GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!

Our journey has taken us back to Asia and the wonderfuld world of Vietnam. Saigon is alive, crazy, hectic, and bursting with people, cars, motor scooters & bicycles. Ask any traveler and they will tell you that a hi-light in Ho Chi Min City is crossing the road. As Carin says, "if it wasn't for Mike, I would still be standing in front of our hotel on the same side of the street." It really can be a life threatening experience until you learn the ropes. There are a number of strategies you can try. Mikes favorite is to push Carin off the curb and see what happens. Just kidding. Carin's favorites are to walk up and down the street waiting for the traffic to clear (which it never does) or to find one of the 5 stop lights in the whole city and wait for the little green walking person. Only problem being no one obeys the signals and the sidewalks offer no refuge for pedestrians. Another good one is to look for the 85 year old Vietnamese woman carrying pots of soup hanging from a bamboo pole perched on her shoulder and follow closely behind as she crosses with ease. The real key is to gird up your loins, look straight ahead (in Carin's case grab onto Mike) and walk... until you reach the other side. We loved our time wondering through the city, checking out the sights, visiting the US embassy twice (long story), and especially the fabulous dinner with Ryan, our friend Ellen's son from Boulder and his fiancée Thi. They took us to their favorite place, Quan An Ngon. Thi, who grew up in HCMC, volunteered to do all the ordering and it was absolutely "delicious", which turns out to be the english translation of the restaurants name. The food was so good we braved our way back for lunch the next day. From the city we took a trip to the Cao Dai Great Temple and Cu Chi Tunnels, pronounced Gucci, which unfortunately Mike couldn't fit into, more about that later. The elaborate network of tunnels were used by the VC for sneak attacks on American forces.

Just a few hours south west of Saigon is the mighty Mekong Delta. This river begins in Tibet and flows into the China Sea, and is used for everything. We took a 3 day tour including bus, boat and bicycle to explore the area. What we saw was amazing, people literaly living on the water. There were floating markets, stilted houses on the river banks and fish farms right in the middle of the floating houses. The tour included a home stay with a local Vietnamese family, a visit to Chau Doc and a short trip across the river to a Muslim minority Cham community.

Continuing north along the coast we stopped for a little R & R at the beaches of Mui Ne and
Nha Trang. Although the beaches were wonderful we really loved skyping with the family on Thanksgiving and meeting Charlie from Buffalo, proud owner of the Texas Steak House & Barbecue who served us an authentic turkey day dinner with all the trimmings, yum yum, a nice change from rice & noodles.

Central Vietnam is home to the lovely, historic city of Hoi An, one of the few places untouched during the war. The old towns architecture is charming, the streets are motorbike free for part of the day and there are 267 tailors. The reason we mention tailors is because Carin decided to go with the flow and have a few pieces custom made. This is when the fun really began. Carin was trying to replace a pair of pants and add a pair of shorts to her collection. While looking through the five million bolts of fabric and trying to explain what she wanted, Carin noticed Mike who was supposed to be helping with the decision making, was fully engaged with one of the adorable young sales girls. She had him wearing a long sleeved Nehru shirt complete with chinese buttons and was asking if he would like a pair of matching pants. Out came the tape measure and and then the comments. You have to understand, the Vietnamese are very small boned, thin people. When measuring Mike's waist the girl looked up at him, patted his belly and said " Oh,very nice, happy buddha" . When Carin asked, whether she should have flaps sewn on the rear pockets, the girl started laughing and said "excuse me madam, but you have little bit of big bum so flaps not so good". It's okay Carin wasn't to insulted because the next thing we knew all the girls in the shop were talking and giggling about their little tushies and saying how they would love to have some. After multiple refits, mostly to let the clothes out, we hit the streets with our new duds. We took a cooking class (ha, ha) learned how to make fresh rice paper and then used it to make the best spring rolls, if we do say so ourselves. We also took a bike ride through neighboring villages on our way to the beach, took part in the full moon celebration and rode a motorbike along China Beach to Marble Mountain, where we saw beautiful Pagodas and Buddhist shrines inside natural caves. During the "American" war one of the larger caves was used by the VC as a field hospital.

By now you've probably figured out Vietnam is a very long country and we're only half way through. Our last stop before heading north was Hue, pronouned "Hway". It rained and rained and rained.

Time for a few shoutouts

-Gerri our dear sister-in-law, you know we love you babe. Thanks for making the drama queens trip to NYC so special.
-Mia, tell us what you're studying and we'll take some pictures of it.
-Ivi you never fail to crack us up, have you thought about writing for Letterman?
-N.I.C.E. very creative who ever you are. Can't wait to see what you write next!
-Sue F. you're quite the travel agent, we're glad to give you a little break from packing.
-Curry Lee maybe you and Sue can team up!
-Doug send some Chicken-E-Licken
- Jess and Hannah, eighteen days and counting. Good luck with finals !!
-Michele, we think some travel is in your future.
- Sue S. let us know if you will be lecturing any where close by Asia..S Africa..India..Egypt....
- Jan, glad you had a great trip to Guatemala, welcome home

-All, Thanks for the feedback on the video. We loved hearing from so many of you!!!