Sai Gon, September 28, 2001
Birthday wishes to Kim and Marc…
Everything here has been continuing as I like it. Last night I went to bed with a raging headache, a sore throat, and stuffy sinuses. I woke up to much the same, only several degrees worse. Anticipating taking next week off, I dragged myself out of bed and went to the office like the prudent worker ought to be. As it turns out, I improved over the day, although I opted out of two evening social invitations to come home and rest. I accepted two invitations for tomorrow, however, and will see how I’m feeling.

Tomorrow evening I am invited to go see Trinh Vinh Trinh sing at a Trinh Cong Son concert held nearby his “mo” (gravesite). TCS is the famous Vietnamese singer who passed away several months ago whose sister is married to my paternal grandmother’s cousin. Got it? So anyway, I am going to try to go if possible as it is somewhat far from the center of town and I’m without a car.

Everyday I pass by a fairly busy street market below the bridge near my house (not quite the same meaning as 59th Street’s Bridge Market), and the fruit stands have pricing signs such as 5000 dong/kg. The funny thing is, if you tell them, “make sure it’s a kilo” then they say, “well, that’ll be 6000 dong.” Sometimes there are signs even that will say “5000 dong/kg – 6000 dong/true kg”. Too funny.

Jeff made his final decision not to come to Vietnam this time. We’re going to wait and see how things turn out in this world. In the meantime, I am going to go ahead and go to Hanoi on Monday with Chuong, my cousin, who happens to already be going up there. I’ll stay till Thursday and then return to go to a wedding of a cousin once removed in Saigon that evening. She’s the granddaughter of dad’s oldest sister. So instead of parading around the country with Jeff, I’m just going to make a pit stop in Hanoi and get out of the office for a week. I’ll be back at work next Friday, October 5th. The cell phone can be used anywhere in the country so if you call, use that number.

Will possibly write more tomorrow or Sunday, but if not, then I will be in touch again next week. Ciao now.
Mille baci
Hani