Our Tet week in the Village

Hey everyone! Maeve here .

The last time I blogged I only had a little time so I have decided that I will not tell you about Dalat and instead tell you about Tet in the Mekong. We took a 8 hour stinky, hot,

and cockroach infested bus (the brochure said it was the best!) and finally arrived at 10:30 pm in Can Tho, the 4th largest city in Vietnam.

We stayed the night at the Kim Lan hotel and the next day was picked up by our friend My Huong Le and her son, Daniel. We all took a taxi to Metro, an enormous shopping warehouse that had EVERYTHING in it. At the doors you have to show you Metro ID, which you only can get if you work somewhere in Vietnam. They have this height thing so they wouldn’t let Nina in but we pleaded with them so they finally said OK. Since My Huong had to buy food and presents for all of Trong Long village we had about 5 carts. We walked around pulling HUGE containers of 7-up, Fanta, , and Mirinda off the shelves. We bought pretty much whatever we wanted which included my new fave cereal. When we got to the milk section we had to buy gallons and gallons of milk. At the checkout Nina, Dad, and Daniel played slide the milk down the checkout while the helpful ones (me, Mom, and My Huong) loaded everything on. Once outside we met up Tran, My Huong’s cousin. We had to hire 2 mini-vans to get all the food in plus us.

It was a hour drive to Trong Long village and when we got there all we saw was a little marble stone house. We jumped out and My Huong led us down a path to her house, a small blue concrete building. My Huong led us inside to our room. It had a little couch in the front and 1 bed in the back(me and Nina slept on the floor on mattresses). Its not what I call the Sheraton but it was lovely. Mom and Dad looked around and I went to see the river. There was a stick supported by only 4 other sticks leading to 2 boats. Some of the kids were walking on them and jumping onto the boats(did I mention there are hundreds of kids). I grabbed the pole they had hung onto and walked across, then came back and wanted to the see the

river close up. It looked solid because the tide was in and there was only mud so I jumped(I know that was stupid) and sunk to my knees in sticky mud. I got out and wiped the bottom of my feet and and started to walk in the take a shower and as soon as Mom saw me she screamed “Maeve, what are you doing!” because she thought that I meant to do that. A young lady called me over and cleaned off my legs.

After that affair we had lunch with an American couple who were staying with My Huong too. The couple(Richard and Judith) were from Alburqerque. Then we went to our rooms and rested and did homework. My Huong had told us that you call you aunt and uncle etc. by in which order they were born i.e. uncle 6, aunt 5. We were introduced to some of the many relatives including Quan Anh (pronounced Win ann), Nhum, Duy ( pronounced Yey)

and Uncle 6 and Uncle 9/ Richard’s bodyguard. The lady who cleaned my feet was Quan Anh’s mother and Duy is her older brother. Quan Anh is 2 and is the cutest thing in the world (she kinda looks like Tessa).

The next day we went on a boat ride with Phoung, a cousin or something and met her 2 sons Tau and Giang and also there goats. The rest of that day was pretty quiet. I can’t really remember what order everything happened in but we went on a 2 1/2 boat ride to another village and got back in the dark. The night before Tet was the Lotto night were we played Bingo. I fell asleep so get the details from Mom or Dad. On Tet we hung around and ate junk food and that night was “Trong Long Idol” a singing competition. Right before it started people were playing table tennis and the table fell on Dad’s foot. He was yelling at Mom to get the people to stop touching his foot. He said it was broken but Mom, the ex- nurse said it was probably just a very painful bruise and he can have it X-rayed when we come home. My Huong’s mother did the village treatment and now he’s walking around just fine. On Mom’s birthday everyone from the village who lived near us gave her presents!The day before we left we went on another boat trip to a market. We bought Quan

Anh some hair clips and Tau and Giang a toy each. After we went to Phoung’s house. She live’s in government housing and you only get government housing if you own NOTHING. Phuong live’s there with Giang and Tau and her husband. It was awful leaving and I just want to stay there forever (no offense to Canada).

We drove back to Can Tho and stayed at the Kim Lan hotel again and looked around for a way to go to Cambodia. We couldn’t really find one so we went to Chau Doc by taxi. We looked of a place to sell us fast boat tickets ad found one. We had 2 rooms at the hotel so me and Nina watched TV all afternoon. Nina’s didn’t feel good at dinner and is not feeling good now. We are on a boat in Cambodia currently and I am going to play on the computer now but I have to get to 1000 word so BYE!

Maeve