March 1, 2012

Our friend Jack Swickard, a Vietnam vet who is on the Board of Directors of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire, New Mexico with Ron, is in Saigon escorting U.S. Congressman Steve Pearce (R) 2nd District New Mexico and his interpreter. We invited them to dinner at Ngoc Sùòng restaurant for Friday night along with another Fulbright scholar who is teaching here in Saigon. His name is Ram and he's the Professor of Engineering at New Mexico State in Los Cruses, New Mexico. He also brought his wife, Khuyen who is Vietnamese, and their daughter FiFi.  It's a beautiful restaurant where we took Carie and her mother a few weeks ago. It's not far from here, but it's rather hard to find - even in a taxi. We got there early and even though we had a reservation for 9, we wanted to check it out before they all arrived plus decide what we should order. As Ron was explaining to the waiter what dishes we were planning for the table, I reached across him and knocked over my red wine all over Ron's pants! Geeze. Once he recovered and cleaned up, he got a call on his cell phone that Jack and the Congressman were lost. He walked outside and found them at the corner, escorted them in and got another call from Ram saying he was lost too. By the time everyone finally got there, we ordered sugar shrimp, clams Rockefeller, Coconut shrimp, and mussels in a wonderful sauce.

Congressman Pearce is very interested in Ron's projects, in the Vietnam Memorial, and very interesting to talk to. He's up for re-election in the fall.

On Saturday we were walking to the front of the apartment building to get a taxi for the Co Op Market, when a couple and their daughter from Russia whom we had met previously invited us to go with them to the Metro. They have a driver available to them whenever, so we took them up on the free ride. The Metro is like Sam's Club, or Cosco. It's huge, selling everything imaginable from fresh produce and live fish to motorbikes and TVs. We needed a lot of groceries because we've been out-of-town, so our basket was quite full when we checked out. We need to go back soon though, because we were sort of in a hurry so as to not hold up our friends and their driver.

Sunday, after our Vietnamese language lesson with Carie, another friend of ours - Ted Englemann from Denver, Colorado is in Saigon and came to our apartment to visit. He's friends of the Vietnam Center in Lubbock and has participated in several symposiums. He's a Vietnam vet and professional photographer. He's written a book on victims of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Carie is also a great photographer, so the evening was very interesting. We took him to dinner here at the apartments and hope to see him again soon.

Today is Thursday and Ron has gone back to work. When he left I said "Be careful crossing the streets." I sounded just like his mother must have when he was in 1st grade!

February 25, 2012

We woke up early Wednesday morning to get a taxi to the airport, and it was pouring down rain with thunder! Once we checked in we had to take a bus and from the bus we had to walk to the plane - both times in the rain. The very formal flight attendant in her traditional dress, walked with us with an umbrella, but we still got pretty wet. Our flight was only 50 minutes and when we arrived there was a man with our name on a sign waiting for us. He drove us about 45 minutes to our hotel - The Saigon Da Lat Hotel.

It's a beautiful hotel, very near the center of town. Even though Da Lat only has around 200,000 people, they all ride motorbikes! We walked into town and even though we walked on the sidewalk, we almost got hit several times. Our hotel is right across the street from the Moulon Rouge restaurant and there's even an Eiffel Tower near the lake. The French were here many years ago to escape the heat of Saigon. When they fled they left behind their holiday homes plus the flavor of France.

This was a landmark in town.

We had lunch here the first day and ordered a seafood hot pot.

Our hotel has a beautiful restaurant called the Orchid and we got all dressed up for dinner the first night and even though it was a huge place, we were the only ones there! It was great food, but a little weird getting waited on alone!

Thursday we had a guided tour with Hieu our guide and a driver named Sunny. He drove us to a cable-car station and we rode up to the Truc Lam Zen Monastery. The flower gardens were beautiful and we got to see a gold Buddha where monks and local people came to pray.

Then we walked down to Tuyen Lam lake and took a boat the other side of the lake where we were met by an elephant who took us for a ride.

This poor old guy (or gal) was probably 100 years old! The ride took us about 1/2 an hour because he stopped along the way to eat several tree limbs!

