Saturday, July 9, 2011

Day 1: The Chaos of Departure and Arrival



I cannot believe it is finally here: MEMO 5G. It has been a year since MEMO finished its 4G mission to Vietnam, and now we are coming back once again to provide help and support to those who are less fortunate in this country. I must say, I am even more excited this time around to go back. I will do my best to document what we do each day and share them on this blog using my mediocre Canon Powershot and mediocre writing skill.





Thank you everyone for trying to arrive at the airport in a timely manner. We were able to identified all of the medical supply boxes and checked them in. After about 20+ hours of flying and transiting, we arrived in Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Saigon under the POURING rain. The chaos began here. As soon as we passed through customs, everyone rushes to the luggage claiming areas to retrieve our medical supplies box. Our contact from the hospital was already present, along with two of our members, Fritz and Jerome, who arrived before eveyrone else. As the boxes rushed out into the lanes, members started gathering them together while officers tried to identified each box. Box number 16 gave us a very hard time...In the end we were able to get everything in and transported to the hospital.



After checking into Hoang Hai Long Hotel 3, our group wandered for the first time in the streets of Saigon looking for Sim cards and places to exchange currencies. We were able to exchange at the rate of 20,520 VND for 1 USD. During this operation i almost got hit by a moped...The rest of the day is free, so most people used it to visit families and loved ones in Vietnam.

Tomorrow, our real mission begins as we will go to Long An to provide scholarship for 50 students. Wake up time is 5:30 am and everyone will need to be on the bus by 6:30 am. It is 1:21 am, I guess this means goodnight for now.

Over and out.

1 comment:

  1. OMG this is tight. Keep us posted!

    Anh yeu em Tuan.

    ReplyDelete