April 4, 2012

My sister, Elaine, who lives in Venice Beach, California arrived today. She flew from LA to Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City and had no problems. Yay!

Elaine at Tan Son Nhat Airport

There are hundreds of people lined up to welcome people arriving from all over. She flew Cathay Pacific Airlines from Hong Kong and there was another flight arriving from Hong Kong on another airline at the exact same time. So you can imagine how many people we're talking about.

She was able to meet our friend Carie at our favorite bar in the evening and then we walked over to the mall and ate dinner. 

We live right down the street from the city zoo, so Saturday we decided to check it out. It's King Hung's birthday and a big holiday here, so the zoo was quite crowded. I think we enjoyed watching the people as much as we did the animals. The young people stare at us and some teenagers even asked to take our picture with them! I guess they liked staring at us too! It's a huge zoo and they seem to take good care of the animals.  

There are plans to build a Saigon Safari Park in the Cu Chi District and then all of the animals will be relocated if and when it eventually opens.

Sunday, after our language class, we took Elaine to Carie's house for lunch. Oh My Gosh. She out did herself again. We had shrimp egg rolls, a wonderful soup with noodles called Bun Bo Hue with beef and a pork pate that floated on top. Then she brought out a big bowl of pork knees. My sister just had an artificial knee operation last year, and this was suppose to be good for her knees. For dessert we had pomelo, dragon fruit and a kind of cookie that tastes like jello. We had a great time with her whole family.

Elaine, me and Carie

She has a wonderful family and they always welcome us with open arms. 

Carie's brother Luan, his wife Nga and 1 1/2 year old Sushi

Elaine had brought them all shirts from Venice Beach!

Ron was trying to show Carie something on his computer and when he turned it on...there was nothing at all on his desk top! They all fiddled with it but it still looked dead. Luan suggested they go to see his friend who would fix it. It had been raining all day, and it was a Sunday, and it was getting dark, but they took a taxi to his friend's shop and within an hour had it back to normal! And to top it off - he didn't even want to charge Ron anything for his service. I think Ron gave him money to buy a few beers before they left though.

Well, we stayed quite late and by the time we were ready to leave, it was raining really hard. On the way home the taxi driver had to change directions 3 times because of fallen trees and when we got to our apartment there was a tree down right in front so we had to walk in the rest of the way. Unknown to us, we were in the middle of a typhoon! My first! It was typhoon Pakhar and was right over Ho Chi Minh City! We're on the 10th floor, and the windows rattled with the wind and rain well into the night. The next morning Elaine and I took a taxi to the Ben Thanh Market and the streets were lined with downed limbs and trees and some were even pulled right out by their roots. We heard that no one was killed, but it was a mighty fierce storm with lots of property damage.

Tuesday Elaine and I sat in on Ron's class. His subject was the "American War." It's impossible to know exactly how much the students have been told about the war and how it was taught in their schools because they are all very young. But he did a great job covering both sides - the soldiers (American and Vietnamese) plus the anti-war movement. He showed pictures of all of the presidents who were involved on both sides, plus William Westmoreland, General Vo Nguyen Giap, the demonstrations on college campuses, My Lai Massacre, the Paris Peace negotiations and eventually the fall of Saigon. His students were very engrossed. I saw one girl tear up. I'm sure they all have a relative or two who were involved somehow during the war. Probably grandparents.

Today I took Elaine to the Co-Op market with another wild taxi drive. I think we'll just stay in the next 2 days!