KFC

by Zak Pham

Zak Pham and the rest of the team working on the sunflower mural

Today was my second day of workcamp. It was a very slow morning as I ate all the phở I could stomach at breakfast. After breakfast: the bus. Everyday driving to the workcamp is a new experience. The bumps, twists, turns, and brief moments of existential crisis packaged with each wobbly bus ride. So far none have been injured.

At the workcamp, we finished up painting rooms and started doing decals. Phoebe, Hayley, Kyra, Zoe, and I painted our own individual sunflowers for one of the rooms. I really liked painting and bonding with the team. The entire day I was working hard all for one reward. KFC. Kentucky Fried Chicken. The day before, I ventured with a group of young inspiring leaders into the local night market. Half of us wanted to go to KFC but one of them forced us to break off. So there I was with Kobe and Kory, the youngest members of the group, along with myself the third youngest member of the group, being misdirected into a KFC that wasn’t there. The member who told us to break off confused us with technically false directions to the nearest KFC. 

We continued to walk and converse amongst each other for 30 minutes around the local area through dark alleyways and crowded street corners to find our true destination, KFC. We craved chicken but ended up stuck in a location we didn’t know. We were all bummed with no hope to find KFC. Then suddenly, we all looked across the street and saw our last hope. OZ Burger. 

We sat down and ordered an American Burger in this nice quaint restaurant full of no one but us. The owner asked if we were from Singapore as we responded “America.” The burgers were on a scale of 6.5-7/10. When we were paying he asked if we wanted to split the check and he said ok. Then Kobe proceeded to pay for all of it as the owner did not understand anything that he said and gave Kobe a full bill. It was really good. After, we went to Ding Tea because the owner from OZ Burger didn’t give us water. We got boba tea even though they ran out out of pearl. 

The night of (June 5th), the second day of workcamp, after dinner we went to KFC finally with proper leadership/direction. It was also really good. 7/10 missing three stars because we didn’t get ketchup. Plus one star because of the extra amount of gravy with our mashed potatoes. After, we went to Ding Tea again. It was pretty bad. It tasted wack because all of our drinks tasted like a Vietnamese household. Nothing wrong with that it just tastes kinda weird. 

Then we went back to the hotel to play cards with Dalton. A fulfilling day I would say, as I am finishing my blog post at 1:03 AM. Don is half asleep. Before Don fell half asleep, he said Sebastian is “live”. He probably is.