Claire is bringing home schoolwork that she has accumulated over the year:
Dear Litt Red Riding HOOd I’m so sorry for eating you.I should be punished for a long time.I will never eat you again. I will just eat pinapl. From: Wolf
How did Ray’s camera know I was in the picture:
Click to see the "Encoding Process" for image
Original picture of Claire taking a picture while on the back of the tandem.
P.S. How many of you guys clicked on the image’s red X to close the image?
The Ride of Silence was started seven years ago in response to a Texas bicyclist who was killed by an automobile driver. Over the years it has become an annual event in many cities across the United States, including Columbus. This year we were remembering three riders who were killed by central Ohio motorists.
Claire's picture of the Mayor
It is called the Ride of Silence because the riders ride in a tight group at a solemn pace and none is supposed to talk. After waffling back and forth, I decided to take my youngest daughter Claire. My rambunctious one.
Before the Ride of Silence
On the drive downtown she was her usual talkative self asking one question after another (”What is a googolplex times another googolplex?” ), but with the promise of ice cream if she stayed quiet (”twist in a cone with sprinkles!”), Claire was 99.44% compliant during the ride.
But the moment the ride was over, she was back to her regular form.
Claire, after the ride
It has been more than a week since I last blogged and since I didn’t have a chance to blog our long, final day in Vietnam, wanna pretend I made this entry last week?
With a red-eye flight leaving the country, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea for us to wake up before dawn Wednesday and drive four hours to Halong Bay. It is a beautiful tourist destination, but it is a bumpy 4-hour drive from Hanoi. To stretch our legs, we stopped at a ceramics factory halfway there. They were opening the place just as we were getting there and there were a handful of workers hand painting bowls.
Hand painting bowls at the ceramics factory
Even though they usually break when on the trip home, Chris brought a couple of items. A decorative plate and a whistle that, when filled with water, warbles like a bird. It is bound for Claire’s show-and-tell when we get back home.
Halong bay is famous for hundreds of large limestone rocks (karsts) that rise steeply out of the water. Its name, translated, is Descending Dragon because the rocks supposedly look like a legendary dragon that protected ancient Vietnam from the Chinese. We took a boat tour around the rocks, unfortunately it was a very overcast day. We had to get out Marissa’s broken school umbrella that we brought from home. We were the only passengers on the boat, probably because it was such a dreary day.
Boat ride on Halong Bay
One of the most famous formations is called the Kissing Rocks. It is also called the Ho Ga Troi (Fighting Cocks) by those not in a romantic mood. A picture of it is on the 200,000 Dong note.
Kissing Rocks (or Fighting Cocks)
These rock formations were formed by the erosion of the limestone and some of that erosion also caused large caves within a few of the rocks. Our boat stopped at the Dong Thien Cung (Heaven Palace Grotto). The cave is lit up by multi-colored lights, which I thought was pretty, and fake fountains, which I found tacky.
Dong Thien Cung
The boat also stopped by a floating fish hatchery that had Cuttlefish, Prawn, Eel, and Crab. After the stop we had lunch on the boat and all that fresh seafood was prepared for us. When it was obvious to the waitress that Marissa was not interested in any of it, they kindly made her a batch of fries. Thank goodness Marissa likes rice or she would have starved on this trip.
Vietnam does not do daylight savings time so the midnight flight was moved earlier during the change so it continues to arrive in Seoul at the same time each morning. That extra hour makes this layover in Seoul before the flight to Chicago seven hours. With the benefit of free WiFi, I get to blog some more. The sole AC outlet at the gate is two feet from a children’s playground, so I am sitting on bright yellow cushion 10 inches off a padded floor, a few yards from three plastic fuchsia slides.
Playground at Gate 9
Tuesday in Hanoi we made what I would assume to be the customary stops for the city. Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, his museum, and the presidential palace. It seems almost every important government building in Hanoi is peach colored and was built by the French 100 years ago. We saw a 1000-year-old Confucian university and another shrine to ancient soldier and his turtle. We brought Flat Stanley from Claire’s first grade class along with us for the tour of the city by cyclo (bicycle rickshaw).
Marissa and Flat Stanley go on cyclo ride
I wanted so badly to swap positions with the driver so I could experience cycling in the city, but I restrained myself.
