Sai Gon. March 22, 2001.

I finally have a moment to sit and write in peace. Last Friday morning at about 5 a.m., mom, di (aunt) 5, di 9, and I all piled into di 10's car and headed to Phan Thiet, their hometown. At our stop off the Pacific Coast Highway -- Highway 1 (and an adventurous trip) -- we pulled up to mom's old house (her first home) that was built and designed by ong ngoai (grampa). She and di 9 kept saying, "it's sooooo small! I remember it being so large!
And "Here's the window where we'd watch the neighbors argue."
"Here's the wall where I used to wipe my face and hands."
"Here's the spot where aunt 5 electrically shocked herself."
"This is the railing we used to slide down. It's sooooo short! I remember it being soooo long!" etc.
Then we went to Mui Ne resort, the really beautiful and great spot on the beach where we would stay for the weekend.

Friday afternoon we went to a restaurant down the street and ate freshly caught everything (nothing twitched this time). There is a special delicacy -- fresh cuttlefish half sun-dried and half grilled, torn into strips and dipped in tuong ot (Vietnamese tobasco). It's delicious. Afterwards, we went to visit the Cham temple. The Cham are the aborigines of Vietnam whose culture and people were virtually annihilated centuries ago by the Vietnamese. Legend says that the queen of the Cham people committed suicide by jumping off the cliff where the temple stands, by the ocean.

Departing the Cham temple, we encountered three children and their herd of very large pigs, so Thanh stopped the car, mom, di 9 and I hopped out, and borrowed the herders' staffs to pose for some silly pictures. No one knows how to use my Nikon, as it is a manual, so every picture of me that is not pre-focused by me (or a self-timered portrait) comes out looking like the way I see without my contacts on. From the pigs, we went to visit various friends and relatives of mom and di 5's. Every time I saw a cattle powered cart, I'd ask Thanh if they were oxen. He kept saying they're cows but I said they didn't have black and white spots. He said those are milking cows and these are cattle. But finally we saw two oxen on the side of the road so we pulled over and the cute old thing posed twice for me. Bovinity divinity. Off to Mr. Hai's house, friend of aunt 5's, who owns a field of thanh long cacti -- the plants I mentioned with the gorgeous pink pod fruit. I got a few pictures of those, too.

Finally, back to the resort where I took a walk with mom on the beach, then over to the pool to get di 5 & 9 to go to dinner. While waiting for them, I proofread the pool rules in English. Off again to dinner at another restaurant in town, and then had a most fantastic ice cream bar -- dau xanh -- which is a sweet green bean ice cream with a coconut ice cream outer shell (much like a creamsicle). Then back to the hotel where mom and I ran into the resort manager (and I informed him of the pool rule typos).

Next day, Saturday, up at 5:30 to get to the Phan Thiet sand dunes early. There are these huge red sand dunes in Phan Thiet that go on and on with the beach on one side, and more sand on the other (I did not venture far enough to see where it ended). Tens of children who are too poor to afford school follow tourists to help them up the dunes. At one particular spot, the sand formed a crater. At the top from which we stood, they would take plastic grocery bags and slide down the sand -- the same way we slide down trash can lids and sleds on snow, which these kids will never see in their lifetimes. Di 5 and 9 both took a ride, and the little kids ran down into the craters to help the old aunties up. Mom bought them breakfast and lunch and di 5 gave them extra cash.

Quick break back at the resort; the executive assistant whom I'd briefly met the previous day dashed up to me to tell me one by one, each of the errors on the pool rules and regulations he had discovered to have fixed.

Onward to Hai Dan, ke ga, the century old lighthouse, one of four remaining lighthouses in the world still hand lit by gas every evening. A harrowing mess it was to get there on dirt roads through salt fields (very cool to see), rice fields, and small villages, having to unload the car twice to push the minivan out of trouble. Two hours later, arriving at the beach spot from which we could view the lighthouse, Thanh, the most relieved of us all, discovered that a brand new paved road had just been finished ten days before that we could take on the way out. From the beach, we hired a small boat with a powered engine to get to the lighthouse, which sat on an island. To get on the boat, we were paddled over on six-foot wide baskets called thung, woven and then tarred for waterproofing. Up to seven people can surprisingly sit in one little thung. The trees around the island are beautiful and have a sweet scented white and yellow flower that mom says is renowned in Hue. Back on the mainland, our ride out on the new road was only 40 minutes and absolutely stunning, running alongside the beach.

Finally, back to the beach where I read one letter by Jack Kerouac to his dear friend Sebastian Sampas before losing the light and encountering Mr. Ngoc again, the resort manager. Mom went off to find her sisters, and I headed to the bar for a gin and tonic. I find Mr. Ngoc very endearing. Soft spoken and cheerful, he's a gentleman whose company I really enjoy. He discovered that I'm the same age as his son and that we are all three oxen, only I was born around 2 p.m., a time of rest for ox, and Mr. Ngoc was born at 5 a.m., a time of arduous work for the ox (which is supposedly reflective of our lives -- mine full of rest and his of much labor). He told me how his mother apologized to him for bearing him at that hour.

Sunday morning we went to Ong 10's (great uncle's) for brunch, then headed home and pit stopped at Thanh's house which lies about halfway between Phan Thiet and Sai Gon. I met his four darling children and his sweet wife who sent us home with mit (jackfruit) the size of watermelons, cashew fruit (from which the nut lies on the outside) and avocados grown in the neighbor's yard.

Sunday evening, we had dinner at Chu Minh's (uncle Minh, dad's younger brother) where I met four of my first cousins for the first time, and was reunited after 18 years with my first cousin once removed (? - my cousin's son) named Chuong, same as my dad. Chuong not only shares dad's name, he shares his looks. He has a son who I'm told by mom, is also dad's mirror image. The resemblance is uncanny, especially because Chuong's son and dad only mathematically share about 6% of the same genes (Chuong's grandfather, my uncle Chau, is only dad's half-brother). So this lineage of men all look like my grandfather. Next Friday, the 30th, I go to Hue with Chuong for a few days. He's fortunately done mass amounts of genealogy homework and has discovered much about where my grandfather worked, who we are, and where dad was born. It'll be an enlightening and edifying trip that I'm looking forward to. Chuong talks about dad so vividly, having been born in '55, he remembers dad's glory years, about how dad was his idol, how dad used to take him along to bring flowers over to a girlfriend's house, and all sorts of anecdotal memories. It fills so many holes in my personal and familial history.

That was my weekend, and luckily there is nothing to tell of my week, except that mom went back to the USA on Wednesday so I'm officially on my own.

Keep writing. H.