Sorry it has taken me so long to post on here but I've been sick and slammed with schoolwork but the last countries I visited were Vietnam, Singapore and Myanmar (which I will post about a little later).

Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Noi & Ha Long Bay

Day 1

The first day in Vietnam I had a field lab for my Gender & Society class. We were able to visit an NGO called Mekong Quilts, which employs more than 300 women with jobs to make quilts and other cloth products. In order to work for the company the women are also required to keep their children in school. The objective is to generate employment for women. All profits from products sold are returned to the villages both directly in the form of salaries, and indirectly in funding for community development projects. Check out their website online if you get a chance! We then spent the afternoon at a local market shopping and made our way back to the boat for the night.

Day 2
I spent today exploring Ho Chi Minh City with a group of friends. We walked around a few of the parks that were all filled with flowers in preparation for the New Years festival known as Tet. The entire city was getting ready for the celebration so crossing the street and trying to get around was quite the experience but I found that if you just keep walking everyone will move around you. I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring two more local markets and had lunch at a small local café before heading back to the boat for sunset.

Day 3 
I had to be up and ready to leave at 3:15 am for a field program to Ha Noi and Ha Long Bay. Once we arrived in Ha Noi we visited the Temple of Literature and an old prison converted to a museum before we made the two and a half hour drive to Ha Long Bay where we stayed for the night.

Day 4 
We got up at around 8 am to head out on the bay for the afternoon. We took a junk boat around the bay to various sites. We stopped at a stalagmite cave and a floating village before we tied up for a seafood lunch on the bay. Once we were back on land we heading into Ha Noi for the night and went to a traditional water puppet show, which was one of the most interesting shows I've ever seen.

Day 5 
We spent the last day in Ha Noi exploring. We stopped at a local market for lunch (where I ate some food from a street vendor that I totally shouldn't have and that became apparent very quickly if you catch my drift…) before going to Ho Chi Minh's complex along with an amazing flower market and the Old Quarter of Vietnam before catching our flight back to Ho Chi Minh City, which ended up getting delayed three hours.

Day 6 
I got up early the last day in Vietnam for a field program to a local orphanage and pagoda. This was a very eye opening experience for me to say the least. The language barrier made it extremely difficult to interact with many of the children who did not speak any English. It was also hard to see the living conditions of the 200 children living within the very small complex. It also became very apparent that there had been many student groups that had visited this orphanage in the past because all the children wanted was to take your phone to play games on and not interact with you at all. It was a tough pill to swallow but its an experience that I will appreciate in time.