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Published: February 19th 2005
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wow! where to begin. i arrived a week ago to nha trang. a beachside town that reminds me of hawaii! yes. hawaii! i've sunbathed on the beaches of oahu and this morning at 9am when my cousins and i went to the beach (saturday morning) i sat in meditation with my eyes open gazing at the distant islands off of nha trang's shore...and thought...wow...hawaii. but better.
better because i'm among my people, as a friend said to me, "isn't it nice to be among the majority?" and that i am. my cousins have been teaching me conversational vietnamese. every day we have gathered on the living room floor (seated in natural hip openers) feasting on so many different variations of noodle soups, vegetable broth soups, nuoc mam (fish sauce), white rice, pork, fish, + beef cakes, you name it...i've had just about every dish in nha trang. my aunt huong is the most amazing cook and will not let me mother or me leave the house without enjoying one of her home-cooked meals that she buys fresh from the market and prepares hours before. three meals!
living the spontaneous flow of being has been amazing! just yesterday my mother asked if i wanted to go with them to visit my 79 yr old retired school teacher uncle phuoc. at first i thought...i should get some exercise and maybe walk off some of this food i've been eating. maybe have them drop me off at the beach. besides i met uncle phuoc the day before when he rode his bike 20 minutes to us to visit. he gave me some chinese energy healing by pressing a ball point pen and some menthol oil on my temples, above my brow, and other random points to help open my left shoulder. a ball point pen with no ink. nice improvising right? needless to say when i finished pressing those points that he learned from a book, my left shoulder never felt better. my arms felt like wings in flight! ofcourse i had to have my mom translate that to him...and he returned with the most amazingly warm + appreciative smile.
so anyway, i opted to jump in the taxi to visit uncle phuoc + his wife. his wife.....she too had those eyes filled with so much life experience....and her teeth. she had black teeth. no lie. her entire smile was black. apparently she stained her teeth black when she was a teenager because she lived on a farm and they didn't have money to fix their teeth. she chewed on a plant that died her teeth. when my mom learned of this as a teen she too wanted to do the same. she tried but was unsuccessful...only staining a tiny line on the top row of her teeth. i told them all that if she had been successful there is no way i'd be sitting there today...no way my dad would have been accepting of a mouthful of black teeth. he's pretty open about most things but that...no, he would have turned on his heels. lucky for my little brother joe + me that blackening plant didn't work.
oh, so it gets better. turns out uncle phuoc is the oldest of the pham phu family. his grandfather worked within the emperors dynasty. my cousins couldn't translate his position in english though. so anyway, uncle phuoc had 5 children. ALL girls. i joked that he's a smart man bc he has 5 women and 10 grandchildren (only 2 are boys) taking care of him. he knows what's up.
so a visit with uncle phuoc turned into a 20 person dinner party that my mother + i hosted at a nearby local restaurant! we had grilled beef + bread that was soaked in the marinated juices....grilling it right on the table. so much food came, from eel cakes to stir fried rice vegetable combinations to crispy rice crackers to sugarcane sticks wrapped with pressed pork, shrimp, + crab! so much food. so many smiles....i think mine was the absolute brightest. i was glowing at having 20 of my vietnamese relatives, 3 generations, gathered spontaneously for dinner. from 14 yr old school children to military helicopter fighter who fought in cambodia (cousin hien), to a retired school teacher (uncle phuoc), to a retired boat mechanic who volunteered 3 months' time away from his family post cambodia civil war (uncle vinh), to a woman who helped carry provisions to the vietnamese soldiers who were fighting against the french...she was 16 at the time.....that was my mom. i just found that out this trip!
and so living in the flow and the mystery of just being....ahhhh...i can say i'm starting to realize the natural wonder....i am in awe of this divine flow and am so honored to be a part of it. it's sooooo right. living in the flow of spontaneous being.
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we head off to the road to hanoi tomorrow at 6am. uncle vinh (cau vinh), aunt huong (mo huong), mom, and me. 4 day stopover trip through hoi an, danang, hue, + hanoi. staying in haoi to visit uncle "toe" and his wife tuc. 4 days. then mom + i fly back to cousin dung's for one night before mom heads home and i to cambodia.
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