Traffic in the major cities is crazy with vans, cars, scooters, bicycles and pedestrians all sharing the same, very busy roads and all going different speeds. Horns are used constantly in lieu of sufficient intersection control via traffic lights.
Hanoi Traffic
We had a very nice lunch at the restaurant where Bill and Hilliary ate when they were visiting as president and first lady. A large picture hung in the front dining area.
With another city came more shopping by foot to various markets. The streets are named after the wares that are sold on them. There is Cotton St, Shoe St, and Really-Tacky-Wooden-Knick-Knacks Rd. (I’m guessing on that last one.)
The highlight of the day was the water puppet theater. Wooden puppets about a foot tall sit balanced on long dowels that stretch just under the water’s surface. By the manipulating the dowels underneath, the puppets appear to be dancing on their watery stage to synchronized music. Very cute.
Vietnamese water puppets
We had dinner at the hotel and, like lunch, the choice of courses was chosen for us by the restaurant. In fact the meals were very similar. Marissa, thank goodness, likes steamed rice, because she liked nothing else. I was more adventuresome and ate a little bit of everything at dinner. In hindsight, I have empirical evidence that something I ate did not agree with me, but I don’t think I will elaborate.
Can I blog something without calling it a blog entry? It is late here in Hanoi after lots of non-emotional things today. I did get a souvenir that I’m sure will break before it reaches Ohio.
This is an abbreviated blog entry because tomorrow we rise at 5am for a day trip to Halong Bay. Our Hanoi guide says we’ll get back to the hotel around 8pm. I checked our flight home and the first leg to Seoul departs at 12:40am. Anti-meridian. This was news to our guide, Chris and me! So we will only have a couple of hours to shower and pack before heading to the airport. 26 hours after that, we will be at home.
It is possible, unless there is an available power outlet in the Seoul airport, that this lame blog posting will be the last one of the trip. The list of things on this vacation to blog about continues to grow however, so I will probably dribble out more anecdotes for a few days at least after we get back, in the meantime I’ll leave you with this tidbit:
Ri sent his very first e-mail to us… In English.
The goodbye three days ago with Hoi and Ri was unexpected. While we were driving in downtown Danang Friday afternoon, as Hoi was gently fanning Marissa with a hotel brochure the alleviate some the humidity she wasn’t used to, the van driver abruptly pulled over to the side of the road. Our guide announced that this was place we were dropping of Marissa’s mother and brother. I looked out the van window and saw that he had pulled over to a bus stop. Hoi’s house is, to say the least, secluded and this was a very good opportunity for them, as we headed back to the hotel, to easily visit their in town relatives. Ri was then headed back on the 12-hour bus ride back to his village to his wife. Our time together had come to and end. This had been agreed upon between our guide and the two of them, but we non-Vietnamese speakers were oblivious to the plan so it took us by surprise.
So we all got out of the van and said our goodbyes. Hugs were shared and, without a common language, we nodded and smiled to wish each other the best. It was heartfelt, but the goodbye felt premature. Looking forward for us, the plan now was to sight see the few remaining stops on Saturday (which I have already blogged about) then relax at the hotel Sunday (I think our guide wanted the day off), then fly onto Hanoi late Monday morning.
But Friday night, Chris ruminated on this and the more she thought about it, the less she liked about it. On Saturday morning before we went sightseeing, she told our guide that we wanted to see Marissa’s birthmother one more time, even if would be without the bus-bound Ri. Our guide mulled it over it briefly then agreed that we would see Hoi one more time Monday morning before the flight to Hanoi.
So, this morning we headed back to Hoi’s house. Our guide had phoned Ri over the weekend and informed him of our revised plans. With this advanced warning, Ri decided to delay his trip back to his wife, and Hoi’s brother-in-law and her youngest brother were able to join us.
Ken, Hoi, Marissa, Ri, and Chris
At Hoi’s house, Ri and I joked about how both of us had married older women. Hoi admitted that after meeting Marissa, that she couldn’t sleep that first night. A million things had run through her mind that night and now, a few days later, she couldn’t think of anything to ask. They did ask when we would visit again. Everyone understood that our answer of “I don’t know” was a tacit admission that this wasn’t going to happen again.
