Tough Days are Good Days

I am currently sitting on my bed in cabin 3037 on the MV Explorer. Vietnam is physically behind us...we are now sailing to Singapore, but the emotional implications of my time in Vietnam is just starting to hit me. I am no longer in intense travel mode (I think I spent 3 hours on the ship aside from sleeping hours), and the dust is beginning to settle. Reflection after Japan was enlightening, reflection after China was awe inspiring, and the reflection that I'm going through after Vietnam is just downright extremely overwhelming.
There's no moment I can point to and say that that's when everything changed. Rather, the accumulation of my six days in Vietnam has all been put into one big pot, molding and melting together to the point where I can't tell what happened on what day. All I know is that it all happened. When thinking of Semester at Sea, I knew that there would be moments where I just wouldn't know what to do with myself, and I think that this is my first moment of the trip. I don't want it to seem as though I'm hating life right now, but I'm definitely feeling my experiences in a way that I haven't in the past.
Water freezes at 32 degrees. There are 12 inches in a foot. My current favorite color is red. Four divided by four is one. I write better on lined paper. Post-its are amazing. Hawaii is a state and DC is a district. Crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh is dangerous. The metro system in Japan is extremely easy to navigate. The Great Wall is everything everybody thinks it is. These are facts. These are things I can explain. These are things that no one will object to. However, what I don't know how to explain are experiences and perspectives. Everybody has a different one. I was with a friend for the entirety of Vietnam, and although we were in the same situations, we have had completely different experiences.
It will be too complicated to go through every single thing I did in Vietnam, so I would rather just talk about some experiences that stood out to me. I did a homestay for 2 nights/3 days on the Mekong in Vietnam. Within my time there, I visited a family owned shop, drank snake rice wine, had a giant boa wrapped around me, ate shrimp with its head and appendages still attached, drank a coconut on a boat floating down the Mekong, hung out in a garden, floated down the river some more, arrived at the village of our home stay, found a lizard in the bathroom, learned how to make traditional Tet cake, ate questionable food, walked around the most serene place I have ever been, fell asleep to the sounds of nature, had a traumatic experience walking through the meat market, got chased around by ladies selling pants in a different market, seen the floating market of the Mekong, and have sweated more than I thought possible.
These are the experiences that I won't forget, that I'll remember to tell people about. However, it's the overwhelming emotions of traveling that often get swept under the rug. The moments when you realize that this is a journey of a life time. The moment I realize that had I been born in Vietnam, I could be eleven year old Nga selling bookmarks and fans to tourists until 1 in the morning. The moment when I'm at a orphanage and realizing that "poverty/orphanage tourism" is a real thing, and I'm witnessing it right now. The moment when I'm in class and the professor asks what "white privilege" is and the fact that none of us can answer that is what "white privilege" is. The moment when you step out of the War Remnants Museum and you wonder if the beggar on the street was affected by agent orange. The wonderful moment when you're walking down the street with your friends and we realize that we're in Vietnam.
There's something to be said for itineraries. There's something to be said for pictures. There's something to be said for sites and good food. But there's also something to be said for putting the map and camera away and just...experiencing. I think I was more aware of that than anything else in Vietnam. And because of that I'm at a loss for words. I'm sorry if this is rambling, or confusing, or if it seems as though I'm being negative. But as this blog post says, tough days are good days. Tough days are good days because that means that I'm experiencing this journey in its entirety. It's been smooth sailing (emotionally speaking), for the past couple of ports, but I think it's just going to continue at this pace for the rest of the time. A journey isn't a journey for its easiness. We don't talk about Marco Polo because he had it easy. Archbishop Desmond Tutu isn't Archbishop Desmond Tutu because his life was simple.

So it's my time for some rough seas...literally and metaphorically.