards a beef noodle shop to try the famous Vietnamese Beef Noodle and to drink Vietnamese Coffee. It was not as nice as I expected actually, where after all, I have Malaysian tongue who only thinks that Malaysian foods are nice.
After spending around an hour there, we head towards the airport to catch our flight. During the journey there, most of us were sad because we are going back soon and we missed the time there in Vietnam where we have less stress as compared to us back in Malaysia. But, we got to face reality and get back to where we belong. After checking in, we were quite mad at the airport because they changed our departure gate 3 times for no reasons. Therefore, we have to run here and there just to be at the gate on time.
After touching down, this is the time where I know our journey to Vietnam ends. It is one of the wonderful trips I have been and learning so many things outside the classroom.