We got back on the boat and rode to the Datania Falls where we hopped on what they call a roller coaster. It's a series of tracks up and down and around where you control your speed with a lever on the front. It's kind of hard to explain, but it was really fun.

The falls were spectacular and we chose the perfect day for our tour because it was cool and clear all day.

Da Lat used to be a big hunting territory in the 1950s with wild boar, dear, panthers, tigers and elephants. But they were pretty good hunters, because only taxidermied animals are left. During the Vietnam War, Da Lat was a safe haven for fighting and the South Vietnamese officials were relaxing here in their villas and their enemy the Viet Cong were doing the same thing not far from here also in villas.

Our hotel had a sign which read "Happy Hour 4:00-6:00 with 2 for 1 prices on drinks." So after showering off the smell of our elephant ride, we decided to check it out. The bar was stunning with bar stools surrounding an elevated area with bottle after bottle of liquor. Again, the bar was completely empty - we were the only ones there! We told the bartender we wanted the happy hour special of 2 for 1 and he just looked at us. We didn't remember the Vietnamese for Happy Hour but we did try to convey that we wanted 2 vodka and tonics for the price of 1. He had to call someone, then poured us 2 glasses of vodka. Ron said "where's the tonic?" He got all confused, called someone again, left the bar for about 10 minutes and produced a can of tonic. After about 1/2 hour we tried to order 2 more vodka and tonics. This time his boss appeared and gave us 1 more glass of vodka. He said it was after 6:00 and could only give us 1 at full price and not tonic. It was a very strange exchange of cultures, but we finally convinced him that we were there before 6:00 and we got out second drink with tonic!

We decided instead of going to the same restaurant in our hotel that we'd walk across the street to the Moulon Rouge where we had lunch the day before. We saw through the window that there were several people inside but when we entered, the hostess said "I'm sorry, the restaurant is too noisy" and wouldn't let us in. We're not sure she meant "noisy" but we left and went back to our hotel where we were the only ones in the restaurant again! And our waiter was the bartender from the upstairs bar!

Friday our flight didn't leave until 4:00 so in the morning we decided to walk to the lake. It's a banana shaped lake called Xuân Húóng, and even though it took us a while to get there, it was beautiful. We passed the Minh Tam flower gardens which is where all of the flowers come from that are shipped to Saigon for Tet.  And there was a spectacular golf course being constructed right across the lake.

Our return flight was on a much bigger plane and it only took 35 minutes to arrive back "home."

February 20, 2012

Ron is off all this week because his students are going on a field trip. So, we decided to take a few days ourselves and see some sights. I haven't been out of Ho Chi Minh City since I came here. Carie told us about a program called "Free and Easy" which Vietnam airlines is promoting. It's a package plan that includes airfare, hotel, transfers, and breakfast to many different places, and we want to be gone for 3 days. We chose to go to a town called Dalat which is north of here, in the mountains. So we walked down to a travel agent just down the street. The 2 women behind the desk took all of our information, found a flight that was acceptable, but when they tried to book a hotel for us, they said they couldn't do it and we'd have to walk down the street to the official Vietnam Airlines office. We took a number there and when it was our turn, the receptionist told us she couldn't help us either, that the "Free and Easy" office was next door. We walked next door, and sure enough, they had an actual "Free and Easy" counter to help us. So, we booked a trip to Dalat leaving Wednesday the 22nd early in the morning and return Friday afternoon the 24th.

The Lonely Planet travel guide says Dalat is mountainous with banana shaped Xuan Huong Lake in the middle, and the temperatures are cooler than Ho Chi Minh City which lends itself to many outdoor activities such as trekking, mountain biking, kayaking, canyoning, and rock climbing. It's also a veggie-grower's heaven, along with their famous strawberries, black currants, plums, persimmons and peaches.  Not to mention their heavily salted hot apricot drink??? Their Dalat wine is served all over Vietnam and we've bought the red several times and it's rather good.

Friday evening we took a cab to Carie's house and her mother fixed us a duck dinner that was out-of-this-world good.

