Viet nom nom nom

I've recently realized that most people probably care less about the details of what I've done every day than I originally thought. So I think that from now on for my blog, I'll only give a daily breakdown when I feel it's needed. For vietnam, I do not feel that way.

Basically in vietnam I ate a lot of food (banana pancakes are my new favorite thing ever), toured around ancient pagodas and temples of Hue, got some custom goodies and shopped around Hoi An, met some of the most random and wonderful people in China Beach, and felt my heart break in Saigon.

China Beach was especially awesome. We got to a guest house where there was a family dinner served at seven for everyone who was staying there. We met Chris from Sweden, Scott from Australia, and Jean-Paul from Holland. We spent the night attempting to sneak into a pool, swimming in the ocean, and drinking in Danang. We had some absolutely fantastic conversations, and their stories reawakened my love for traveling. It was refreshing mixture of traveling for fun, traveling for new beginnings, and traveling for the sake of traveling.

I spent my last day in Saigon learning. Most people in our generation know someone who fought in the war or who have been affected by it in one way or another. I never really read into the war much. I didn’t know anything about it. I’m not even sure if anyone in my family fought in it. To put it simply, I was incredibly ignorant to the horrors of the war. I made my way to the war remnants museum in Ho Chi Minh City to learn more, and I walked away with a head full of horrifying images and a heart full of sadness.

        The part of the museum that I found most disheartening was the Agent Orange exhibit. Agent Orange is a chemical that was sprayed throughout Vietnam with the intent to kill. The chemical affects your DNA, so there are children to this day who are being born with physical deformities and health defects. Deformities ranging from lack of fingers and toes to missing legs to large tumor-like lesions all over the body. Some defects are worse than that. You can feel free to look up images on your own, but I must warn you that the images WILL stick with you. I saw images of hundreds of kids who were affected by it, and by the end of the visit I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach.

        After leaving the museum, I went to an orphanage for children affected by agent orange. I was completely by myself. I got there and just walked right in and started playing with this little boy, who jumped up for me as soon as I walked in. I spent time with him and one other boy who clearly had a slight mental retardation. I never learned their names, because they both didn’t speak English, and they had a hard time speaking anyway. We spent about half an hour drawing pictures, singing, and just playing with one another. I took a few pictures and they loved how a digital camera works, so they took a few pictures as well. After about an hour, I had to leave. I picked up the boy who had been in a crib and put him back in and had the most difficult time walking away from him and all of the kids who I didn’t get the chance to interact with. I walked downstairs and saw a little boy who had to be strapped down to a bed, and he was trashing around trying to escape. I walked toward the room and two nurses who were hovering over another child shooed me away.

        On one hand, I think it’s amazing that there’s an opportunity to go to an orphanage and just play with these kids. On the other, it scares the hell out of me. ANYONE can just walk in and interact with the kids. Including not so nice people. I just couldn’t stop imagining that there was a chance for people to walk in and abuse the kids and no one would even notice. Or someone could just walk out with one of them, and it may easily go unreported. I found my heart completely broken and my faith in humanity ever so slightly diminished. I wish that I could help every kid in the world who needs it, but I can’t and it made me feel so small and meaningless. The thought has been circulating in my head for a while. I feel like the more I see the world, the more I don’t want to be apart of the population.

        Don’t let the things I’m saying make you sad or turn you off of seeing the world. Absolutely don’t let it stop you from going to orphanages or donating your time somewhere else. I have to continuously tell myself one thing: Even if it’s a small change, I AM still making a change. Some people I've been talking to on this ship are under the mindset that there's no way to actually know if we are making a difference, we can't just assume that we are. The way I see it is that if there's even a glimmer of hope in the eyes of these kids, then we are making a difference. Every smile, every laugh, every hug counts.  What may seem meaningless to us could mean the entire world to these kids. Sure, we're not necessarily changing their lives, but we are doing something... and that's what matters.


        ALSO: I just found out I got ringworm in my feet from walking around the woods of Malaysia. Don’t walk barefoot in Southeast Asia, folks! Also don't worry, it will go away within a week or so. I'll try to get some photos of my new little foot pets.