A great success

The 2012 OFS Vietnam trip was a great success both in its goals and in the enjoyment. All three groups managed to complete their goals and in several cases surpass them which is even better. The students all had an amazing time, even though the work was tiring and back breaking at times we managed to pull through and still enjoy the trip. During the trip we toured several different parts of Vietnam and discovered it was an incredibly beautiful country and that the people were wonderful and amazingly friendly. The work my group had to do was at first just digging several trenches which at first seemed like hard work but only took us the best part of the first day to finish. However the next day we did not have enough space for all of us to work and so the remaining people in group 2 went to help the other two groups. We realised how much easier our worksite was compared to the others after this, especially group 1’s worksite. Group one had to dig much longer trenches and also had to dig through hard crumbly soil which was full of roots and took a machete to hack through at times. Mixing cement was another one of our jobs, which was not too difficult, and the shovelling the sand almost seemed like a welcome break, but carrying the buckets was difficult as many probably weighed about 20 kilograms each. Brick laying was difficult to get the technique right at first so you have the right amount of mortar on the brick and it is level with the rest of the bricks. However kneeling down for more than about 5 minutes really starts to give you sore knees and it became much easier once the bricks were at a level where you could stand and lay them. The tour of the Cu Chi tunnels was also an incredible experience as  I had learnt about them in my history classes but have never been to them before. The tunnels were incredibly cramped and dark but were very interesting to pass through to see what it was like for the Vietnamese who were using the tunnels. It also makes me appreciate how much hard work they did as they could make an underground tunnel that stretches several hundred meters and would have been incredibly hard work especially as they had to bring up the soil and used it to level bomb craters. Overall this trip was a wonderful experience even though at times it was incredibly hard work if I got the chance I would gladly do it again. Thanks, Yan