There were big bowls of duck soup with big hunks of meat and noodles and then the duck was chopped up in chunks and we could eat it with our hands. She also served a mushroom dish with several kinds of varieties in a broth that was really good. We took them a couple of bottles of red wine from Chile that went very well with the meal. It was a great evening spending time with her family again. Her aunt and uncle joined us, and the uncle and Ron had a lengthy discussion about U.S. history even though he doesn't speak any English.

Saturday night we decided to walk down the street to a restaurant that looked rather nice. It is called Nón lá which means "cone hat." Two women opened up the door for us and another 2 women stayed right by the table while we ate attentively refilling our glasses, emptying our plates, and handing us napkins for the entire meal! We ordered a rice dish with seafood, barbecue pork ribs (which were really tiny) and chicken wings that were spicy.

I'm not sure what those little things on the plate next to the ribs were, but there were kinda good. For desert we had a fruit plate with watermelon, pineapple, guava, and Vietnamese cherries which I though were disgusting. They had so many seeds in them, that it was impossible to eat!

We're looking forward to our little out-of-town vacation on Wednesday.

February 16, 2012

Valentines Day is big over here. There are flowers for sale in the streets around our neighborhood and I guess it's a universal day to celebrate LOVE. Ron took me to The New York Steakhouse on Monday night because he teaches until 8:00 PM on Tuesdays. We picked that particular restaurant first because it's right down the street and we could walk there, and second because he's been thinking about eating a nice steak for a change. It's a beautiful restaurant but we found out that it's also pretty expensive compared to others in Ho Chi Minh City. I had a nice piece of salmon and he had a steak. We each had a glass of wine and they were $16 apiece! They weren't even full glasses either!

We, of course, topped off our dinner with a beautiful piece of apple pie ala mode.

All in all, it was a beautiful evening.

Tuesday morning after the maid service was here, I entered our bedroom and they had put a treat, a rose, and rose pedals all over our bed to celebrate Valentines Day!

Ron bought me a little basket of flowers when he got home from school. I didn't get to take a picture of it though, because I put it in the center of our kitchen table where I also placed a tip for the maids and the next day they took my basket along with the tip thinking it was for them! Oh well, it was the thought that counted. He said he only paid 50.000 dong for it anyway (which is $2.50!).

Later that evening I was able to do FaceTime with my friends at The Falls again. That's so much fun. This time I got to see more people and say Hi. I really miss them all.

Ron and I played tennis again Thursday morning. I appreciate him playing with me so much because I am used to playing at least 3 times a week and sometime even 5. They put in brand new workout equipment in our fitness room and they are state of the art. The treadmills are like the ones at The Falls with their own TVs. There's no way we could ever run outside with all of the bike, car and foot traffic. We keep saying some day we're going to take a taxi to a park and run there, but we haven't done that yet. These treadmills work just fine for us.

After lunch I decided it was time I ventured out by myself. Now that doesn't sound like a big deal right? But it means getting a taxi, making sure he takes me to the right location, paying for the taxi in dong, crossing a street (scary!) and getting another taxi making sure he takes me to the right location home. I did it though. I went to a huge mall called Vin Con. It's about 5 stories tall and has jewelery shops and high-end stores in the top floors from New York and Paris and a food court on the bottom floor. It's a beautiful place and I enjoyed just wandering around by myself looking. I stayed about 2 hours, then crossed another street (scary!) to a mall called Parkson. It's very similar, but by that time I was getting tired, so I came home. I'm going to have to do that more often.

February 13, 2012

Friday, Ron had lunch with the head of the Office of International Cooperation and International Project Development at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in HCMC where Ron is the visiting professor. His name is Bang Anh Tun. He took Ron to a hot pot restaurant called Que Viet.

In the afternoon we made our Friday trip to the Co Op market and bought food for the week. It's always such an adventure and I'm glad Ron goes with me. Then in the evening we met Carie after her work at Ice Blue and after a few drinks we walked to the Vin Com center to a huge food court and had dinner at Pinocchios. We all had a different pannini. After dinner we walked all around the mall and had an ice cream.

