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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

A bit of background: Mid last year, we wrote Marissa’s birthmother, Hoi, and told her we were planning to visit during Christmas break.  But due to one life’s vicissitudes, our plans changed and we ended up sending a letter telling her we had to cancel.  She was heartbroken.  This past January we rescheduled the trip and we sent off another letter saying that we were coming for real this time, but this time we never got a response.

Flash forward to this morning when our new translator picked us up at the Danang airport and with her address in hand, and we headed straight out to the countryside for the visit.

Unfamiliar with all the streets in Danang, the van stopped at the local gas station for directions.  Unfortunately, the station attendant herself had no idea where the street was.  She was however, kind enough to point us toward a gentleman at another business down the street that might have directions.  That gentleman ended up offering to take us there personally. With our translator on the back of his scooter, we followed in the van.  With each successive turn, the roads got narrower and narrower. And foliage got thicker and thicker.  Off an alleyway, the road, if you still could call it that, was the width of a bike path and the van had to stop and turn around while the scooter continued off.

Up ahead our guide asked the locals for the whereabouts of Marissa’s birthmother, initially having some confusion because she didn’t go by her formal name in the neighborhood, but eventually he had success in finding her.

Hoi's house is the green one on the right

In the distance, across a rice paddy, he motioned for us to follow the path on foot and about the time we exited the van and headed down the path, a spry woman in her mid-50s started heading up the path towards us.  She headed directly towards Marissa and gave a big hug to a girl she hadn’t seen since she was a month old.

Hoi, the translator and the three of us gathered back at her house, a cement block home with a corrugated tin roof about half the size of Marissa’s bedroom at home.  Marissa sat on Hoi’s bed between her birthmother and birthgrandmother.  All three of them were in tears.

Her 85-year-old grandmother, Marissa and Hoi

Hoi checked Marissa’s teeth and squeezed her legs to see that she was indeed healthy.  Hoi offered us bananas and brought out all the pictures we had sent over the years.  Within a few minutes everyone from the neighborhood had gathered on the front porch peering in the open door and window.

The neighbor on Hoi's porch

She also had pictures to share from her son’s wedding last November.  We had really wanted to meet Marissa’s brother who is fifteen years older but unforunately, he lives 400 miles away and the trip is 12 hours each direction by bus and is not workable into our schedule.  Ri was willing take the overnight bus trip to meet us in Danang if we could reimburse him for the bus pass.  We, of course, said yes immediately and so we’ll see him tomorrow afternoon.

We ended the meeting with a walk outside for pictures of the two of them together. Hoi made hand motions that Marissa is almost as tall as she then proceeded to lift her 88 pound daughter up off the dirt.  Hoi walked us up the path back to the van and we said our goodbyes for the day.

Marissa with her mother

Despite our attempts at a letter, this was all a complete surprise to her.  The hollow were Hoi lives is so remote, it does not get mail service, so she has to make a trek to the post office miles away to pick up what little mail is ever addressed to her.  She has arthritis and cannot read, so her trips are understandably sporadic.  She never received our letter from months ago, and in I all likelihood it is still at her local post office.

I have been encouraging Marissa to keep a diary of this trip.  For those who are unfamiliar, a “diary” is what people did before blogs.  Back at our hotel I encouraged her to write down what she remembered of the day.  A pooped Marissa didn’t feel the need to write anything yet and when I asked why she said, “Because this is a day I will never forget.”

In the morning we went to Cu Chi, northwest of the city, and visited the tunnels that Viet Cong guerrillas used during the French occupation and the Vietnam war. It started with a grainy propaganda film from the seventies explaining how farmers were noble in killing the bad Americans.  The word “soldier” was not used. As I assume most Americans would also react, I winced a few times during those 15 minutes.  I was reminded again that one of the spoils of war is the ability to write the history books to your liking afterward.  I have heard that versions of the same film from decades earlier were even more stridently anti-American.

But I did learn some Vietnamese history from our guide who was a perhaps a bit more balanced.  In addition to the tunnels that Marissa and I went through, he showed us Cu Chi’s exhibits for the crude, but effective boobie traps left for the American enemy.  We also ate a tuber that was common for the guerrillas to eat, but we passed on the opportunity to have target practice with an actual M60.  (And prizes were available.)

Marissa and me in a Tunnel

After lunch at a restaurant he picked out, our guide gave us the choice to go to the War Remnants Museum or the Re-unification Palace.  Hoping to avoid another boring history lesson for Marissa, we chose the latter, but we didn’t escape more communist viewpoints.

The Reunification Place

Our guide was old enough to have lived through the war while in Saigon and your could tell he had no affection for the series of South Vietnamese presidents that were supported by the U.S..  He was pleased to report when each, in succession, was assassinated, fled or surrendered.

But all was not lost.  Our guide had a thing for capitalism too.

Interspersed with these stops and others (drive bys of the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office), were mandatory excursions to go shopping.  He literally would hand us over to a shop owner who would point out the most expensive things in the store and hang over Chris while she walked the aisles. The expectation of sales was great.  It was obvious that tour guide kickbacks were involved.  We resisted the overpriced lacquerware at one store.  We blankly indicated we don’t drink tea or coffee and therefore weren’t interested in the overpriced lotus tea at another either.

Chris did look at the traditional Ao Dai dresses at the last store.  By this time in the afternoon Marissa was understandibly cranky.  This was one store too many.  I thought we were off the hook when the color she wanted wasn’t in the right size, but the saleswoman indicated that although they were out of stock at the moment, in a mere five minutes they would have the right style and size in stock.  You just knew one of the other employees was going to a competing store on the block to buy the right outfit at a lower price only to resell it at their hefty mark up.

Chris avoided eye contact with my best don’t-you-even-think-about-it glare and went ahead with the purchase.  Five minutes stretched into ten then fifteen then more before the outfit magically appeared.  This was not Communism, nor Capitalism.  It was Barnum-ism.

Marissa remarked that the map of the world that hung above the one of the moving walkways in Seoul was backward as the Western hemisphere was on the Eastern half of the map.  I reminded her that the earth is round and it is arbitrary as to which ocean should be split in order to flatten it.  The way they chose to split the Atlantic, leaving East Asia as the center of the map and that was probably by design.  It’s all in your frame of reference.

I imagine there will be more frame of reference adjustment during the next ten days.

We are finally in Vietnam.  We arrived a little after midnight (local) at the Rex hotel. I’m trying to count the hours between 5am EDT Monday and 1am Wednesday in Saigon, but my brain hurts.  33 hours awake?  The luggage did, thankfully, make it to Ho Chi Minh with the plane.  On the way here Marissa noticed the ad hoc nature of traffic in the city.  Wait until she sees it in daylight!

Skype is working to Grandma’s where our younger daughters are.  The WiFi is pretty good at this hotel, but there are lots of hops between Ho Chi Minh and Upper Sandusky, Ohio so it occasionally drops out.  Unfortunately it isn’t helping with the jealousy from some of those who aren’t on the trip.

Again, more opportunities for reference point adjustment.