Today was our last full day in Vietnam and we didn’t let any of it go to waste. We started off our day by visiting the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Seeing how busy it was and the amount of people there really showed how many people respected and cared for him as a role model. Ho Chi Minh was a down to earth person who wanted to live a simple lifestyle. His request to not to live in an extravagant palace but instead a basic house (which we saw) showed that he cared more about the people than fame and fortune. Next we visited a small one pillar pagoda where people pray to the lady Buddha and many Vietnamese couples go there to pray for a son.
We were lucky enough to walk the streets of Hanoi with a local himself (our tour guide Hoang) and see a different side of the city. We walked to a nearby lake where an American B52 that had been shot down was still visible in the lake.
We saw Hoang’s mother’s street-side restaurant and he kindly invited us to see his house. Even though it was a simply household he was very happy with his life and it reminded us of how lucky we actually are. Feeling very hungry we enjoyed lunch nearby and many people remarked on how good the hands on rice paper rolls were. We then set off to the Australian Embassy and enjoyed hearing other Australian voices after being in Vietnam for 16 days. We learnt about the many different ways Australia provides support to Vietnam. The statistics that were presented to us were very confronting. With Australia’s help poverty has decreased and since 2010 Vietnam is now considered a medium class country in terms of support needed. However, there are still 36 million people here living on less than two dollars per day. Australia has helped build a major bridge to connect the two major islands down in the Mekong Delta. This allows easy access to two major parts of South Vietnam and they are now discussing building another bridge due to commence in 2017.
After completing our embassy visit, we were given time to do some last minute shopping to spend the remainder of what we had left in our pockets and enjoy our last dinner in Vietnam. To finish the night we belted it out in a karaoke bar and sang some classics like dancing queen.
We award best singers to Patty and Nick for their incredible rendition of Katy Perry’s E.T. We also presented Hoang with a token of our love, a ukulele, and he touched our hearts with a heart-warming goodbye speech. Over all we really enjoyed our last day together but can’t wait to be greeted by our families in Melbourne.
By Nat S and Phoebe J