A Day in the Life... Scooters

Today was another fun day organized by our great OAT leader, Dahn. We were divided into 3 teams after breakfast in order to purchase food items for our lunch at a local market, where no one but us spoke English. Dahn gave us a small amount of Vietnamese Dong and orally told us (in Vietnamese) 4 things that we had to buy. He repeated the name of these items 3 times only. Two ladies in our group wrote down what they thought he said. We ended up the winners, as we were the only group to purchase all of the items correctly & have the correct amount of change left. It was fun! We continued on our way on the scooters to a private home where we helped to prepare our lunch. The man of the house was another Vietnam war vet who shared his story & answered our questions through Dahn. The men mixed the drinks (delicious mojitos) and the ladies peeled, chopped the veges, & prepped the rest of our lunch. The family, with Dahn’s help I’m sure, added in the missing items, and a couple of new ones as well. It was delicious. I tried a Vietnamese delicacy, duck embryo, which is just as it sounds. It was actually quite tasty, although a little chewy. Kim was too “chicken” to try it. We continued on to a Bamboo village where each family makes items for sale from bamboo. It was fun to try making some items ourselves. It gave us a better appreciation for how talented the local people were at what they produced. They made very little money compared to the amount of time & effort they put into their craft.Read more