So, I have noooooo idea what happened to the idea of somebody blogs everyday of the project, but it hasn’t happened. I can give you a brief idea of today though. If you want to know the full story, you have to go back to last night (Wednesday night). After our de-briefing, we had spotlight on and then some of us went to go find a café.

The hours for cafés had come and gone, as it was now past midnight, and our only option was a big tall, bar-looking building which had the words, “Go2Eat” on the bottom, “Go2Drink” on the middle, and “Go2Bed” on the top floor of the building. And so, we found ourselves at the Go2 Café, Restaurant, Bar, Hotel, or whatever it was in the middle of the Backpackers’ Area on Pham Ngu Lao Street. The place had, as Martha put it, “more white guys times ten than I have seen in my entire time in Vietnam.” The place really wasn’t my style, too much alcohol and too many drunk foreigners. So, after we left the place, we decided to go for a walk.

When I was in the USA, I think it was definitely advised that you don’t go out at night but here, but especially in a group of eight or so people, it seemed quite quite safe. We walked from the Backpackers’ Area to the City Hall and then the opera house, and then to the Cathedral, Notre Dame.

It was a beautiful night and we had the entire city to ourselves. It was silent and beautiful and the lights playing off of the pavement, sidewalks, and the glass that covers the tall buildings of the new Sài Gòn. After that, we walked back to the hotel and arrived at about 3:00AM.

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This morning, I woke up at 8:00AM and went back to 15 May School. When we got there, we had a nice stretching session led by Hung. After that, we started to paint on the gigantic canvas that we primed yesterday with blue and black paint. It turned out quite nice and we will complete it tomorrow.

After painting various shapes in circular patterns and a nice lunch, we headed out to the shelters. My group of students had already met at 15 May School and had left earlier by city bus. Then, the SEALNet team followed by Taxi.

Our students had come up with games and we played the games with the little kids at the shelter for a while. At the end, the mentees presented their gifts to the shelter and gave candy out. Overall, it was quite a touching experience. The little kids at the shelter got so happy to see us all there. Afterwards, however, some of the SEALNet members voiced their concerns about how they went to the shelter for a day, got the kids there excited, and then we just left back to our nice hotel and a few days later, all of us will leave Ho Chi Minh City.

After the shelter, I split from the group and went to a coffee shop with some of the mentees to listen to some of their discussion on their service plan. I didn’t help them with it, but rather, gave them specific ideas on basic project planning and presentation.

Came back to hotel a few minutes late, had debrief, spotlight on, then the team left for dinner. I split again and headed to get kem (ice cream) with two of the mentees (Anh Tú and Nandar) and to discuss ideas about SEALNet in Myanmar in the future. Afterwards, we explored near the city hall again and then they dropped me off at the hotel to go to sleep.

What I learned in Day 9? I think that this day, I saw for the first time, the real beauty of Sài Gòn. We’ve been running around so much on the crowded streets and alleyways that I did not have time before today to appreciate the beauty of the city. I also was glad to see the high school students become so excited about the younger students at the orphanage.

—Daniel Clayton Greer