Hoi had bought Marissa a nice gold-colored necklace. It seems they felt the need to kill the proverbial fatted calf. Hoi after hearing that Marissa likes fruit, gave her a golf ball-sized orange. Her brother gave us the gift of homemade bologna. Hoi harvested peanuts from her garden, then washed and dried them on the cement block in front of her mother’s house next door. Meanwhile Hoi’s brother-in-law cracked a coconut to gave its milk to us.
Marissa at her grandmother's house
Drying the washed peanuts at grandmother's house
But finally it was time to head to the airport and while Ri would use our Van to reach the bus route, we had to say goodbye to Hoi in the alley leading to her house. Big hugs were shared. As we headed out of the hollow, Marissa leaned her head on Ri’s shoulder still clutching onto the little orange.
Not much was said as we reached downtown. We stopped at a bridge near the intersection of two major roads. It was time to say goodbye to Marissa’s remaining relative one final time. Not asking permission, Ri pulled Marissa out of the van and walked a little ways for some privacy with his newly-found little sister, but the din of the bridge traffic would allow him that privacy. He leaned into Marissa and raised his voice loud enough for her to hear and, carefully enunciating a language in which he knew few words:
I love her. I miss her. I love her forever.
Ri's goodbye to Marissa at the bridge
I’ve been carrying a little book around with me and jotting notes for all the things I might want to blog about. Since today (Sunday) is a rest day for us at the resort hotel, it is a good day to catch you up on a few things.
I mentioned to our Danang guide earlier in the week that we wanted to get an Áo Dài, the traditional Vietnamese dress, for Marissa. And last Thursday after leaving Hoi’s house, he suggested we go to Hội An, an historical town and now a tourist destination, and get the outfit custom tailored.
On the way there we passed rice paddies along both sides of the road. A few women were tending to their rice with the occasional water buffalo. Many paddies had scarecrows to scare off birds and, for this country, that meant Áo Dài outfits on two crossed sticks with a traditional Vietnamese Nón lá hat on top.
The Thang Loi shop, did silk embroidery downstairs and custom tailoring upstairs. (They had men’s clothing too but the tailored suit I bought on the original adoption trip in 1998 still fits. Yeah, me!)
Embroidering fabric for Áo Dài dresses
A young lady helped Marissa pick out a purple silk fabric for the top and cream fabric for the pants. I found it sweet that our saleslady was Marissa’s height too. Actually, all the young Áo Dài-wearing salesladies were Marissa’s size. They measured every conceivable body part of Marissa and photographed her from a couple of different angles for her posture.
Measuring Marissa for her dress
The next day at 6:00pm, when we were done with our visiting Ri and Hoi, they dropped off the outfit off at the hotel.
Marissa in her tailored Áo Dài
The form fitting dress fits her perfectly, which is a little sad because she’s bound to outgrow it quickly. But I suppose when she does get too big for it, we can put the dress on a stick in her uncle’s cornfield in Ohio.
We are dialing it back a notch as we finish our time in Danang. Chris was asked by our organizer months ago what she want to see in each city. With a little bit of research Chris requested to see the big Catholic church downtown and the Han Market in Danang, but we were open to anything our tour guide had to recommend. So we saw that and more.
The church downtown was pretty in pink and white, but since it was not during a service time, it was closed, so we just took pictures of the outside and left.
Our guide suggested we next the visit the Cham Museum nearby that had relics from the seventh century. The Cham race are a Hindu minority that had to flee to the hillside after losing a war against the majority Kinh race caused by a royal inter-marriage that ended in disaster. Our guide went into a very detailed description of the conflict and of the meaning of Hindu gods the Cham worshipped. It was almost not boring.
Trolling the grounds of the museum were two university students who were given an assignment to practice their spoken English with native speakers. The professor had given them a questionnaire to spawn a conversation with strangers. One student talked with Marissa and Chris and the conversation eventually got around to the international fireworks competition that was taking place in Danang this weekend between five countries (Philippines, Spain, China, Australia, and Vietnam) and how much you miss when you only watch it on TV. It was a very pleasant conversation.
University Student practicing her English with Marissa
Another student caught me. A little more reserved, she told me she was a student then just handed me the questionnaire to read for myself. I obliged, but I’m not sure it improved my English. I resisted the urge to correct the many typos the professor had made on the questionnaire.
