Zoe and Helen share a chicken bone at a barbecue at Sang’s place.
Archive for the 'Vietnam' Category
always more fun
Published 8 October 2009 District 10 , Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam 1 CommentTags: zoe
truc twenty-two
Published 8 October 2009 District 11 , Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam 1 CommentTags: family
We celebrated Truc’s twenty-second birthday with spaghetti and snails. Bao is a fussy eater – he wouldn’t touch the spaghetti.
saigon zoo
Published 5 December 2008 District 1 , Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam Leave a CommentTags: zoe
Our first outing was to the Saigon Zoo. All was well until the elephant sneezed.
The elephant remained upright, but gave Zoe quite a fright.
two wheels
Published 3 December 2008 District 3 , Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam Leave a CommentTags: zoe
We all agreed that we would keep Zoe off of motorcycles in Vietnam. That lasted until about five minutes after we arrived in Saigon. Trinh and Zoe jumped on Di Thu’s Honda and headed to the market.
Our final stop in Dalat was Prenn Falls on the way out of town. This place is a real Vietnamese tourist trap: concreted over, smelly, strewn with trash. Once you pay to go inside, there are many attractions in an attempt to part you with more of your money. My favorite was the ostrich rides. (No, I didn’t partake.) As I continued walking, I was so engrossed in the idea of ostrich rides that I didn’t notice as I passed within inches of two full-grown crocodiles on the other side of a three-foot-high chain link fence.
The next day, Di Yến, Chú Báu, Di Vân and Trinh threw me a surprise thirty-seventh birthday party. It was an amazing spread: steamed giant prawns, nem nướng Ninh Hòa, chả giò, xà lách trọn thịt bò, a bottle of surprisingly palatable Dalat red wine, and a milk and lá dứa gelatin cake.
We quickly escaped the heat with a trip up to Dalat with Di Vân, Clifton and Joy. Our favorite spot there was Thung Lũng Vàng, a sprawling botanical garden run by the water company.
I especially enjoyed the orchid garden at Golden Valley.
dzô đi!
Published 2 May 2008 District 3 , Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam Leave a CommentTags: family, noah
We all enjoyed a quit trip to Vietnam last week. It was so hot in Saigon that we had to eat dinner outside Di Vân’s house. A perfect opportunity to nhậu with Anh Cường and Anh Triều.
The outlook certainly improved on Wednesday. We all piled into a van and drove back toward the airport, then walked a kilometer or so to Bãi Đầm Trầu. After a couple hours on the beach, the tide ebbed enough for us to crawl over the rocks at the end of the beach. We waded up to our chests through the lagoon and started hiking toward a waterfall. For some reason, our guide veered us through the jungle instead of directly up the stream. There were no paths. We slashed our way through the crawling plants and climbed vines up rock cliffs. After I ended up in the middle of a nest of hornets (ouch!), we elected to find our way back to the stream. And there was the waterfall.
When we awoke on Tuesday morning, the heavy wind had still not died down and the beach was ominously filled with hundreds of dead fish. We elected to rent motorcycles and see the sites around town. We quickly discovered that everything is closed unless accompanied by an official guide. We found that the prison tour is available from the Con Dao Museum for 15,000 dong per person, including a souvenir lapel pin. Con Dao operated as a brutal prison island from 1861 when the French shut in the first political prisoners at Trai Phu Hai, through the American War years, to 1985 when the Vietnamese relocated their prisoners to the mainland in order to turn the island into a sort of a revolutionary theme park.
