Wednesday: Day 10

Today was the day many of us had been looking forward to: cooking classes. It actually turned out differently than we had expected. We were originally supposed to go to some fancy restaurant on an island somewhere in one of the rivers, where they would teach us how to make spring rolls. The cooking lessons still happened, but the locations changed. Instead of a nice restaurant on the waterfront, we were taken to (seriously) a 5-star hotel in the middle of the city. Now, none of us had any problems with the hotel we were staying in, but you could definitely tell that this place was on a whole other level. Just walking in, everything felt fancy. Just the lobby gift store had jewelry that was so far above my budget, somewhere in the hundreds of dollars. We got taken on a mini "tour" of parts of the hotel, which I think was just an excuse to get the big group of rowdy college students out of the way until the kitchen was ready for us. It was nice though: we got to hang around a cute little garden and admire the giant pool. The whole feel of the place was distinctly different from anywhere else we'd been so far on the trip. I can understand wanting to have nice accommodations, but I think most of us felt that staying in a place like that would have robbed us from experiencing the country as it really was. It wouldn't have been nearly as authentic. Nevertheless, we were all prepared to enjoy the experience while it lasted.
We were finally brought down to the restaurant area, and were immediately floored by the buffet. Our cooking class was to take place right next to their fancy buffet area, and I've never seen a more enticing display of edibles. Literally anything you could have wanted, from Asian to European and American. They had an entire table just full of fancy-looking desserts. Pulling our eyes away from the food, we began the cooking lesson. They taught us how to make two things, fresh shrimp spring rolls and friend pork spring rolls. We all got to take turns making the spring rolls, to varying degrees of success. I'm proud to say mine turned out alright (relatively). It was a hard process because it involved wetting rice paper, which, for those who have never done it before, makes the rice paper really sticky. Once we were done, though, we got to enjoy the fruits of our labor, and then some. They made the mistake of turning us loose on the buffet. Reminiscing on the experience, most of the details blend together in a sort of food haze, but I remember it involved bread, many different meats, sushi, fancy cheese, soups, steamed buns, more spring rolls, and five or six different types of dessert. I'd say it was a pretty special meal.
(Side note, but this hotel was so fancy that the guy in the "Man" sign on the bathroom door had a pocket square. I'll post a pic)
After lunch, we headed off to Saigon Newport Corporation, which was basically a big port. They gave us an interesting presentation on their involvement with the Vietnamese government, since their cooperation with the navy helps facilitate their business. They took us up to the control room so we could get an overview of the whole port. It was basically shipping containers as far as the eye could see, but it was more interesting than it sounds. After that, we drove the bus around the port for a while so we could get a closer look.
In the late afternoon, most of us went back to the market for another shopping trip. Most of us left after the market closed, but I and a few others stayed and had dinner by the market. I had snails. Afterwards, an outdoor market opened up in the streets around the indoor market, so we did even more shopping there, and I finally finished my souvenir shopping. It only took me three trips to do so.
To finish off the night, a bunch of us walked a dozen blocks from the hotel to go to a Dairy Queen, which was great, and then came back to the hotel to get remeasured for our suits. The tailor had all our outfits half-finished, so we got our first look, and they looked great! We were definitely pretty excited for the finished product.