Pilgrimage

As the KAL flight rose out of Incheon Airport the standard announcements were given, first in Korean by a strong authoritative female voice with a hint of menace in it, then in English by a strong authoritative masculine voice that made us know that there were dire consequences of failure to go by the rules. Then they were done in Vietnamese and the voice was soft and feminine in that loveliest of languages and I thought I would be delighted to follow any rules at all for the owner of that voice. As her gentle suggestions came to an end I turned to the Korean businessman across the aisle from me and said, “Hear that? That’s why I love these people.” He looked puzzled and turned to his seatmate and exchanged a few words. Then he turned back with a great grin and bobbed his head, held up both thumbs, and said, “Yes, yes okay!”

I was on my way on the last leg of the flight to Tân Sơn Nhứt Airport in Sài Gòn that I had last seen in 1970, thirty three years before. Many Catholics reach a point in their lives when a pilgrimage is appropriate. Most Americans go to Guadelupe or the European sites- Rome, Fatima, Lourdes, some to Medjugorge, and, of course, the Holy land. My conversion to Christianity came at the hands of a Vietnamese priest I met by happenstance in Florida and I became a member of a Vietnamese language parish so when I started to feel the call of pilgrimage, the focus was the site of an Asian Apparition, La Vang, a place that was forested in those days  near  the city of Quảng Trị up by the old DMZ.

I calculated that I had enough money to buy the airline tickets and to take some cash with me also and my priest was going in August which was great because an unaided foreigner would have difficulty getting to La Vang and I could travel on a “family visit” visa instead of tourist. That would give me much more flexibility since I did not have to report my movements or stay in sanctioned hotels.

I stayed three days in Sài Gòn in the apartment of Trương, a nephew of my priest and went sightseeing behind him and his sister Oanh on their motorbikes. We went to mass in a large modern style church in Thủ Đức.

Many of Trương’s friends and acquaintances came to the apartment to meet the American. A prosperous friend of Trương who had a Suzuki automobile drove me to Phan Thiết to catch a bus up to Cam Đức, a highway village in Khánh Hòa where I stayed with the family of another relative of the priest. Cam Đức is a Catholic village that had no hotels and no tourist trade. It was a poor village but full of shops and stores and small businesses. There are two large churches and several smaller ones and masses are said several times daily and 5 times on Sunday to overflowing congregations.

The nearby beach is beautiful and butts up against a mountain on the north. The sand is light brown on the shore but there is a large area behind the beach itself that is full of great dunes of white sand like the Gulf Coast at home in Florida.

There are several convents in the area and each has a small school. One takes in autistic and Downsyn kids and others with physical handicaps. The sisters have no training and can only offer love and care which is far better than they might have without the sisters because there are no other facilities to deal with them outside of the large cities.

As it was getting close to time to go on to La Vang I learned that Hòa Yên Parish would rent a bus to take parishioners to La Vang each year when they could afford it. This year there was no trip planned because there was not enough money. Many wanted to go but it did not seem feasible so I assured them that I would hire the bus and driver to make the trip. I was told it would cost around $200USD and that was within my budget, as I had not come as a tourist and couldn’t afford to be one, anyway. I was not in the country to go look at waterfalls or great palaces and museums in the first place, but to go to La Vang.

The bus was hired with driver and the driver’s assistant. One of the local ladies agreed to act as tour manager to handle all the tolls and gas purchases. I was told to hold on to my money until the trip had started, that no one pays up front. Actually I was never allowed to pay for much of anything. I do not know where the financing came from but that bus and crew were hired and we went. We set out in the evening as travel at night is easier with fewer motorbikes on the road.

On the whole trip as we traveled, the women on the bus fed me different kinds of fruits and cooked food to see just what the foreigner would eat. I would eat anything they fed me. Normally I am not a dinner oriented person and eat only because I am hungry. In Viet Nam I took pleasure in eating at all meals and in between. The variety is tremendous. There are a hundred different tree fruits and many different greens and all of it is fresh because refrigeration is still in Việt Nam’s future.

I quickly became acquainted with most of my 34 fellow pilgrims as everyone was curious about the American and everyone seemed to think the trip only happened because I was there. One of the ladies is Hàn Ny, a single mother for whatever reason, and her two daughters, Thuy who was 8 and Trang who was 12 and a deaf mute. Hàn Ny asked me many questions and was intent on finding out just what sort of man I am. Eventually she suggested that I should adopt Trang and take her to America. I regretted that I could not help them that way. The laws and my finances make it impossibly difficult, but I could send some money each month after I was back home.