I hurried home to FaceTime my friends at The Falls, but the call came in on my cell phone (which I can't use over here) and so I didn't have it's battery charged. Therefore I had to sit about 3 feet away from the plug. I did get to see their faces though, and they tried calling back later, and I didn't get the call. They are going to try again Tuesday when they all meet to play tennis at 8:00 AM (9:00 PM my time) and I'll be ready to go this time.

Saturday morning Ron played tennis with me again. We've played 4 times now and every time my leg feels better and better. I've also been walking on the tread mill and swimming. Ron has been running every single day since he got here! Saturday night we drove about 1/2 hour away to another gigantic mall with a restaurant on the top floor called Viking. We met 2 other Fulbrighters who are both here on student Fulbright awards. There was a guy and a girl both from California. The guy brought his Vietnamese wife, but he spoke better Vietnamese than she did. They have a 4-year old daughter who is being watched by her mother. It was another hot pot restaurant. They have tabletop grills with boiling broth and it's buffet style where you choose meats, vegetables, fish, or seafood and place it in the broth to cook. They had items that were completely foreign to me, so I stuck with the shrimp (with heads), clams, crab and some small corn-on-the-cob, carrots and mushrooms.

Sunday, Carie's mother rode Carie here on her motorbike and brought me a pommelo. The one I bought last week was very difficult to peel and slice, so she showed me exactly how it's done. I love them. They are dipped in salt once they are sectioned off and it looks like grapefruit but it's not sour or juicy like a grapefruit. In fact, she said they call them grapefruits too sometimes. Then we had our Vietnamese language class with Carie and learned more about shopping in the market, how to ask for the prices, and how to bargain. It's coming along - but very slowly. We FaceTimed Wade so he could open our mail and sort out our bills from the junk. Said hi to Buster.

I woke up early this morning to watch the Grammys, but we got NO SERVICE until around 10:00, so I've missed a lot. It's on a channel called Star World. Ron got picked up by Carie's brother Luan on his motorbike and they are going to the store to buy several electronic items we need.

                                                  Ron and Luan Monday morning

                                               Happy Valentines Day Everyone!!!

February 9, 2010

We get a copy of the Viet Nam News slid under our door each morning. It's a daily paper except on Sunday. On Saturday there's a Sunday section in the back. It's pretty much world news with only a little about the United States. The day after the Super Bowl, there was absolutely nothing about the game. The lead story in the Sports Section was about Viet Nam hosting the international chess tournament. It will take place February 8-15 in Ha Noi and athletes will compete in men's and women's team standard and blitz chess (in case you want to tune in). Yesterday there was an article about Madonna performing in the half-time show and M.I.A. flipping a middle finger to the camera. But cricket, cycling, soccer (football to them), and even an article about the Viet Nam table tennis team were the lead stories. There was a small article about Sharapova with her eyes on Olympic gold and Kyle Stanley winning the Phoenix Open golf tournament. There is a Bird Flu outbreak heading south from Ha Noi, so that takes care of us not eating chicken for awhile. There's a stock market report and cartoons and of course Sudoku.

I keep coming back to the subject of food, but there are some things that are just too fascinating not to mention.

Jackers are like Pringles, only thicker. Not bad really. The Muoi Tinh Say is table salt which comes in a bag. It's quite coarse and doesn't come out of our salt shaker, so I have to put it in a coffee cup and we take what we want a pinch at a time. The jar on the right is coarse ground black pepper: Tieu Den Xay.

The 333 is Ba, Ba, Ba - bier, the beer that Ron likes. I think it's around 5.3% alcohol. The Birdy in the middle is interesting. It's Ca Phe Lon which is canned coffee. It's sweet, you drink it cold, and is actually quite good. The ad says "More Flavorful, More Inspired." I doubt if you can buy it caffeine free! The bottle on the right is the Vang Dalat. It's Dalat Red Wine from Da Lat Vietnam. It's 12% alcohol and only about $3.00 a bottle. We like it. We tried a white Dalat wine and it was pretty bad.

