Cu Chi Tunnels and Saigon

Ready for our day

Cu Chi Tunnels and Saigon

But first, the traffic...

I haven't mentioned the traffic situation in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City (southern Vietnamese prefer to call it Saigon, more maybe later on that).  First of all, it is one hundred percent a feast for the eyes.  The streets fill early morning with cars and trucks and little open backed tuk tuks and a million or a billion, I don't know which, motorbikes.  Most people do not own a car, a real luxury here, the cars that are driving around this city are new and often high end, and just only a few years ago the bicycle was the main mode of transportation, but with the resurgence of the economy here, there has been a massive shift to the motor bike.  They float over the roads like a flock of birds, it is amazing to watch and sometimes scary.

First, to clarify, the stop lights in the city are only suggestions, not hard fast rules (which would really help me out at 4:50 in the morning back home when I am driving to a workout class and wait and wait at an deserted intersection for the light to change, but, I'm a rule follower).   We only a few times actually witnessed everyone stopping for a red light, but mostly the thought here is that if you go slowly, slowly, you really can cross an intersection with five hundred other motor bikes, sundry trucks and cars barreling at you...by the way, the same advice goes if you would actually like to do something crazy and cross the street.  You just step out into five thousand speeding vehicles and go slow, no running, we've been advised, because that would surely be a death sentence.

So that is the volume and method of driving aspect of traffic around here, the real show is what the people here managed to fit on a motor bike.  Today alone, Quinn saw an entire mattress...ENTIRE MATTRESS on the back of a bike.  Families of four can be seen casually weaving around in and out of cars, even if one of the family members happens to be a two year old who is standing.  We've seen 8 foot long poles carried and even a load of Culligan sized water tank bottles.  Phong tells us he has seen a whole water buffalo.  On the back of a scooter...woah.  It is totally entertaining and scary all at once.

But, that is not really what I came to the blog to write about tonight.  I mentioned yesterday that our guide suffered greatly for the first eighteen years of his life.  I haven't even told you the half of it.  He and his five siblings and parents lived out in the countryside near the Cu Chi Tunnels we went to visit today outside of Saigon, about one and a half hours away.  After the war, there was no way they were allowed to leave their family home due to the rigid restrictions that the twenty years after the war brought to the people.  His family suffered greatly, they ate leaves or bark or anything at all to survive.  He said he would wake at night with hunger pangs so great that he would go out to eat leaves only to get a horrible painful stomach ache due to the toxins in the leaves he desperately chose to satisfy his never ending hunger.

Today, on our way up to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which are a labyrinth of tunnels that ran underground for something like 150 miles (maybe more, I can't remember exactly), he told us more about his life growing up.  The people were compelled to dig the tunnels at gun point to maintain the military advantage over the American troops.  And the tunnels were amazing feats of work.  More on that next.  But as a child, he and his friends played in the tunnels, found unexploded grenades and bombs, and many of his friends lost arms, eyes, legs or were killed right in front of his eyes.  He said every day in the countryside when he was a child, people also were dying and being injured from the landmines that riddled the ground.  People he knew, saw in his village, played with, cared about.

There is no way to begin to imagine a childhood like that.

We arrived at the tunnels stunned already at the depth of pain the war caused this kind friendly man who has been showing us around his country.  He is proud, it is clear, of how much has improved here since 1995.  And, even though by Western standards, this country is still a developing country (dirty, lack of basic social services and chaotic in many ways) it has come so far.

A soldier demonstrates how the tunnels were hidden

As we entered the area set up to show the way in which the tunnels worked in favor of the Viet Cong, we heard rifle fire and it shook me to my core.  It turns out to "entertain" the tourists, they shoot guns all day at a shooting range on the property.  Everywhere we looked, bomb craters, jungle type vegetation and mock ups of the traps (nightmarish is the only word I can think to describe what these looked like) for catching and making human beings suffer slow painful deaths and injuries was straight out of every Vietnam movie you or I have ever seen.  Horrific.  I have to admit, there were many times I struggled to hold back the tears just thinking about the utter terror of the war, which in reality was not fought that long ago.  These people are still in recovery mode from what happened.  Go hug a Vietnam vet.  Find them, tell them that you can't ever imagine how horrible it must have been to see what they saw and suffer the way they did.  It was horrible on both sides.  War.

