Sumner

Today we woke up and got ready to go to Phu Quoc, an island off the western coast of Vietnam. After we were packed we got into the car go to Rach Gia where we were to board a boat to go to Phu Quoc. Once there we had to kill time for a hour or so. We had lunch and then went to the dock. Our boats name was the Super Dong Express. It was suposedly a hydrofoil and most likely it was but sometimes companys just think a word sound like a good way to market their services to tourists and may not even know what it means. It was like an airplane in some respects like having set seats. It was pretty cramped so it was a pretty long two and a half hours. We got to Phu Quoc safe and sound. We were picked up at the dock and drove to our hotel. The one that we picked was called Cassia Cottages. It was one of the first resorts on Phu Quoc. We got our key and were shown to our room. It was huge! When you went in the front door you were in the living room it had a sofa and two chairs in the left side . On the right side was a table and the mini bar. If you waled forward to a little alcove you would see to either side of you a door that led to on of the rooms. They were mirror to each other so you know the drill. I’ll tour you through the one on the left because that was where Hannah and I slept. As soon as you go in you are seeing the bed with nighstands to either side of it. In front of the bed was a big box to put valubles in. Walk in a little bit and turn right and look right you are looking at a closet/desk allong the wall going all the way to the bathroom wall. The bathroom door is on the wall paralel with the closet. In the batroom was nice but not spectacular, it had a bath and a shower and all the regular things. The ammenities were basic though, oh well. Anyway once we were settled in we went and toured the grouns. I am not going to tour you right now but it will come. We went down to the beach and hung out at the ocean and the pool.  Then we went back to the room to get ready to go to dinner. We decided to walk down the beach to try to find a spot to eat. We found a little restaurant on the beach with little tables on the sand. We got a table on the sand and had a wonderful meal. After dinner we walked back to the hotel and went to bed.

~Hannah~

Hey,today we are going to Choa Doc. That is on the way to Phu Quac Island. That makes sense that Phu Quac is an island. Anyway. This morning we went to a more occupied breakfast room. There was about… 20 people at breakfast. Mom and Dad were the odd balls, because they were the only white people. We had to leave for Choa Doc at 8:00 AM so we had a relatively hurried breakfast. We got ready and headed out on the road at precisely 8:00 so we timed everything well. Mr. Anh, ( our guide,) told us a very interesting story that I would like to tell you guys.

Today we woke up and got readdy to drive to Chao Doc. We went through Can Tho and then kept on going north to Chao Doc, a place very close to the border with Cambodia. The first thing that we did was go on a boat ride. We rode around and see many exiting things. One thing that really stood out were some people fishing with big nets. It was a simple design for these big nets. The frame was just two ladder-ish things conected at a fulcrum on the shore. One side is over the river and has a net attached to it. The other side is just free with nothing. The person fishing walkes on the ladder closest to shore and tips the net out of the water. Then he (of she) walks to the center of the contraption and pulls a rope that then pulls the net up. Then they put the fish that they caught in a smaller net. Then he walks to the end out over the water and waits for two miniutes and start the prosess over again. After the boat trip we went to a market. It was basicly just like any other Vietnamese market. We saw some pretty disgusting stuff such as frogs with their heads cut off but still moving. After the market we went to the hotel and got settled in. It was a nice hotel and the rooms were nice (we had to have two). The staff didn’t win any prizes though. We hung out for a while at the hotel (no tour because it wasn’t anything special) and went to the hotel’s restraunt for dinner. Then we went to bed.

~Hannah~

Hello, today was a very special and memorable day. Today we started at in a city called Can Tho. Can Tho is also a very special day, because when Mom, dad and Sumner came to get me in Soc Tran, they stayed in a hotel very close to the one we stayed in this trip.

