Well, I am officially on holidays and I have to say that I am really ready for a break. I have Friday for packing and tidying up and then early Saturday ... very early Saturday ... it’s off to Hong Kong, then Chicago, and then Tulsa. Cait is meeting me in Tulsa and then we will visit Errol’s mom and brother in Big Cabin before we have a mother-daughter road trip home. Yay!It has been a strange 10-week cycle in many ways. First, I had a class that I took over in Week 6. That wasn’t so much fun, as I didn’t get to know them all that well, and then I had the last 5 weeks for resource room inventory and some curriculum work. So it felt quite strange to not be finishing up a class. But it’s all good and learning-full.
Last weekend was a lot of fun, as it was the Hung Vuong’s (Kings’) birthday. My apartment complex is named Hung Vuong, and there are numerous shopping centres, schools, hospitals and so on also named after Hung Vuong. So we had a 3-day weekend and I met Sally and Patricia in the very picturesque and ancient town of HoiAn. I had 3 days with Sally and Patricia, and then they had an additional 3 days there. Hoi An is very famous for tailor shops and certainly there seem to be hundreds of shops that make clothing very quickly for visitors. Shoes and jewelry also. And lanterns!
It is such a beautiful town. You might consider it the Santa Fe or San Miguel de Allende of Vietnam. It is very touristy and certainly it is difficult to walk down the streets without people imploring you to visit their shop and buy something, but that element is somewhat controlled. And most people are fun to talk to. We stopped to buy some items but the woman needed to run (literally) to get more and so Patricia and Sally looked after the store and I was the control for them, as so much inventory loss occurs because of dishonest employees, I hear. They seemed utterly reliable from my (limited) observation. 
We met a few very lovely women who sell items on the beach and their English was pretty good, so we learned lots from them. Quyen, who sells jewelry, is a university student in DaNang. Her father is a fisherman and her mother cleans the Cua Dai Beach. She carries at least 10 kg of jewelry as she trudges up and down that beautiful and scorching hot beach. You can see how many clothes she has on ... it must have been 35 degrees, but Vietnamese women in particular do not want to get tanned. She even had woollen gloves! 
We went a couple of times to a store where old (or dusty) items were sold, among which were some very handsome water puppets, including water buffalo puppets. 
And where a lovely young man named Bai gave us a very unique water puppet show. We went on a few shopping excursions and boat cruises and motorbike tours and of course we tried out a few local delicacies. But we didn’t have anything custom-tailored there.
We stayed in the Pho Hoi resort ... resort in this case means that there is more than one building and a pool and some services ... but it wasn’t too fancy, by any means. Think 2-star resort ... It was by the river and quite quiet. And there were lots of lovely plants and trees on the grounds. Perfectly lovely, but not luxurious by any means. We had to walk across a little bridge, as the hotel is really on Can Nam Island. We were so struck by how important the river is to the folks in HoiAn.
There are loads of islands nearby and people put their bicycles and motorbikes on ferries that leave continuously from a little landing stage. Sometimes we would sit in the little plastic chairs clustered on the sidewalk nearby and drink nước mía (sugar cane juice) and watch all the action. Patricia and Sally took a water taxi home a couple of times. Once I had been on a motorbike tour and as I was going over the bridge, I saw the two of them sailing forth on a boat. I wondered where they were going (without me me me) and was about to call Patricia on her cell phone when I saw the boat start to cut across the river and head for the Pho Hoi ... so we all arrived home about the same time. That was funny. 
On my motorbike tour I had a very short motorbike riding lesson. I thought I had communicated my wishes for a lesson (NOT a tour) quite successfully but after the 15-minute lesson, I got the tour anyway. And it was fine. I saw lots of corn being cooked over wood fires in giant pots. 
My driver, Mr Giao said after a few hours of cooking people would come from all over to take the corn (up to 80 kgs) to various cities. I couldn’t figure out why it would be cooked so far away and then carried all over central Vietnam cooked. Something must have been lost in translation.
And we saw a lot of rice being harvested, so that was a real treat. The fields are beautiful ... like paintings, really.
Mr Giao said people were very happy about the harvest. Just about every house we passed had rice being dried on tarps or on patios in front. Even one chua had a lot of rice being dried in its courtyard.
And we saw some duck farms along the way as well. Very interesting, all in all and nice to see the countryside.
As I was riding around the island, I saw lots of little cams (small temples) in front of people’s houses. Some people call them bàn tien or somesuch???? Spirituality in Vietnam is quite complicated and I certainly cannot figure it out. Many aspects of Confucianism and ancestor worship colour and influence Buddhist practice and possibly even Christians for all I know.
I love these little temples ... the place where they were most prominent were in Hue, where they really were quite different, but my pics from Hue vaporized ... Que lástima. I really want to learn more about these shrines.
After coming back, I had a lovely dinner with my friend, Carl ... one of the newbies who started with me. He is talking about going to Japan in August or September, so I may not get to enjoy his company very much longer. Sad, that.
Sally is with me now in Ho Chi Minh City. We went out to Tokyo Deli last night but ate pasta and cheese tonight ... need to eat up some of the food in the house. It will be so nice to travel over the Pacific Ocean together. So we have one more day together here in Vietnam. Sally wants to go to the Continental tomorrow ... and then to pack. I hope to see some of you when I am back in Canada.As always, too many more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/raven_chick/
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