2009 Vietnam trip: ... "Miền đồng thảo" and "Đùa với bóng"

I and my family were working on the plan for a trip through the North and Central of Vietnam for a while.

We wanted to take Mom and Dad on this trip. They should enjoy life a bit while they could still do it. I and my brothers spent the next several days to do the reservation for the trip. We finally had my brother's girl agreed to go with us on the trip. I went by the tour office to update the contract on Friday, July-31.

We would start the trip on Saturday, August-01. "Ly" wanted to go out for a movie with me and some of her cousins. I could not make it that weekend so "Ly" decided that we should watch a play instead. I was fine with that.

She picked me up at the park near the Notre-Dame Saigon.It was raining on and off that afternoon. According to the plan, she would pick me up around 2PM, we would spend some time at "Miền đồng thảo" cafe before we would head out for the play. We were 7-8 minutes from the place when it started to rain, I did not want to wear a rain coat so we tried to go faster but i had to stop after 2-3 minutes for us to put rain coat on. It was a small rain coat so we both got wet pretty bad.

The place was OK, I expected more from what i heard from friends but it was quiet that afternoon and we had some good time to talk about many more topics. "Ly" was really a nice girl and you could feel easily the sincere from her actions was real.

We had dinner there before we headed out for the play. The food was alright.

We stopped at Idecaf a bit early and to be honest, i was a bit sleepy and I was hoping that the play would not be so boring that i would fall asleep.

The play was "Đùa với bóng", it was trying to express a very classical topic "love and how we should treat people". It was alright.

We went to the hotel where my older brother worked to pick up his motor-bike. We drove side-by-side to her house's drive-way then I was continue on my way back to our house.

It was drizzling again so ... no rain coat.

I was planning on sending her a message whenever i got home but i forgot. She called me to ensure that i got home safely.

You just can not deny it. "Ly" is a really nice person, nice friend.

2009 Vietnam trip: My third coffee date ...

- "Alright, I will be there at 9 AM !"
OK, the date was at "Them Xua cafe", it is near my former university. It was a good chance for me to revisit my school.

We had been talking, chatting for awhile and i liked her a bit. We were good friend. We know a bit about the situation of the other. But there was nothing special and still there is always a big gap between the virtual world and the real world.

My younger brother dropped me in front of the coffee shop. It looked nice. I walked in and looked around. I did not see her so I walked back out and took out my phone to call her.

In a sudden, i felt there was some one stopped by next to me, at the same time, I heard the sound "Hi ! Nguyen". I turned around ............

Well, what could i say here!

OK, she looked a lot younger than in the pictures and on webcam, and she looked little too.
We walked in the coffee shop and picked a table up stair. We started our formal conversation. She was very careful with her words.

Oh, yeah ! She recognized me standing in front of the coffee shop by the green wrist band that i had been wearing for about 6 months.

The weather got hotter and the conversation got a bit better. We made some jokes and told some naughty things that we did when we were still in school.

Around 11AM, my brother called. He might want to rescue me (just in case, hahahaha, nice brother). By this time, i felt that i like my company a bit more so i told me brother to stop by and have lunch with us.

Oh man, my younger brother definitely was a "girls killer". He cracked her up with his jokes. Between I and my brother, she had to ask us to stop telling jokes for awhile. Her stomach muscles were hurting bad from laughting so much.

It was around 2PM and we decided to go and visit my brother's girl friend. I could see that my friend was a bit tired but she claimed that she was OK to go with us. I was driving on my old time trophy motor-bike with her and my brother was driving her motor-bike.

We stayed and visited my brother's girl friend's family until around 4PM, then we decide to hang out some more. She looked more tired but was hard head enough to continue with us.

The youths took us the a pretty nice coffee shop some where near the back gate of the Polytechnic University. I could not recall the name of it. We got some drink there and chatted a bit more. We were mainly trying to convinced my brother's girl friend to go on the trip with my family. She was a crazy girl, she could not decide, she had a bunch of reasons that i could not digest any of it.

I turned around to my friend. She was so tired but she told us that it would be OK to continue. Well, I got tired too from jet-lag. So i told every people that we should go home.

My friend did not want us to go with her back to her house. My brother and his girl friend wanted to go shopping so i turned around and went home. My friend drove home the other direction.

It rained a bit on the way i drove home.

Damn, i love the feeling of driving in the rain.

So i did not wear my rain coat at all. It was just a typical rain in Saigon. It stopped after it wet my head and my clothes.

That was it. Another day, another date. It wasn't bad, it was OK.
But i sure did have a great night. I slept so good. It must be a good way to fight jet-lag.
..........................

What did my friend think ? I had no idea but it might be something like "I was so tired !!! I need some good rest, these guys were crazy ...." or might not ....

2009 Vietnam trip: My second coffee date ... (let just call it like that from now on)

My second coffee date ... uhm ...

anyway, i just remember that i promised to myself that i would not talk about it.

So I am sorry ...

You have to wait for the next entry

2009 Vietnam trip: My first coffee date ... (if you want to call it so)

I got this basket of flower the first morning that i arrived in saigon.
It was from a very close friend. It was a bit funny when i got and signed off the form for the delivery guy.

So my Mom got a phone call to confirm our home address so the flower could be delivered in the early morning. My Mom was about to sign off the form when i asked them the name of the sender.
- "Ly was her name", the delivery guy said.
- "I don't know any one with that name, you should double check with her first." I told the guy.

He got on the phone just to confirm with "Ly" that the flower would be delivered to Nguyen. Everything was correct except the part that I wanted to find out who "Ly" was. So I asked the guy to call "Ly" again. "Ly" did not know that i was calling from the delivery guy's phone. I heared a voice and I could not recognize it, she could not recognize my voice either.
We did exchange a few short questions and it was her, i did guess so but only then i could confirm that was her, my very close friend that I was going to have coffee with that afternoon.