After we marveled at the tunnels themselves and how soldiers and people and children and medical personnel could have lived in such awful conditions to kill an enemy that they didn't even know and were compelled to fight against, we drove a mostly quiet ride back home.

As I said, Phong has such a optimistic outlook on where Vietnam is headed, really it is written over all the faces we have seen so far.  The people are finally happy and have hope here.  It is not hard to see progress everywhere, with new construction, cleaned up and beautified roads and rivers.  These people today are grateful.  They have known the worst of life and have survived.  A good perspective.

In the afternoon we toured the central part of Saigon.  Many of the buildings have survived from the French occupation of Vietnam in the early 1900's so there are some beautiful places to see.  An opera house, a beautiful post office (really beautiful), among other historic buildings mixed in with modern and sleek architecture are another feast for the eyes.  The city is full of a lot of trees, too, and green spaces, so that adds to the beauty.

During our walk around the city, I forgot to mention that we also took rickshaw rides through the crazy streets and got to rub elbows with the occupants of cars and motor scooters and that was both thrilling and a little anxiety producing.  We each had our own rickshaw driver who tried their best to communicate.  Everyone is your friend.

We boarded a plane in the late afternoon and landed in Danang in time for a late dinner.  More on Danang tomorrow, when I have gotten a chance to see it in the light.  So far, beautiful and right on the ocean (China Sea).

Until then, good night.

Whoa.

Gang country. We hit it today. 

But prior to that we woke up to a simple breakfast followed by a 2 hour church service at our hosts' local iglesia. 

The girls worked in the various nurseries while I went to the service. Probably not a shocker that everything was in Spanish.  But here is the deal: the secret to speaking a new language is listening to good pastors in their native tongue. A good pastor generally speaks in present or past tenses, stays in context, uses common words, articulates, repeats, and often uses hand gestures. Duder today was a student's best friend. I think I picked up about 50% of what he said - much better than the 5% of the local boys who live with us. We studied Romans 8 and the pastor was, I think, talking about how our life is changed from the inside out thru Christ. 

After church we got changed and met Barbara, a woman who runs the Faro Project. She is awesome. 56 years old, a widow, American, and drivng around a beat up 80s something toyota tercel with dull paint and a driver's side door that her passenger needs to open for her. She is a riot - fearless, trusting, and has a major heart for the Salvadorian people. 

The Faro Project has youth centers around San Salvador. We went to one today. And to get there we had to drive right thru a gang hotspot. Barbara was full of information and peace. She let me know that the gangs are almost exclusively after other gangs. They are are almost exclusively fighting over territory and revenge (and not drugs - yet).  They mostly don't care about Gringos because they would not be a threat. And they have a unique relationship with the church - they respect it and even allow former gang members to "get out" of the gang and "find Christ" - as long as that person always goes to church (if not, they will kill him).

On the way to and from the youth center, Barbara waves at the suspected gang members and they wave back. They know her, she says. They know she is not a threat. 

The youth center was a nice, newer cement structure where a man named Eric takes kids in for music and computer lessons. Most of the kids are between 10 and 17. On this day we shared Little Cesar's Pizza with them and presented them with a brand new electric guitar for their worship band. Then I gave them all a lesson in finger picking. I taught them the Travis Pick and the Reverse Travis. They loved it and got it. Then we had a recital. We all played songs together and sang worship songs in Spanish and English.  The Northrup girls had been practicing a select handful of Salvadorian songs and played some of their own. It was special. 

We got back around 4:00 and went immediately, by car, up a local mountain and hiked to the top. It is Holy Week here (Semana Santa) and it was hoppin. Lots of vendors and local toirists. Salvadorians are known around Central America as very hard workers. So when they get a break, they take it. 

Then we went down the mountain a bit for pupusas. 

After a quick pit stop to get a photo view of San Salvador at night, we headed in. Long day. A bit scary. But God is good and we were in good hands. Tomorrow the soccer and Futsal begin in earnest. 

Breaking Rules and Reading the World

Quinn and I arrived less than twenty-four hours ago into Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and we have already broken pretty much every single rule we were given by our travel doctor regarding food.  There are two problems regarding the food issue:  First, we are guests at small villages and they make the food in front of us, are proud of their work and then hover around and watch us eat, and Second, it tastes fantastic.  So, we'll see how that goes.

It took us twenty hours of flying time to get here.  Thirteen from MSP to Tokyo and another nearly seven from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh.  We had no idea just how far away this place is.  But, we are here and we can't believe it.