We went to the Han Market next. Chris had forgotten that she had already been there 11 years ago. The first floor was a food market with fresh food… and some not so much. Chris told me I should be glad that I have no sense of smell.
The Busy, Crowded and "Fragrant" Han Market
The second floor had clothing and accessories. She found a small gift for Katie at the please-triple-the-price-because-I-am-foreigner surcharge. Chris even admitted again afterward that she knew she was being taken advantage of. And I have to admit it wasn’t much money to worry about anyway.
We then went up the mountain to the Hải Vân pass that separates the Danang and Hue provinces. Only tourists (and gas trucks that are forbidden to use the new tunnel that goes through it) take the beautiful winding road up and down the mountain. At the top were still intact bunkers built by the French to ward off attack by the natives. This country has a long history of conflict.
Beach front leprosy village viewed from the Hải Vân pass
We also stopped at the largest hospital in Danang where Marissa might have been born. I pointed out to our guide that Chris works in a hospital and he queried whether she was a nurse or a doctor. Even after she said “neither,” our guide sought medical advice from her. As someone who was formerly overweight and a smoker, he still had high blood pressure and was on medication for it. The medical information sheet that just so happened to have with him indicated the medication was to be taken at night while his doctor had told him to take it in morning. This caused him much consternation and he wanted her opinion. After Chris pointed out that his three large cups of coffee could also be contributing to his high blood pressure he fretted some more.
This our last weekday in Danang and with some things not open on the weekend, we had many places to visit today. Our prearranged itinerary has been thrown out the window and we started prioritizing over breakfast.
Marissa’s brother Ri slept on his overnight 12-hour bus ride to Danang and had taken a taxi from the local highway to his mother’s home and was there before we arrived mid-morning. His wife, Giang, is pregnant and stayed back.
Meeting Marissa's brother Ri for the first time
One of Ri’s childhood friends joined us from the area as we sat around a table and many chairs at Hoi’s house that had probably been gathered from the neighbors. Chris had brought gift bags for Ri, Giang, Hoi and her mother. Hoi gave Marissa a nice little watch which, coincidentally, was the same gift we had given them. Once again under the watchful eye of the entire neighborhood gawking from the porch.
We were pleased when Hoi, Ri and even his friend expressed interest in joining us for our day’s touring. As we all trudged up the path to the car, Ri showed Marissa a half-decade old picture of her he keeps in his wallet. This was a proud big brother.
Marissa with Ri, her brother
Our first stop was to the closest elementary school. While we waited in the van, our guide went in to explain to the Vice Principle that an American couple and their Vietnamese daughter wanted to see a local school and to our surprise, he yes on the spot. He ushered us from the courtyard to a room of fourth graders that were learning English. The teacher encouraged us to ask questions of the neatly uniformed students and Chris stepped in when Marissa demurred. Although they had trouble understanding our questions, they had no problem understanding the pencils and candy we had for them. They sang us a nursery rhyme in English before we left. We were swarmed by schoolchildren in the courtyard as we boarded the car.
The class of English-speaking fourth grader
We had lunch at a nearby restaurant Ri picked out. We all had the same regional delicacy: rice noodle soup with chicken, peanuts, corn, sprouts and dash of lime. A thin, crisp, rice and sesame tortilla was crumpled on top. I enjoyed it, but had no skill in eating soup with chopsticks; although I have to admit I was a little put off with the bones still in the chicken. Marissa, would dislikes anything spicy, was a trooper even eating a few noodles.
Our last big desire while we were in Danang was to see the Red Cross orphanage. The orphanage that was home for Marissa 11 years ago had been destroyed by a natural disaster and a much nicer one was built in a different location in 2006. Since Chris had provided the address and phone number months ago, our tour guide was able to call ahead this time for an appointment. At the front door we were greeted by a half dozen barefoot caregivers.
We also took off our shoes before entering. A dozen so bassinets surrounded the room and they were now caring for special needs children. Hoi handed me a little boy with a “LIVE STRONG” T-shirt who proceeded to play with my goatee. He obviously had never seen anyone with one. I don’t think I’ve seen any men in Vietnam sport a goatee or beard. Besides this guy was surrounded by women all day.
I recognized one of the caregivers from 11 years ago. Marissa looked while different from when she was a month old, but she remembers caring for the baby named “Dang Thi Huong.”
Marissa with the care giver from orphanage 11 years old