"The coffee date" was around 2:00PM July-26. I did have a lot of coffee to keep me awake all day. I was thinking that Le Van Sy street would be the best way to avoid the traffic boongkes system. I was dead wrong. I was up and down the sidewalk for every 10-15 meters (30-40 fts). I realized that my driving skill was still pretty good.

It took me forever to get to cafe "Soi Da" where my friend was waiting. I got there, called her to find our where our table was. We did have a great time. We talked and talked and joked. Anyway, that was the first time that we meet in real person. The "date" went smoothly with helping of some extra coffee to fight the jet-lag.
I could not remember clearly what topics that we talked about but we spent easily 3 hours together before my friend released me so i could go home and had dinner with my family.

It might just be a "polite excuse" because my friend would not trust me with a motor-bike and jet-lag.

My friend must did a great job of re-opening "my coffee date season", I went out almost everyday to meet friends. Sometimes, 1 in the morning and another one in the afternoon.


Oh, you have to read this section:
I order coffee as the drink on my date, right ? It came with with a pack of sugar. I opened it. It was in some form of liquid. It must be melted and unusable. I rose my voice and asked for a different pack of sugar.

"What a jack ass !".

I must look pretty stupid then, right? Sorry, long long time since my last sync with "coffee culture" in Vietnam so i did not know that liquid-sugar would go better with my ice coffee.


Stay alert, more entries are coming ...

July-25-2009: Hello Vietnam and all of its ... legacies

It took me many hours on the air before we landed in Japan. I checked the time. It was just around 11 AM in Vietnam, I still had a long wait ahead. I was so sleepy but i did not dare to sleep. I did not want to delay fighting with the jet lag until i arrived in Vietnam so i started the fight immediately. I had 5 hours waiting in Japan. I wanted to be home as fast as i could "my family is waiting and i want to meet so many of my friends new and old".

We took off around 4 PM Vietnam's time and the trip would take several hours. Everything was perfect so far except the sleepy part but i could handle it.

I thought that i planned everything for this trip perfectly:
- I would stay up so i could sleep easily the first night in Vietnam.
- I had all the paper work correctly this time.
- I had some extra "green paper" so it could help me find a short cut through the custom.

But just as things always happened to me. Yes, here is the story:
- I was stopped at the custom gate because my visa exemption was not valid. What the heck ! Yeah, the small book was real, everything was correct except the part that I applied this exemption while i was still carrying my US green-card. I got US-passport now but i did not re-apply for the new visa exemption. So i got pointed to a small office to fix the problem. I walked there and "holly cow !" a not small group of people were standing there waiting for somethings. Just to cut my story short, I took me around 1 hour with some nice talking to get a new and FREE 1 time visa this time. I was LUCKY at the last minute, just as it has always been like that.
- There was a guy who had been waiting for 3-4 hours. I could not recall what the problem with his visa application was but i remembered what he said "This is bull shit, I was in like 20-30 countries and this is the first time i got this kind of shit".
- There was an unlucky American girl too. "Hahahahaha, welcome to the world and remember America is not the world". So, the girl came to Vietnam through a Japanese travel agent. They did not get her a Vietnamese visa. It was OK, she was willing to apply and pay for the application fee. But the unlucky girl did not carry US dollar, she had Japanese YEN and Vietnamese custom just takes US dollar. The girl then tried to ask for an ATM to get some USD. She soon found out she was in a deadlock situation "She needs US money to pay for the visa fee, and the ATM to withdraw money is on the other side of the custom gate which she needs a visa to pass through". So i offered to help the girl with some US dollars, she gave me back the same amount in Japanese YEN. Minutes later, a guy came up to her and asked her to pay for the picture fee and he did not want to take US coins. I and she exchanged coins and US dollar again. By the time i got me visa and passed the custom, she was still waiting for her visa but at that moment she got one of her friend with her.
- "So what do you want to do ? You did not declare all these laptops, cameras, cellphones in the form. You will have to declare them and pay tax for all of them !". I replied "Is there anyway else and I gave a $20 bill to your friend over there already?". "Umh, alright, let just make it easy and straight forward. Give me another $20 bill then you can go". Yeah, i took the easy way, no fighting at all, just paid my way for the short cut through troubles.

I walked out the door. My family was waiting there. Mom said "I thought that they took you to hospital because of H1N1, but ,hell, they must let you make a phone call, right ?". "Yeah Mom, I did try to call you, a guy was nice enough to let me use his phone but i do not remember any of yours cellphone's number". We got back the house around 1 AM of July-26-2009.

I opened my luggage and every people got somethings. My Dad was waiting for his laptop but he was not very happy when he found out that he could not get it until my buddy get to Saigon 2-3 days later.

I ran up and down the stair several rounds, did some push ups. All those efforts so that i could sleep for several hours before going to my first date on that Sunday afternoon.

Not much to complain this time, we already know the legacies. You have your choices (or maybe not) to pick a way to deal with it. For now i just go "green". Hahahahahahaha

Photography ...

Found this site with many good tips and advices relates to photography

http://nhipsongso.tuoitre.com.vn/Index.aspx?ChannelID=555

Home alone ... again !!!

Hey guys,

I am back in the US around 4:45PM Sat, Sep-05-2009. It was the end of a long long trip to visit Vietnam with so many memories and events to tell you guys.

Alright, take it easy. I will slowly report my trip from the beginning to the end.

It is late now, i need to get to bed and hope that i could sleep a little bit.


This picture came from my "sister", she spent tons of time using photoshop to upgrade my face so it could reach the "avatar standard".

"Sis, thank you so much for your hard working !!!"