An and Khoa sat behind me and bought more fruit and different rice preparations every time we stopped and kept handing me morsels so I bought no food on the trip. Quyên was a ten year old elf child that sat with her mother in the seat ahead of me. She told me she wanted me to take her to America. All these children seem to think that America is the Promised Land.

Khai was the assistant to the driver. His job seemed to consist of leaning out the door and yelling at the motorbikes. He is also the mechanic who replaced the belts when they came off halfway up Hải Vân Pass.

Vinh, 22, was sent along by his father as my watchdog to make sure that the old foreigner would not get into trouble. He had long wanted to go to La Vang and was glad of the opportunity. Phụng is an old soldier who fought in the war for 9 years on the other side and converted before he left the army in 76. Actually he was forced out because the army, in those days, had no room for Christians.

Our first stop other than pit stops was at the cathedral in Huế. We stopped there because the driver and Khai needed to sleep before continuing. We pulled into the church grounds an hour before dusk (actually “dusk” is not quite right,with the mountains so close in the west when the sun goes down the effect is more like touching a light switch). The cathedral is surrounded by a large paved and enclosed courtyard. There is a grotto at one end of the grounds and a large travelers’ wash area at the other. Most of us attended evening mass.

A lady who seemed to be someone in authority informed me that I could not stay on the property after dark but must go to a hotel and register my presence with the police (not true because I was not a “tourist”). Instead, Vinh and some of the teenagers and I went walking in the city streets for a couple of hours. When we got back the lady was gone. We had until 2 AM to get some sleep and the whole party stretched out on the stone porch of the cathedral until 0200 hours when the bus driver was ready to go on.

After sunrise we came to Hội An, a tourist city at the base of Marble Mountain, from whose rock are cut lions and dragons and Buddhist and Christian saints and nudes and Pietas. The bus stopped among all the tourist buses and we went to look around. There was an “American” restaurant there where one could actually buy fried egg sandwiches and hamburgers. In this cornucopia of palatal delights who on earth could want to eat a hamburger? A German tour group was crowded into the Restaurant and as we went by a tall blond fellow stepped out in front of me and said in my face, “You are American, n’est ce pas?” I made a long reply in Vietnamese, put my fingertips together and bowed Chinese style and suggested to those with me that we should go find some real food. Vinh and a couple of the ladies and some of the children and I went into the town and found a small eatery where we got bowls of phở (truly delightful noodle soup). While we were eating with our chopsticks at the little molded plastic tables the German group walked by. One grabbed the arm of the fellow who had accosted me and pointed at me . The accoster looked hard and said something to his friend in their own language that sounded like it must have meant, “well, you just never know…” and he shrugged his shoulders.

Most of our group eventually found the street that led to Trà Kiệu, site of another Apparition in 1885. It is at the top of a lump that rises steeply out of flat rice land 150 meters or so. There is a stone stairway up the side of the hill that is a real workout and there is a large chapel at the top. I stayed there a while and prayed.

Later in the day we stopped at Phong Nha for some touristy diversion north of the Bến Hải River. Phong Nha is a town in a district of dragon tooth mountains, not very large, really, but they stick up out of the plain like, well, dragons’ teeth. We parked in the very large parking area along with a half a dozen arriving tourist buses and most of the riders elected to take the tour up the mountain to see the famous waterfalls and the disappearing river that flows through a mountain. All the tourists in the other buses did the same or went down to the river to hire the sampans and barges for cruises.

Vinh wanted to stay in the parking area and I stayed also. When there was no one left but the vendors, I went over and bought a bottle of water from Sương. a middle aged woman selling sweets and sodas and film, and she asked me how it is that I knew the language. We talked for a while and a little boy came over to see what we were doing and then an old man. Pretty soon all the vendors were there and several brought over  plastic tables and chairs and teapots and  burners and Vinh came over. We all sat in the shade of their parasols and had tea and talked.

One old gentleman said that over the years he had had seen many Americans but had never actually talked to one. I could have taken the tour and seen the fabulous waterfalls and I would have pictures when I got home to show off to my relatives. But I can buy pictures or look at them on the INET or in National Geographic but I cannot sit around with good people and talk over tea and sweets in any magazine.