In a tuk tuk on the Mekong

Vietnam.  Most of what I know about this place has been formed through movies and books about the Vietnam War (which they call the American War here).  Our guide, Phoung, he was born in 1978 and all of his life until 1995 he lived in total repression and near starvation.  He is athletic, well dressed and well spoken now (speaks both Japanese and English very well), but he has described to us what his life was like since the war was over and I. had. no. idea.  I could go into great detail, but I couldn't do justice to what the last twenty years have been like for the Vietnamese in terms of growth, opportunity and promise.  Especially for the people that live outside the major cities.

We got to see first hand today as we boarded our little van and drove nearly two hours to the Mekong Delta.  Out of the busy city of Saigon (which we will explore tomorrow) the cityscape gave way to vast rice fields, numerous coconut trees and of course the Mekong River, which is everywhere since it runs throughout the region and empties then into the Vietnam (China) Sea.  As Phoung explained, the people who live outside the city work in the fields during the harvest long days and long hours (rice harvest three times a year) and then rest with their families in between the planting and the harvest.  Family ties are of utmost importance here, with family members looking out for each other, siblings helping younger siblings financially and the utmost respect and authority given (plus financial responsibility) to the mother of the family.  The family holds land generation after generation and even on that land their ancestors are buried, so that the family can honor those that came before.  These traditions have been in place through the many occupations of this country, war, and unrest.

Yet, there is still extreme poverty and lack of infrastructure.  Most of the people that we saw today in the Mekong Delta live in huts or on small boats, sleep in hammocks, subsist on what they can catch or grow from the muddy waters of the delta region (rich soil is what is so good for growing the rice and other crops) and yet they smile readily and often, love to laugh and enjoy company and make us feel so welcome.

The bricks being fired

Elephant Ear fish

We visited a brickyard and watched bricks being fired and made in the dusty disorganized shop, we went and watched some workers in a covered hut with chickens running around while they made coconut candy (we tried some, maybe another thing on our list of what not to do, sanitary conditions were non-existent), and then we ate fruit that we didn't even peel ourselves (another big no-no) and drank tea with honey while we watched a small family in their riverside haphazard shop/hut/restaurant entertain us with beautiful music (a guitar and another two stringed guitar like instrument), we visited all these places by a motorized long boat driven by a barefoot man who smiled as he drove.  Then, we walked for a while through the labyrinth of houses built on little canals to our lunch spot, a restaurant for locals with three mangy dogs and the smilingest teenaged girls I've ever seen (no cell phones, explains a lot).  These girls showed us how to make pork rolls and let us try our hand at it.  They served us something called an elephant ear fish and shrimp (big no no) and chicken with some delicious sauce and rice.  Also spring rolls with fresh vegetables and fish.  All crazy good, spicy as we wanted it to be and fresh.  These people are so warm and friendly we threw caution right to the wind and ate up.  We haven't totally lost our minds yet and are sticking to bottled water, though.

The restaurant/shop where we heard a
family's muscial talents and ate fruit

The people, they are warm, friendly and so welcoming.  Of course, our presence as tourists is a newish experience for them (most of the roads that we drove on today were only build within the last ten years so much as grown and developed since then) and holds the promise of both a better life for them and the hope of connection and understanding of each other.

Phoung says repeatedly that each of us has our own happiness.  The people of the Mekong are happy with their hard work and their long rests and the people of the city with their busy workdays and consistent pay.  He seems right, to a person, they are content, even though most seem to us Americans here that they don't have much.  What they do have is each other (families) and hope now more than they once did when their country was more restricted.  A new day has been dawning here and it feels marvelous to be able to witness it.

The family car
Motor bikes far exceed cars
here

One of the four or five
modes of transport
today

Quinn and I are learning a lot, and getting to spend this time with my daughter is the best gift I could ever imagine.  Being here, in this unlikely place, has been good.  We are tired after a long day (it is Sunday night now) and get up tomorrow, explore Saigon and the Chu Chi Tunnels and then fly north to Danang.  I will check back in tomorrow with more to report.  I miss Jeff and my other three darling girls like crazy, of course, but am so relieved that they seem well cared for all the way across the ocean and many time zones.

As always, life is an adventure, no matter where we are.  Phoung taught us another phrase today that is a good one to wrap up with:  The world is a book, he said, and if you stay put you only read one page, but when you travel, you read many and learn and grow and change.  Cheers to that.

