searching for the house i lived in, in Saigon

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our last day in vietnam together. i had been away from mom for 3 days in cambodia. it was refreshing but i missed being with mom. so i took an earlier flight to ho chi minh city to meet up with mom and my cousin dong's house.

mom was glad to see me as she was taking her usual post-lunch afternoon nap. i woke her to go explore saigon to try to find the house that i was raised in....the one we left before the fall of saigon.

mom was game. we got some lunch and jumped in a metered cab ...on a mission. mom remembered the exact street address. we wiggle through a million motos (that rule the roads) to find ourselves in front of a line of shoe stores open to the street. mom was confused. the street was much bigger. maybe they changed the entire block after 31 years. maybe. after driving around for 45 minutes or so...the driver was sooo cool and so involved in finding this house...and mom was cool...and i was enjoying the flow. just smiling along the way.

we decided to go home and wait until cousin dong came home and we'd venture out again. we did. and we got dropped off in front of the SAME shoe store. mom was right.

turns out the chinese owners that my mom sold to before we left saigon, fled the scene too. the government took over the property. they sold it to another vietnamese family that gutted the houses on the street, pushed the sidewalk forward, and built retail space to rent to several shoe store shop vendors. so what else to do but to buy shoes! mom and i both got a pair of shoes (i opted for cool army green sneakers). we walked into the building that mom was sure was her old house. we walked to the back to find a door. we looked through the door and mom recognized the stairs on the left. she said that was the stairs that dad carried her up upon returning from the hospital after giving birth to my brother joe. wow! we rung the buzzer. a lady answered. mom told her our story and the frightened woman quickly turned sour and shut the door.

wow. that was weird. my cousin dong said that she was probably afraid that my mom was coming back to "make trouble." maybe she thought my mom was coming back to get her house back. funny how people are. so we didn't get to take a tour of the house but mom was happy to find the house still standing...even though it was disguised by a shoe store directly on it's front porch. c'est la vie.

we left the next day for the airport....i hope to come back next year to revisit my cousins and new family in vietnam for tet! mom says she'll be back too!

want to join us? local-style!

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Photos

driving around local style
after 2 weeks i figured out that the masks we were wearing were not intended for pollution control...instead for sunscreen. the paler the skin the more beautiful! if you look more closely you can see the (blue) ballroom gown gloves they wore to protect their arms from tanning!