We arrived in Quảng Trị a little before nightfall and the driver had to stop and ask the local folks for directions. The roads are actually quite well marked in Việt Nam except that there are no signs for La Vang. It is an embarrassment for the officially atheist government that the place draws many thousands of pilgrims every August and a smaller stream all year round.

We finally came to the street that ended at the edge of the grounds and parked the bus in a farmer’s yard. It was Wednesday afternoon and the vigil mass was Thursday evening with the main celebration Friday morning.

Vinh suggested I immediately go to the nearest farmhouse and rent a sleeping spot before the next hundred thousand people arrived and took all the available space. I talked to the farmer’s wife and she asked for 20,000d for the two nights. The house had a large concrete porch and a sizable paved area that would, in America, be a carport, but here was a threshing and drying floor. The cistern and wash area were behind the house and there were actual privies on the other side.

I bought space on the porch for my hammock. I could have slept in the house on the floor but I preferred to be outside. I did not have any note smaller than 100,000d and the lady professed to have no change so I gave her the 100,000d. Then Vinh asked me to get him a space, too, as he had run out of funds. I paid another 100,000 for Vinh. As a result we were included in the family meals. It was a very well spent $13.

After our lodging was seen to I went on to evening mass on the grounds. The forecourt appears to be a quarter of a mile long and maybe a hundred yards wide. At the other end is a raised dais covered by very large parasols where the mass is said. Surrounding are many more acres of camp ground and vendors’ stalls and the monastery. Much of the camping area is covered by temporary or permanent tin roofing and tarps and it is well appointed as things go in this part of the world. There are no facilities for bathing and no privies. People just make use of the woods that border the grounds.

There is plenty of water as the area has several springs that arose in 1798 in conjunction with the apparitions and it is quite safe to drink. There were several thousand people at the mass and afterward I went among the shops and stalls and bought a beautiful rosary and a statue of Our lady of La Vang. There were beggars about, not in overwhelming numbers but a definite presence, among them some healthy looking children holding up cans and some amputees.

The amputees are a problem in the country because there are no facilities to take care of them and they cannot work and can only beg. I resolved to leave money with them before I left. All night and through the next day people were streaming in, on buses, on motorbikes, a few cars, or just walking, many thousands of them.

Our group prayed together for much of the day until time for the Vigil mass. The forecourt was crowded. I don’t know how many people were there but probably not the million plus that attended in 2000 and for the 1998 bicentennial celebrations. This is not a special year. Mass was just the vigil mass of the Assumption with no elaboration but there were many priests concelebrating and more nuns on the side of the dais or among the congregation than I would have suspected there were in the whole country. Mass was announced by the sounding of a huge drum in an accelerating rhythm until the opening hymn.

After mass I went back to the farmhouse for dinner and more prayer. The crowd started to thin as people streamed out. For many the vigil mass was sufficient and it does fulfill the obligation and they left. At the same time many more were arriving for the regular mass in the morning. The two way traffic in the narrow lane looked as if it must get locked up in immovability but everything just kept flowing smoothly the same way the impossibly anarchic seeming traffic flows smoothly in the streets of the cities.

As it got more and more crowded and some less respectable people began to drift in, the women in the group rearranged the sleeping plan. Khai and the driver and I were moved to the edges of the porch to act as a sort of barrier for the children and old folks who were assigned to the middle of the porch. The young men were to sleep on the threshing pad. I asked Phượng, our “manager” why I was deemed more efficacious as protection for the children than the younger more muscular fellows. She said that the sort of people who might be a threat to the children tended to believe that all American men carried guns. Score one for the 2nd Amendment.

At mass in the morning the forecourt was packed and there were thousands more outside the low wall. There were more than a hundred priests. I did not know it then but my own priest from back home was up there, also. I knew he would be in attendance but I thought he was somewhere in the crowd like me. After mass there was a procession that moved the length of the forecourt then doubled back on the outside to proceed around the back by the bombed out 1923 church and ended at the grotto. The procession was as long as the route traversed with many groups represented. Some groups of women wore áo dài and baseball caps. A totally unexpected group of Mọi (mountain people) walked in the procession and many thousands of others. It ended with a blessing and immediately the crowd began to disperse. I went looking for the amputees and gave each 100,000d, about $6.30. It was enough to feed one for a couple of weeks and more would have invited robbery of the recipient.