OMO is my laundry detergent, and I thought the Chrystal salad dressing was interesting because it's called "Separating Italian Dressing." I guess that means you have to shake up the bottle so it isn't "separating" any more!

Tonight Ron gets home late again, so he's going to order from downstairs on his way up because they are so speedy with their delivery service. My choice for dinner is called "Special Plate No.1" I think it's going to be fried shrimp, egg rolls and fried rice. All the items on the menu have pictures. Ron is getting the German Sausage & French Fries and he told me he'd give me some of his French fries. Mine is 72.000 dong and his is 68.000. That's about $3.60 for mine and $3.40 for his.

February 6, 2012

I bought the wrong rice! Friday night I tried cooking the rice I bought just like I cook rice at home. The longer I cooked it, the gummier it got! While it was congealing, Ron checked the internet on "How to Cook Vietnamese Rice" and the first step was to wash it thoroughly. Oops. I forgot step #1! I don't rinse my rice at home. Needless to say, we didn't eat it, and it took several soakings before I got the rice out of the pan! Carie's mother, Yen, read my blog and realized that I also actually bought the wrong kind of rice (the one I bought is for sweet dishes like rice pudding), she went out on her motorbike bought a big bag of Huong Hoa Sua rice not Nep Thom Thai, went home and picked up a rice cooker that belonged to her family, and she and Carie rode over here to deliver it to me! She gave me a demonstration on how to use the cooker (after rinsing and rinsing and rinsing) and...Bingo...fluffy rice very time! She's a gem but probably thinks I'm quite stupid.

She had to get back to cook for her family, but Carie stayed with us and is going to be our language teacher for the next few months. She's very patient with us and answers all of our questions without snickering! We learned things like how to order in a restaurant, what to order, how to ask for the check, and basically how to get along when she's not with us! Ron had her help pronounce the names of his students. He asked them to write their names on a Name Sheet and also say what they liked to be called. Some of them are funny. One girl's name is Nguyen Tho Phuong Thuy but she likes to be called Candy. Duong Quang Dhy wants to be called Eric and Nguyen Nai Tram wants to be called Jump Shot. He has 15 students in his graduate studies class on International Relations Systems in History. That is his evening class from 6:30 - 8:00 every Tuesday and Thursday. We got to FaceTime Wade (our house sitter), and I saw Buster climbing on the sink! I said "Buster, get down!" and he looked at the phone like he recognized my voice.  Probably not though. I'm sure he's long forgotten about me...

We woke up this morning and watched the Super Bowl at 6:00 AM. We have a Sling Box and can watch our TV from back home on Ron's computer. It felt strange watching it so early in the morning.  This is Ron's day to prepare for his week's lectures and I type up his Power Points. I'm reading the book Matterhorn on my I-Pad.

February 4, 2012

I seem to be blogging a lot about the food here, but there is such a difference between here and home that I am amazed by everything we see and eat! Yesterday we walked around our neighborhood and found a small restaurant called Bread & Roses. It was very good. Ron had seafood pasta and I had a sandwich. My foot did real well. So we decided to go to the Co-Op market again. Ron pointed out a sign that said NO CAMERAS, so I guess the last pictures I took were illegal and I better not do it again. There are so many items at this market that I have never seen before and have no idea what they are. We needed some fruit, so I picked out a beautiful watermelon. Their watermelon is wonderful - sweet and sometime seedless. I also got a dragon fruit, a pommelo, some limes, some nectarines, and some real small bananas.

You can't separate the bananas, but these only cost about 25 cents. They look pretty green, but they'll ripen in no time.

We bought some vegetables - lettuce, onions, tomatoes and garlic. They had some good looking pork tenderloins and the chicken was either whole (with head and feet still attached), or in pieces. We got some drumsticks but I'm not sure how I'm going to fix them yet. We also got some frozen shrimp that I can maybe stir fry. I needed some rice. But wholly cow - the rice comes in HUGE bags and I knew I didn't need that much. I found a small bag but I'm not sure what I got. It looks like our rice back home, but it says Nep Thom Thai. The rice here is very sticky and not fluffy like mine. I also needed some flour. But the only small bag of flour I could find (that I could understand) was High Wheat Flour or Bot Mi. On the back it says "Special in Sponge Cake. Suitable for baking soaked seafoods." Not sure about that.

