On Monday we visited Thu's grandfather. The trip takes about two hours from our little village, but I don't remember the name of the place where he lives. Her grandfather moved back here from the States about four years ago -- it's much easier to live well here than in Arizona! Thu called the day before to say we were coming over and ask when would be a good time to arrive. He apparently hadn't checked his e-mail in a while (since you have to go someplace to do that), so he had no clue she was here! It was a [View Full Entry]

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I am hiding from a monster bug right now. Thu just walked out from the bathroom area and said that there was a giant cockroach above the sink. She asked Matthew to take care of it, but after looking at it he said that he has a policy when confronted with bugs that could reach back and punch him in the nose - live and let live. I’m hoping having all the lights on will scare it into a little hole. Today was nice - the first day we could sleep in! We still got up before 8AM, but it was [View Full Entry]

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We planned on sleeping in this morning, but the early phone call from Salem-Keizer did not make that possible. Instead, when Thu knocked on our door at 8:30 wanting to know if we’d join her and Peter on the roof of the hotel, we were ready to go. Again, Bac Phuc was chomping at the bit to leave ahead of schedule, worriedly calling our rooms at 8:50 to wonder why we weren’t in the lobby yet (even though the agreement was to meet at 9:00 - this obsession with running early has turned into a standing joke now J). We went [View Full Entry]

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Another early morning this morning! We took the elevator to the top floor, the ninth, in our building to the hotel’s breakfast buffet. It was an odd combination of foods that didn’t match - eggs, toast, rice, stir-fried veggies, pho but with pork (I’ve never seen that before and neither has Thu), and little bits of chicken that I think were supposed to resemble chicken wings. We picked it over - it wasn’t good, but it was food. After breakfast we met downstairs. The plan was to go see the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh. Sadly, when we arrived we [View Full Entry]

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Our tour guide really is a task master! She has us up and to breakfast between 6AM and 6:30PM every morning! This morning was no exception. We arrived in the lobby at 6:10 and went to breakfast at the hotel buffet - a conglomeration of “Asian” food (including pho, which I am eating every morning as a preventative against further illness) and Western food (represented by toast). After a quick breakfast we jumped into our tour van and went to the dock where we chartered a boat to take us on a tour. This boat was great! We had the whole [View Full Entry]

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We awoke early and were downstairs in the lobby of our hotel at 6:30 in the morning, ready to eat breakfast and check out, off to the next adventure. We ordered pho or chao or wonton soup (wonton being a type of noodle here, not wontons like we’re used to) and ca phe sua da (which hasn’t been really good since we left our village café) for breakfast. We assume that the hotel actually ran out onto the street to buy things like pho - isn’t that convenient? Anyway, we left and started to head out of the city of Hanoi. [View Full Entry]

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Day three (?): We left EARLY this morning and drove into Saigon. Since we actually arrived ahead of schedule, we stopped and had pho for breakfast, along with more ca phe sau da. We still arrived at the airport way too early! Saigon has a beautiful new airport that was built last year, but that was for international flights. Since we were flying domestically we used the old airport. They don't allow you inside until your plane arrives, so we all sat outside for a while waiting for our tour guide (who's leading the trip north) and then we went to [View Full Entry]

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Day two (? -- Monday) in Vietnam: We awoke and headed to the shower in the house that Thu's father, Bac Phuc, built for her (most of the time it is used for her uncle's wedding business -- he lives in the house next door and his business studio is also nearby). Thu said "The shower's not working, so I guess that's what the bucket's for." It was a bucket with a scoop. No problem. We had a toilet that worked and a sink that turned on (although it drained onto the floor), and growing up with a crazy I was [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! While I have a place with internet, I'll try to update my blog. (Of course we all know how well I kept up with Prague -- ha!) Day One of our trip to Vietnam: We left Portland at 9AM, bound for Seattle, Seoul, and eventually Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City). The trip to Seattle was short, and we thought that our layover would be way, way too long. We arrived before 10am and our next leg of the journey wasn't scheduled until after 1PM! It turned out to be a good thing that we had so much time on [View Full Entry]

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Today we planned for Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. Cheery subject, eh? Neither one of us has ever been to a concentration camp, so this would be interesting. Terezin is reached by bus, so immediately after breakfast we headed to the main bus station, Florenc, to figure out how to get to Terezin. It turns out, buying a bus ticket to Terezin is relatively easy (probably because so many tourists want to go each day - our bus ended up being packed and only a few were locals headed to different towns along the way), but riding the bus is a bit [View Full Entry]

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