I came upon one beggar who was not an amputee but who was obviously crippled. His hair was in patches on his head and was brown. His face was western in shape and only his eyes looked Vietnamese and they were light colored. I was stopped by the sight and choked up. Here was one of our own children of the war. The French, at least, took their children out with them when they decamped. They gathered up the half caste orphans and urchins and their mothers and took them to France where they had a future. We left our children to beg in the villages and be shunned by the populace. I gave him more money than I had intended and it did not make me feel any better at all.

On the trip home to Khánh Hòa we stopped only once, at the market in Huế so that the women could buy from the more varied and cheaper produce available there. The luggage compartment under the bus was filled with greens and fruit.

Back in Khánh Hòa the bus emptied and the pilgrims dispersed. The 5 days of the journey had seemed to me more like a month. At my age time zips by and weeks are gone in a flash and I felt as if God had given me back some time and I gave thanks for that. After having been to La Vang I did not need anything more. It was two more weeks before my flight home and I settled down to reflect in the village and to walk the streets and the lanes.

In my remaining time my new friends made sure I saw everything there was to see in Khánh Hoà, a Buddhist wedding and a Catholic one. Trang took mr to visit a Buddhist temple where. The bonze there had been a Catholic in his youth. When I told him about my own youthful immersion in Buddhism and subsequent conversion to Catholicism he said that it was Fate that we should meet. He oversees the education of 30 orphans for whom the temple is home and family. Those children, all age 5-9, are the best behaved and most studious children I have ever seen.

Cô Phương and her brother Khanh took me to Nha Trang to see the Po Nagar temples built by the Cham, who preceded the Kinh (Việts) 900 years ago. A teenage cousin and two younger boys who had never been outside of the village went with us. On the hilltop Loàn borrowed my camera to take pictures in the cave like sanctuaries of the 1000 year old structures. Then she told me to come with her because she was afraid of going into the dark rooms. I waited for her outside of one of them and a young man standing nearby spoke to his companion- he said, “Look at the old foreigner with his gái yêu! -that is a stronger term than the English equivalent “girl friend.” Without thinking I grasped his arm and pressed my fingertips into his wrist and said, “Don’t talk ugly about my daughter. Her mother is nearby and will hear.” He looked surprised, folded his arms and did chào (bowed from the waist), apologized, and the two fellows left as Loàn came out of the temple chamber. When we rejoined the others Loàn told them that her “father” had chastised some men who were talking ugly. I had not thought she had heard it.

Finally my time was up and I took the bus to Sài Gòn. At the airport the customs officer noted that I had overstayed my visa and said I would have to speak to a higher authority. I said in Vietnamese that I would have stayed longer but my money was gone and I had to be on the 0100 flight. He turned to another agent who was leaning on the outside of the kiosk and who seemed to be his supervisor and said that the American talked well and seemed to be a friend. The other officer just nodded. My agent turned and handed me back my passport, smiled and said “hết rồi!”( all done) and said in English Please return another time.

I will go back again. Perhaps I will retire to a village in Khánh Hòa. Summer in the year of Our Lord 2003

Đà Lạt

Q̀uynh Trang has been telling me since 2007 that she wanted to take me to Đ̀a Lạt. I found excuses not to go each time before because  it involved getting involved which I was determined not to do.  This year she and her husband Binh said they were going to take me with their two little girls to Đ̀a Lạt.  I have not been interested in going there because it is a resort and exists for tourists and artists who exist for their trade with tourists. I am not much enamored of those things. It is the old French resort built originally around the turn of the last century to provide a respite for the colonials from the heat and humidity of the lowlands, of S̀ai G̀on especially. It is every young couple’s dream for weddings or honeymoons. It has world class golf courses and is an art colony.  Some strange people live in strange houses there.  My daughter spent a few days in Đ̀a lạt in 2007 when I gave my prot́eǵe a high school graduation gift of going to visit anywhere she wanted to go in Việt Nam. Of course she chose Đ̀a Lạt.

Trang acted as if it was a done deal so I resigned myself to going . The day before the scheduled trip Trang said she and Binh couldn’t make it because Binh suddenly had to go to Huế  to deal with business problems and the baby was sick. I felt a little relief but then she said that her sister Phương Trang and Trung, Phương’s husband the local high school coach would take me instead.