We meet Carie after her work at a bar called Ice Blue. It seemed to have mostly Ex-pats as patrons - lots of Australians. The waitresses were beautiful all dressed in black and in this really small bar there must have been 6 or 7 of them. There were several men in the back playing darts. Then we took a cab to a restaurant called Al Fresco's and shared a couple of salads and a marguerite pizza. Sharing is the way to go here. You order several things and then everyone gets to try whatever they want. I like that.

We took a taxi to Carie's house and then the driver continued on to our apartment. When we drove next to the Saigon River, our taxi stopped for traffic, when all of a sudden the car in front of us started backing up and WHAM! hit out taxi full force. Our driver got out and started yelling but left the cab in neutral and it started rolling backward, and WHAM, we hit the car behind us! They all started yelling at one another, our driver got on his phone and called someone and all this time the meter was still running! I said "Let's get out of here!" So we paid the driver and started walking and only got 1/2 block when another taxi pulled up and took us the rest of the way home. Ron comes to Vietnam every summer bringing students for Study Abroad and said he's never been it by a motorbike or gotten in a taxi accident. I guess it just must be me!

My foot was a little swollen when we got home, but I'm so pleased that I was able to do a lot of walking today with no pain. I just have to take it one day at a time.

February 1, 2012

I didn't have a very good night. My foot is really bothering me and we decided that we need to go back to the hospital and get another evaluation in case there's something else we should or shouldn't be doing. I saw an American doctor, Dr. Jane Li and she sent me back to x-ray to see what's going on with my foot. No broken bones - thank goodness. Then she sent me to get an ultrasound of the foot and my calf which is still red and a little swollen. Just soft tissue damage and she prescribed a topical anti-inflammatory, and said heat for the calf and ice for the foot, elevate it above my heart when sitting, and wrap it whenever possible. I am very relieved but the cynic in me says maybe they can't detect the stress fracture until it starts healing and calcifying. I need to be patient, but that's not one of my virtues. We walked across the street to the Diamond Plaza that has lots of up-scale shops and a food court. We had pho ga - which is chicken soup with noodles.

It was really good and I was hungry after all that prodding they did of my foot and leg. We walked around the block, trying to avoid getting run over again, and my foot started to swell again! We caught a cab and now it's on ice, elevated and wrapped. I think a nap is in order!!!

January 31, 2012

This is the day we've been planning for, preparing, for traveling for, and saving for. It's Ron's first day of classes. He prepared an opening speech for the students stating his name, title, position at Texas Tech and generally telling them how honored he was to be there. This, of course, was spoken in Vietnamese! He did a great job. I have the video on tape. The students chuckled a few times, probably because of his pronunciation, but I think it went real well. He simply wanted them to know he tried. The rest of the lecture, of course, was in English. The 1:00 class had about 35 students, mostly females. Then the 2:30 class was about the same. He delivered the same lecture twice giving them a preview of what he will be covering in the next 6 weeks and handing out the syllabus. I went with him to check out the classroom and I wanted to see for myself what the university looks like. I also wanted to take a few pictures.

 His classroom is open-aired and not air-conditioned. He showed a clip from the movie "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson and it was a little bit hard to view because he couldn't darken the room. But I think the students made out OK though. After the second class, we walked back to the apartment and then he went back again for his 6:00 class which was for graduate students. He returned around 8:30 and I had ordered a carry-out dinner for us from downstairs. He got Shrimps and Squid with Vegetables and I got Fried Fish, Mayonnaise and French Fries. They were both really good. We opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Chile.
My foot is really swollen from all that walking to the University. I don't know what's going on because it didn't hurt this bad a week ago. The swelling on the calf is going down, but the foot is another story. I hope it isn't a stress fracture. I put ice on it, elevated it again, and took Aleve. Darn it.