Sumner

So toady we woke up and got ready to go to Soc Tran. Soc Tran (pronounced: shoc tran) is where Hannah was born and where her orphanage is. We got up and walked to the dock to go to a floating market. On the way we found the hotel that we stayed at the last night that we were a three person family. The next day we had Hannah. Then we got onto the boat. We went up the river a little way and then turned on a canal where the floating market was. On the way we saw an on the water gas station. It was like any other Vietnamese gas station with gas pumps and all. When we arived at the gas station we went slowly up one side of the market. There are many boats with fruits and vegitables. We saw many bamboo poles with some of the different fruits and vegitables hanging on them. We asked our guide what they were for and he said that those things are the things that they are selling on that particular boat. This market was wholesale so you had to buy in mass. We saw some women in little canoos up beside the bigger boats and buying produce. We saw some other women in canoos selling phu and noodles and other food. Our guide called one of these weomen and asked her to make us some fried noodles. She had a little styrofoam box with the top and one side cut out of it with a little one burner cookstove. She had one pan add mixed the noodles and fried all the stuff. Then she gave us the food. It was moving fast food! Once we got to the end of the market we furned around and went down the other side. On the way back we stoped at a place that sold pineapples we baught one and the man on the boat sliced it for us. We ate the pineapple on the way back down the other side of the market. Then we went back to the big river and to the dock. After that we went to buy some things for the kids in the orphanage at another market. This time it wasn’t outside on the water it was inside on land. We baught all sorts of stuff, candy, washing machine soap, soy sause, rice (five kilo’s of it), toys and all sorts of other things that would help them. Then we loaded all of it in the car and drove to Soc Tran. It was maybe a four hour trip to get there. When we went to go get Hannah it took allot longer because you had to take two ferrys. They just compleated the bridge six months ago so if we had gone seven months earlier we would have had to go on the ferry. When we got there we went directly to the orphanage. First we went into the office of the orphanage and met a woman named Mrs. Van. She was the doctor for the orphanage at the time Hannah was there. She didn’t remember Hannah because she didn’t ever have any realy serious sickness. In that room they had a chart of how many kids were there. We were supprised to see that they only had twenty-nine kids. Then Mrs. Van took us to one of the rooms, the main one for orphans. We saw babies and little kids and older kids. There were some older kids in there that we gave those fethered things to. Many of the kids there had disabilitys. I was so glad that I have someone to love me and take care of me instead of being in an orphanage. It is probably one of the hardest lives to live. After giving some toys and candy and cookies to the kids Hannah played with one of the girls there. While she was doing that I played for a while with an older kid in the orphanage. His name was Tam and he is fifteen. We played with the fethered thing. We learned that the Vietnamese call it a fethered cock. I don’t know why, but that is what they call it. After that we went to another building where elderly people live. That room used to have with Hannah’s crib. After that we went to another building, the one that we went to to sign the papers that offically made Hannah ours. Then we went back and had a conversation with Mrs. Van through Anh because her English is very limmited. She thanked us for taking care of her for the last years and we thanked her for taking care of Hannah for the first years of her life. The conversation was more than that but that was the path the conversation took. After that we got back in the car and drove to a pagoda. It was basicly like any pagoda exept that in the trees surrounding the ppagoda were many bats. The locals even called it “bat temple.” After that we went back to the car in a thing sorta like a sicilo. It was the oposite though because a person on a motorcycle attached at the back to a small carage (not like the ones that the pony express went on just a seat and a little area to sit on the front.) Once at the car we went to the hotel and got settled in. It was a big hotel and looked very nice from the outside. Once we got inside it was still nice but it wasn’t as nice as it seemed from the outside. Our room was clean and it would be only one night so it was fine. They even had a swimming pool so we decided to go check it out. It was a little questionable about how clean the water was but it looked clean enough so Hannah and I swam for a little while and then we got out and went back to the room. By that tome it was about time for dinner and we went to the restraunt in the resort. It was a little scary because we were the only ones there, besides two emploiees. The meal was OK though and we went went back to the room to get readdy for bed. Done with today, BEDTIME!

Sumner

Today was basiclly just a ride to Can Tho. We started out by metting our guide who’s name was Anh (pronounced: an with the a sounding like a mix of the letters O and A) and driving out on the way to Can Tho (pronounced: can toe). The first thing that we did was see how they make rice noodles. We stopped at a village in the sububs of Saigon and walked down a path to someones housenoodl factory. Anh explained the prosess of making the noodles which was very interesting but to many steps to explain. After that we got back into the car and drove on. We arrived in Can Tho and ate at a restraunt that was relly good and was close to out hotel. Then we went on a boat trip on one of the branches of the Mekong River Delta. We saw the floating market but it wasn’t very active and we are going to see it tomorrow. We got to go on a little cano paddled by a woman down a canal. It was very prety and we got to see life in the country side. We met the big boat and continued on out tour. We stopped to see the prosess of making popped rice. Popped rice is kinda like rice crispy treats. Any way the first step was that they placed a big wok over a fire and put sand from the river into it and a little oil. Then, once the sand was hot enough, they added rice to it. The  hot sand made the rice pop and then they put the rice into a sieve and sifted out all the sand back into the wok. Then they put it in another sieve and got all the rice husks which they used to fuel the fire. Then he started over again. After that they add some other ingredients to make it sweet and sell it to you. We tried to buy just a couple but we ended up with six, oh well. After that we got back on the boat and went to the hotel. We said goodbye to Anh and hung out in our rooms until dinner which we had at a restraunt in an indoor market. It was very nice and the food was good. After dinner dad got in trouble and asked for the price on a t-shirt that he liked. They went all over him and even he couldn’t get away. The one that he like was an knock off “Abercrombie”. They tried to sell him an knock off Osh Cosh shirt which was better quality. Of corse we knew that it was fake because Hannah and I out grew Osh Cosh a while ago. He ended up with the Abercrombie. Then I saw a t-shirt that had a picture of a Vietnamese telephone pole with all of the wires. I then went with one of the ladys to another shop and got a t-shirt that fit. Then we went back to the hotel. I won’t bug you with another tour because it really wasn’t anything special. And then went to bed.