So I went to Đ̀a Lạt. Đ̀a Lạt is about 120 kilometers from Cam Đ́ưc and the last two thirds of that is all windy roads and switchbacks on mountainsides that reach probably a 7 per cent grade in spots. We passed big trucks in low low gear that I could have overtaken on foot.  One truck was blocking half the road obviously overheated and the driver sat in front of it while it steamed.

Near Đ̀a Lạt the valleys and hillsides are covered with square miles of greenhouses. Trung told me that most of the commercially raised flowers in Viẹt Nam were grown in those things.

We rode around Đ̀a Lạt for an hour to see some of the sights then found a small hotel for the night. We unloaded the car into a room with a double bed and a single bed and air conditioning which was most surely not needed. It is almost always cool in the highlands and there is no call for the AC except from some western tourists who have to have it in the room and working even if they turn it off as soon as they close the door.

After putting our backpacks and clothes on hooks in the closet we went out walking which is the best way to go in Đ̀a Lạt. The market on the central circle is full of gadgets and children’s noisemakers and sparkers and little cars that flip over and run around in programmed patterns. And there is lots of clothing and of course, food and flowers.  Phương said we have to buy gifts for Trang and her girls, flowers for Kim Anh, and souvenirs for  nieces and nephews. I was, as usual, at a loss for choosing such things but Phương had the situation in hand. She picked out knit hats for all the girls and  Qùynh Trang and the flowers for Kim Anh. She found a LED flashlight for Thông and fruits available only in Đ̀a Lạt, at least for reasonable prices, for everybody. At each place where she made her selections, when all was wrapped up and ready she turned to me and said, smiling, okay pay for it.  It wasn’t all one sided, though. Some sellers didn’t have the right tìên lẻ- change- and Phương and I would each pull out the bills we had and pick out the right combination. At one place we only had big bills left and were at a loss when a woman who had been pestering us to buy one of her printed shopping bags offered to help with her stash of tìên lẻ and the three way exchange proceeded. We bought three of her shopping bags.

Trung decided it was time to get something to eat and we looked for a caf́e. There were eating places everywhere. Such is how it is in Việt Nam. But Trung wanted a discrete restaurant with a roof. When we came to one  finally that suited him it was at the top of a narrow stone staircase that turned right at a landing in the middle of it and went for another 20 steps or so to the entry. At the landing  two  walls met at a right angled corner. As I led the way up I was confronted by a pile of rags in that corner with a hat set out in front of it. It was hard to tell in the dark But it seemed to be a small girl of an age somewhere between 8 and 14. Even that was not sure. She looked as if she had been very ill fed for a long time.  Trung  squatted down and tried to talk to her. All she would say is that she had no mother and father.

Many years ago, before I was any sort of Christian a situation occurred that involved a problem that had arisen, I had a feeling that it was placed in front of me. It was in a letter from ten thousand miles away. I heard a voice in my head that I thought was the voice of God. It just said, what are you going to do?  The world seemed to change at that instant, as if all the colors had changed or I could see it somehow 90 degrees differently. From that I got a wife who is probably the only woman on earth that would have put up with me in later years. She is still my wife after 47 years and several paths are radically other than if I had turned away and are far better for several people, myself not the least.

In 2003 in Cam Đ́ưc I visited a convent the first day I was there. The sisters were excited that an American had come to visit and Soeur Têrêsa ran across the street to get the 14 year old girl who had taught herself to speak English to come over and translate. Nguyệt was one of two young ladies who determined that the American should see everything there was to see in Cam Đ́ưc and Nha Trang, the nearest city of any size.  She pointed out the collapsing roof on the dormitory at the convent and said I should get the sisters some help in America. She took me to meet a truly poor family whose children were all to some extent retarded because they had never had enough to eat. She said I should get them some help from America. I heard this exhortation daily and she never asked anything for herself  though her family was poor, even by Cam Đ́ưc standards. I could see that she was very  intelligent. Two days before I was to go back down to S̀ai G̀on to go home I said to her, “Nguyệt, you start high school in the fall, what are you going to do with it? Do you have any plans?

She said,”No, I am through with  school. I have to go to work for my family.”

Again, God showed me a problem and I heard the words quietly spoken with no inflection, no demand, what are you going to do?  I had the same sensation that everything had changed, as if all the colors had changed, as if all the directions had changed. “Let’s go talk to your father.”