El Salvador

Horrible night's sleep due to a party all night the floor above us at the Courtyard. But we got up early, squeezed our way onto a shuttle, and set off for the airport. 

We almost lost some of our bags when the back door of the van flew open.  Fortunately I was in the back seat and was able to secure Shelby's bag as it slid toward the pavement. No biggie. 

Delta Sky Caps once again took care of us and we were able to get all our 50 pounders check in without issues. 

We spent uneventful hours in the airport and then 2 more on the tarmac waiting for a software glitch with the ground crew. Ultimately they got the plane full of luggage, and we shoved off - albeit very late at this point. 

What a riot the flight was. One of the best stewards I have ever had. He had the plane in stitches for 5 hours (including the time on the tarmac) cracking jokes in Spanish and English. Most of the plane was filled with either Salvadorians or  people on missions trips. So there was plenty of opportunity to see how far my spanish had come. 

Not far. Nope. 

We landed to new smells and a wave of heat and humidity.  We breezed thru customs with all our bags (and two handy push carts) and walked out of the airport into a sea of people behind a rope barrier. 

At this point we were very vulnerable. I just stood there and scanned the crowd, hoping someone would recognize me. And then a guy in glasses waved at me - a guy I have never seen. 

So I went with him. Yup. That's how it works I guess. Just go with a guy in a foreign country because he waves at you. 

His name is Josue and he works for Christ for the City. Lauren wasn't with him, but she showed up shortly after. They got us into a van and off we went thru the hills of El Salvador. 

This is the third world. No doubt. The street dogs, fully employed 8 year olds, and reckless driving give it away. But there is something peaceful about it, almost attractive. The people seem happy and apparently are very hard working here. I noticed on the plane how quick the Salvadorians were to laugh. It puts me at ease. 

We made our way to the crime city of Soyapango. Thankfully, we are not near the gang areas. Otherwise the city seems like most Latin American cities. Busy, dirty, frantic, and colorful.  

The mission house we are staying in is in the heart of the city. There is a locked gate that will allow a car in to a small courtyard. One side of the yard is a wall, the size of a prison wall - who knows what's over there. Another side of the yard is a small office room in a one story building. The adjacent wall has a toilet and shower stall, much like you might see in a German concentration camp, and the final side is the street side that goes up to the house itself (the driveway is under the house). 

It feels safe in the courtyard behind the locked gate. There are three short term missionary women who live here in the house with us, along with three local boys who live behind the office. They volunteer with the mission and are being cared for due to threats on their lives. More on that in another blog. 

The mission cook fed us lunch and dinner, broken up by a trip to the mall to buy a guitar. The food is really really good. She is a great grandmother and might be 60. Maribell. Her grand daughter and great grandaughter (2 years old) were there to help out most of the day. 

We went thru an "orientation" too with Lauren and Josue. That was helpful. We discussed the schedule and the rules - like don't give stuff to people and don't take orders from anyone other than Jake, Josue or Lauren. Good to know. 

But the best part is that they have put us in charge of some very exciting soccer opportunities, which I look forward to sharing more about. 

The kids crashed early. We are all tired. And we are sleeping in the heart of poverty thousands of miles from nowhere. Pray for us. 

Our Side of the World: Quinn and Janna

Just checking in to report that we are in Tokyo in the cleanest airport we've ever seen.  Can't compete with Jeff regarding luggage issues or general chaos, but Quinnie and I had our own panic moment after we deplaned in Tokyo.

Quinn was able to exit the plane before me, I was held up behind lots of slow bag-getter-downers from the overhead bins and followed behind at least five minutes.  I walked up the long jetway and then looked for Quinn...she was not there.  I went down a long hallway, no Quinn.  I went up a long escalator, still no Quinn.  Then, I got to the security checkpoint and STILL NO QUINN.  I was sweating, where was my daughter?  We were supposed to go on this trip together!  Mother-Daughter, bonding, connecting all that and I LOST her at our first stop.

I knew Quinn couldn't get through security to our next gate since I had all of her identification documents. Then, I saw Jeff's text to me about losing his phone and it seemed so like small potatoes compared to LOSING MY DAUGHTER.

I turned around finally and retraced my steps since even the captain and all the crew walked by.  I got to just before the escalators when I saw my little baby (I know, I know, she's not little but I felt at that moment she was my little girl) crying big tears and saying, "Where were you, Mom?"

