People

I think I will begin with the fact that I am meeting interesting, wonderful people and forming wonderful, loving relationships, language barrier or not, not the least of which with my son. (ok grammar people, dissect THAT one—I’m not even going to try)
Hung Bui’s mother, ‘Kim Loan’ (that’s what I call her because it’s what is on her business card) is another amazing person that I have been able to get to know. I already told you much about her: she lived with her mother in a pagoda for years until she was 16, she is a devout Buddhist, although which branch of Buddhism it is I haven’t clarified yet—there are so many!!!! And they are ALL here in HCMC!! And I thought that Christianity had a lot of factions. We’ve been to their home twice, and it is so lovely. We’ve also visited her car dealership. I’m quite impressed with her! Today, we are going to VungTau with them for the day. They’re picking us up at 10:00, so we’ll get there about noon, spend a few hours, and then come back to HCMC. I just want to swim in the ocean for a couple of hours. I miss the beach!
On Tuesday, the 6th, we went to see the water puppet theater. The puppeteers run these puppets around a pond, and they do flips and jumps and spit fireworks and smoke and everything. It’s very LOUD, but a good show. Anyway, before the theater, we were taking our prerequisite photos, and a Japanese man offered, in impeccable English, to take the picture for us. We ended up chatting for a good 20 minutes while waiting for the show. His name is “Ju Chi” and he works for the Japanese government’s Ministry of Tourism. He’s been in that field for 25 years. He brought his 2 lecturers and is staying at the Majestic for a 3-day symposium on the treatment, expectations, and issues of Japanese tourists. Apparently, 400,000 Japanese visit Vietnam every year. I wanted to see one of the lectures, some of which were in Japanese and some of which were in English. I think I could have learned a lot. My schedule didn’t allow it, though. Still, if I ever get to Tokyo, I’m looking Ju Chi San up! Watch, I probably just met the Minister of Tourism and didn’t know it. Ha ha.
The hotel is run by two people, a man who looks like he’s in his 40’s and a woman who looks much younger (and hotter), like in her late 20’s. Neither one of them speaks any English. They are one of the reasons I am learning how to say things like, “soap, towel, clean it please,” and “toilet paper.” Oh, yes, and we learned the word for ‘hanger’ on weeks 1 and 2. Well, we came home from a big day last week, and she had cut up fruit to sit and share with us in the lobby!!!! I was so surprised. It was the loveliest gesture! Of course, we couldn’t have any semblance of a conversation, but it was incredibly sweet, nonetheless. They are the reason that my ‘good bye/hello’ and my ‘thank you’ sound authentic, and now they are saying ‘good morning’ in perfect English! Yesterday, when we got home, she had put in a coat rack for us to hang our ‘only-worn-once-for-work’ clothes (you know what I mean—the clothes that I don’t want back in my closet but are clean enough to wear again) and our towels on. She had noticed that our towels were always spread out over the backs of the folding chairs to dry, and our worn once clothes were hung all over the place. It was very thoughtful of her. Nguyen Thu also asked her to loan us 2 plates and 2 spoons, so now we have the beginnings of a kitchen. (ha ha right)
Nguyen’s cousin, Nguyen Thu, has been a god-send, too. Whatever I need, she finds. She found earplugs that first week. Yesterday, she bought me the hot pot, 2 coffee cups, and knife I wanted to find (and she found them cheap—the whole ball of wax, plus a box of instant coffee, for 120,000 vnd—about $7). She took us to buy plane tickets yesterday to DaNang (where we will go to Cua Dai beach). About those tickets—she’s so cute. They wanted us to come home at 2:00pm on that Sunday, which didn’t give us a whole day in Hoi An. I asked about coming home at 6 or 7 or 8, and apparently there were no ‘cheap’ tickets available at those times. “The ticket price is so expensive at that time!” She was so concerned about the money aspect, I had to redirect her: This is my only vacation to this place. TIME is the most important thing. Money is second. Look at 8:00. We ended up getting a ticket home in business class—Anthony’s first taste of the good life, for one whole hour and 15 minutes of flying time. Oh, and the difference in price? About $25 per ticket--for 6 extra hours of sightseeing. I’ll take it. Two tickets there in economy and two tickets back in business class ran us a total of $346 USD, or 6,600,000 VND. That was just over this week’s paycheck, and still a great deal.
Which is another thing that is great about this trip. Anthony and I earn the teaching salary together. As of this week he gets 500,000 off the top (that sum has gone up progressively each week since we started, as we slowly get more in reserve) for whatever he wants, but he usually buys me dinner once a week.  It’s so darling to hear him say, “Dinner’s on me.” It makes me so proud of him. We also budget together. We spend an evening each week figuring out what sights we are going to see and factoring in taxi rides and such. We even, until yesterday, had a coffee budget, but now we have a hot pot!!! We are in constant communication about funds, and it is wonderful to see him learning the whole budgeting/living within your means system. He’s good at it, too. I think this part of the experience is something that will really benefit him when he goes off to college and has to have a budget of his own.
So… Since we were out and about in a different section of town, I wanted to walk for a bit before climbing into a taxi and going home. I’m SO glad I did! We walked down the street and stumbled on our department store, Big C! We’d needed to go there anyway to stock up on a few things, so I was incredibly pleased. Now that we have a hot pot, we can buy cup-o-noodles and things like that, too, which is what we did. We only bought a few this time, just to try out the flavors. Scary, but I actually recognized the name of the flavor on one of the containers! When we got it home and tried it, it really was what I thought it was going to be. We loved it. Oh yeah, and the cup-o-noodles here come with a fork inside that you snap together! Way too cool. I’m going to bring one home.
Anthony is getting much more adventurous about food here, too. He will try anything. He doesn’t like the vegetables still; when we get the seafood/beef/lemongrass soup, I eat all of the lemongrass in both of them and always give him my prawns.