Journeys Home

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Vietnam has turned out to be so different than what I thought. I came to Vietnam with this vague idea of discovering where I came from. Where my parents lived, where they met and courted, where they got married, where I was born, where I was nurtured. That Vietnam, for the most part, is gone. The apartment my parents first lived in has been razed. The houses my grandparents and my uncle lived are basically crumbling structures. Even most of the streets have been renamed.

But discovering where I come from is so much more than just the physical places that I thought I wanted to see. What I've discovered is a whole new extended family I never knew. My journey to Vietnam is as much, if not more, about these people as it is about those places in my parent's memories. I have cousins who are such cool, sophisticated and educated people.

One of them is even a litigator! We talked about how hard it was to be a woman and a lawyer in our respective countries. She said that you really have to know how to drink to be a successful lawyer in Saigon! Hah! What a coincidence!

I have another cousin who is an executive at an import/export company. She's 41, beautiful, speaks 3 languages, earns tons of money and is perfectly happy being single. And then there's my uncle who took us around So. Vietnam, who smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish but is one of the sweetest people I know. He doesn't speak English and Peter doesn't speak Vietnamese, but somehow they carried on an entire conversation about beer one night at dinner. I can see where Raymond (who kept up wth the Irish inlaws until 4 am at the wedding) gets his particular talents from.

Of course, there are relatives who aren't as successful and still live in tremendous poverty, but yet were so generous with what they had and were so happy to see us. Like my Dad's half-sister who owns a poultry farm in the country. She prepared an entire meal in preparation for our arrival. Or the cousins who immediately hopped on a motorbike to buy us fresh coconuts when we arrived unexpectedly. We invited them all to dinner and it was the first time some of them had ever been to a restaurant! I couldn't even fathom that.

Needless to say, it's been a great trip (notwithstanding the expected exasperation from havng to spend 14 days with my parents).

We started off in Hanoi, which is kind of a provincial town compared to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City). It's saving grace are these little sidewalk cafes that sell Bia Hoi (the local brew) for 2,000 dong each (did I mention that the exchange rate is 16,000 dong = $1 USD? Our bank account had $96,000,000 dong in it! No, I don't need to hear any 'dong' jokes. Peter's got those covered). Yes, that's right, you can get a decent pint of beer for about 12 cents. You sit on these tiny little plastic, neon chairs, sucking carbon monoxide from the millions of scooters zooming by, drinking 10-20 of these beers. After awhile, whether from the alcohol or the carbon monoxide, you screw up the courage to actually stumble across the street to get back to your hotel.

We drove/flew down to Saigon, making stops in Halong Bay, Dalat and Nha Trang. Our favorite was Dalat, which is totally not what you expect from a resort town in a subtropical country. It's an alpine village up 2 hours of twisty, don't-look-to-your-right-it's-a-sheer-cliff-with-only-room-for-one-car roads. We especially appreciated the driver's nerves of steel when he actually passed a few buses on the way up.

Nha Trang, a developing beach town, will be Phuket in a few years. For now, there aren't the annoying touts buzzing like sandflies in your ears and it is still relatively laid back. Halong Bay was amazng because you can book an entire junk to yourself and sail around the 3,000 islands to your heart's content.

Saigon was so cosmopolitan, it was scarey. My cousin, Lily, moved there about a year ago from Houston. Her husband works for BP so they have a house in the exclusive part of Saigon. I could not believe how expensive property is there! People who were selling vegetables at the street market a few years ago became millionaires (not in dong, but in USD) because they happened to own a dilapidated house in the center of Saigon. There's a vibrancy and opportunity here that is so exciting. And that's not just because I'm a capitalist pig either. People have plans and hopes that I don't think they had when the country's economic policies were much different.

Anyway, we have a little more than a week left in Malaysia and then we're home from 4/27 to 5/7 to refuel before South America. We're not sure where we'll be staying, but hopefully, we can catch up with everyone while we're home. See you soon.

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