Sumner

To is our free day in Saigon (oh oops the politicly corect name is Ho Chi Minh City). We got up and went this morning at eight o’clock to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cuchi Tunnels are some tunnels that the Viet Cong hid in durring the Vietnam war. They are located on a bend of the Saigon River and cover over three hundred square kilometers (about one hundred fifty square miles.)  It is a little northwest of Ho Chi Minh City (very long name). Anyway now that you know it’s general vicinity I will continue the story. At eight o’clock we went downstairs and met our guide. He was an older gentelman (we learned later that he was two years older that dad). He started out by saying “We must talk about the war. We are not enemies we are friends…” He went into the details of our good relations and Bill Clinton starting those relations. He talked on about it pausing only to show us a sight. It was rather funny, he would be talking about some political thing and then point and say “there is a rubber plantation, we’ll see it on the way back.” and then go right on talking. He was fairly easy to understand (always a good thing) only a few pronuctiation errors but hey, I would have umppteen zillion errors if I tried to speak Vietnamese. His English would probably have been easier to understad if he had not had fake teeth that didn’t fit because all the time that he was talking he was tring to keep his teeth in! Oh! I forgot to tell you that he was ex-Viet Cong (Vietnamese comunist fighters in the south)! When he told us we were thinking “maybe all of the tour companys hire ex-Viet Cong to do tours of the Chuchi Tunnels. But after the tour we hadn’t seen another tour guide that looked than forty years old! We were extremly lucky that we got shuch a guide. When we got there we first were going to see a movie full of comunist propaganda but all the little rooms were full. So we just went on to see the tunnels and see the movie later. The first thing that we saw was some traps that the Viet Cong used against the Americans. They were pretty brutal. Then we went throught the forest seing some of the different entrances. Some were very teny only about twenty inches by ten inches and had a  little cover over it. You had to put your legs in and then slide down with your hands over your head and squat in the little hole to get in. There were little tunnels leading betwene the enterances that were maybe two feet wide and two feet tall. We didn’t go in those we just went down the entrance. We kept on walking through the forest and saw many other places that secret enterances to the tunnels. The reason that the tunnels have many enterences is so that when someone comes out and shoots if you go to that enterence then he goes to another enterence and shoots you again an so on. Then we came to a place that was the kitchen/mess hall. It was a rectangular pit with a fire and some tables. When it was really in use it was covered by a roof that was the level of the ground with a mound of dirt. For tourists though they made thatched roofs and made the walls about a food higher. If they let the smoke from the firego out freely then the Americans could find them and, as Phong said, bomb comes boom. So to avoid this fate they made tunnels that went through the ground. Allong the way put underground compartments to trap smoke so by the time that the smoke went out it waws greatly reduced. Sometimes they even had to do it for two hundred meters! After we saw that we saw the generals place. It was basicly the same as the kitchen just with a desk and a meeting table. After that we walked to one of the enterences. They made a roof and made the enterences ten times as big for tourists. They also made steps to get down to the tunnels. They had made the tunels larger two times (tells you how skiny they were and how fat we are). Inside the tunels used to be up and down and narower in some places and not in others. Also there were little indents that you could hide in while they went past and then follow them from behind. Also the tunels were curvy and made it hard to shoot at anything far away. At the first enterence we went back out. You could have gone further to other enterences but we didn’t. We didn’t go very far but it was very curvy so it seemed longer. All the other enterences in the circit were for tourists. They were really close together just like the part that we went in. We learned that there are three levels. The first one is three meters deep (nine feet) it is for getting around. The second one (six meters deep)is for fighting. And the third one which is nine meters deep is for when the bombs come. On our journey we went in the first and second levels (they don’t take the tourists to th third level because of the chance of them getting choked). The kitchen and generals room were also interconected with the tunnels (not now though). After that we went to a place were they colected unexploded bombsand shells to make their own homemade explosives. They burryed unexploded shells and used them as anti-tank mines. They sawed open bombs for the explosives (doesn’t seem like the best thing to do) and then put it into things to use as mines. After seeing the tunnels we went back to see the movie. The lady in the movie talked about how Cu Chi was shuch a piecefull place but how the “ruthles American bombs decided to demolish this beautiful land” (OK one or two of the words were wrong but that was the basic message). Then she talked about how the people of Cu Chi defended themselfs. She never said anything about the Viet Cong hiding there or that many of the people there were against comunisim. Fighting with the Viet Cong was almost like a game of hide and seek for the Americans because they had to find where they were hiding and then clean them out. And they were tring to hunt the Viet Cong and what is a game of hide and seek without the seek?

~Hannah~

Sumner

Today is our las day in Hoi An, well actually it is our last partial day. We leave for the ariport at eleven o’clock this morining to go to Da Nang for our flight to Saigon/Ho Chi Min City.

First we rented three bikes (dad didn’t go because his knee hurt) and rode around the side streets. We found a way to go to the riverside so we rode allong that for a while. Then we had breakfast and packed up to go to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon.

Sumner

Today after breakfast we met our guide to go on a bike ride. We went through the country side of Hoi An and passed lots of rice fields and just got to enjoy the country side. Then we got onto a boat with our bikes (I was surprised that they could actually fit) and went to an Island. We biked through the country side there and I almost had a wreck! This is what happened I was riding and some cows were running in the field then they suddenly bolted out right in front of me! It looked like a mama and a baby playing tag!