All's well that ends well and we are now waiting for our next flight to Ho Chi Minh City.  At least another five hour flight.  I am still considering applying for a job marketing the product "No Jet Lag," since it seems to be working great even now when it is 3:30ish in the morning back home.

This should be a fun travel blogging experience for us, really Jeff and I are calling to each other from across an ocean and many time zones.  It is hard not to be together, but at the same time, we each are getting an amazing experience.  Can't beat that.

More to come...

MSP to ATL

Not much to report today on the first leg of our journey, other than a small snafu at the airport. More on that in a second. 

The main character of our story thus far are the 7 50 lb bags that, somehow, we have to figure out how to get to El Salvador. But we couldn't just check them straight thru to our final destination due to the nature of our trip. The cheaper way to get to and from El Salvador had us spending the night in Atlanta. Not great when 7 monster bags need to make the same journey. Fortunately, there have been willing helpers along the way - idiots like me are a magnet for attention in and around the airport, I have noticed. Even after I paid $5 for a rinky dink cart at the ATL baggage claim, a dude with an industrial-sized cart just assumed his way in to our 7 bag problem. Amazing what $20 will get you. I am passing out $20 bills left and right. First the sky cap, then duder in ATL baggage claim, then the shuttle guy to the hotel, then the bell hop to the room. 

We are all snug in a Courtyard, enjoying our last hot shower and air conditioning. Tomorrow we get up early and bungle our way to the International Terminal and then on to San Salvador. 

Oh, the first "issue."  Right after my mom pulled away after dropping us off at the airport, I realized I didn't have my phone - left it in the car. With no other phones on us, we realized the second worst thing to dying.  Well, maybe helpless is a better adjective. Question: how many phone numbers do you know by heart?  I know like three, maybe. Question: when was the last time you used a pay phone? I am not sure I ever have, to be honest. Well, the pay phone wouldn't accept my credit card so I had the girls panhandling at MSP. We scrounged up $2.30 in quarters (and a nickel). It was Gillian who suggested I call one of the three numbers I know - my own number. Luckily it was hooked up to the Bluetooth in my car so my mom had no choice but to hear it and pick it up. Problem averted. 

New Years Eve

NYE went kinda like we thought.  We left the hotel at 9:20am and walked about 2 miles to the "Queue" (line).  We were going to be watching from the Mrs MacQuarie Point, which is very close to the bridge.  The line was super long, even that early in the morning.  In fact, when we woke up at 7am, there were people camping out in a line outside our hotel.  

Football field with half the queue already there at 9:40am.

The crowd was massive.  Mrs MacQuarie can hold about 16,000 people and at least 8K were already in line when we got there.  They used a nearby park to extend the line, wrapping serpentine the length of a football field.  

Geishas.  Sideways.

Where's Waldo?

We were in that line for approximately 3 hours before we made it slowly to the bag check.  The crowd was an international one.  We had the PDA Germans in front of us.  In front of them were the Wangs.  Geishas and Waldo were there too.  It was a mad house, but festive and fun.

Once we made it thru security, we hustled to the end of the point, at least another mile walk.  It was already packed - the land grab had already happened and would continue so for another 3 hours or so.  The bummer about watching fireworks in Sydney is that there are very few place with no trees.  Even Mrs MacQuaries was a grove of tall trees.  So we posted up under a tree near the point, figuring we could move once fireworks started in eleven hours.  

Giggling Spaniards.

Under our tree.

Once again, our little plot of land was surrounded by internationals.  We had the Creepy Germans to our right, along with the Infringing Indians.  Below us we had the Easy Going Asians and next to them the Tented Brazilians (no idea if they were actually from Brazil, but you know).  Then up the hill from them and to our left were the Giggling Spaniards.  And finally the Pakistanis.  

We had a riot.  The time flew by as we lounged around on lawn chairs reading and doing Sudoku.  Oh and we ate a lot.  Janna and I had hit the grocery store prior, so we were loaded up.  

Shelby hangin in there prior to fireworks.

The evening was filled by various events, like a child's fireworks and a lighted flotilla.  Also two air shows.  The harbor was filled with boats (the way to do the fireworks, btw).  By the time fireworks hit, we had a pretty good idea where to stand and we had a great view.  We could see the bridge too.  14 hours of camping and festivities and a brisk walk home put us in bed by 1am.  Up by 7 for a train ride to the airport and a flight to LAX.  

Really looking forward to home.