I supported her for 12 years to keep her in school through her MBA from the Economics University in S̀ai G̀on. Her life is radically different. So is mine.

In that corner on the staircase in Đ̀a Lạt there it was again. What are you going to do?  This time I turned away. The three of us gave the cô b́e ăn xin- little beggar girl- more money than we should have. Both Trung and Phương were affected thy the waif. We knew, all three of us, that all that money would not help her but would go to her adult owner who had assigned her that station. She might have got an extra share of rice once for increasing his take for the night. We could have  taken her or got her to lead us to her owner from whom I could have purchased her, or more exactly, her papers, the birth certificate and identity card which the owner must surely have.   But I didn’t do it.

In the morning when we were rousing ourselves to take a last turn around the town before we started back to Cam Đ́ưc it came over me like a palpable cloud. I had been called to do something and turned my back. I said nothing for the rest of the trip.

Tr̀ân Thị Phương Trang is a woman I met the second day I was in Việt Nam in a crowded apartment full of transient business and enterprise conspirators  in Sài Gòn in 2003 when capitalism was very much being born but was still a bit underground. I met her again a few days later in Cam Đ́ưc with her sister Qùynh Trang  though I recognized neither and did not know they were the same people in both places until years later when I recognized Phương in a photograph from those first two days and then Qùynh Trang in another.

Phương  amazes me more every time I go back there. I fully believe that there is no one that Phương does not know. She is the capable fixer, the one who knows where to go and who to bribe and how much is too much or too little to get something done. In the last 10 years she has made herself a consulting office with employees that works with several large real estate offices in the province. She does all their field work on her scooter or in her car if Trung doesn’t need it. She does all their dealing with government offices. She has made herself affluent by American standards, not to mention Vietnamese standards. She is successful because she has managed to meet everyone relevant to any situation and is truly a fine judge of character and intentions. In American parlance she schmoozes  well. And she is a fount of practical wisdom.

The next day after returning from Đ̀a lạt I went to Phương’s house- her office is also her living room and asked her if she could take some time to talk. She had a client coming in the door and I said to deal with business first but she put the client off and we went on her scooter to Babylon, the coffee garden where she carried on much of her business. She asked me if it was about the cô b́e nô lẹ, the “little slave girl” girl in Đ̀a Lạt.

I asked her what would be the consequences for her  and Trung if we had kidnapped the child. She said the police would become involved because we wouldn’t have her papers if they knew where she had gone. I suggested that it would be difficult to keep her at the convent without paper and Phương agreed.  I asked if she could get a set of papers for her that would be officially accepted. She said yes, she could do that. It would be expensive ,at least in Vietnamese terms but she could get them.  She suggested that her apparent age  would make it possible for me to claim I had fathered her in 2007 and it would be easy to find a “mother;” she might do that part herself. But if the child knew where she was born, the year, and her parents’ names it would be easier and much cheaper to get papers.

Then Phương asked me why? She said there are still many of them, not like ten years ago but there are probably a hundred of them just in Đ̀a Lạt. I said ,”but this one was set in front of me.”

She sat immobile for eight or ten seconds and then picked up her di động- cell phone and called Trung. I did not understand the conversation. It was too fast for my not-so-sharp ears. She set the phone down on the table and said, “Trung and I will go back to Đ̀a Lạt in two đays. I think I might be able to find her. The price from the owner will probably be four million đ̀ông and maybe up to three times that.” That is 200 to 600 dollars, which can be done. If anyone not from Đ̀a Lạt can find that needle in that haystack it is Phương Trang.

I told her she did not have to do that for a foreigner with a silly fancy. She answered that she owed me too much not to. That mystified me for a moment but then I remembered that her father had spoken the last words he spoke on earth to me after not speaking for seven months due to a massive stroke.  That means a lot more to sons and daughters in a traditional family  society than it does in America.  That and I had helped him out of a financial jam  a year before.

I went from Phương’s office to H̀ơi Ấm Th̀ưa Sai convent to tell the senior sister these things and ask if the convent could accept the child if we could bring her there. I would pay for a medical exam, for whatever papers would be necessary and monthly support. She said she was agreeable but must get the other three sisters to agree also.

I went back across the street to Thông’s house where I stay and Kim Anh’s  phone was ringing as I entered. It was Soeur Dìêu saying that all were agreed.

Since then I have been home for three weeks and Phương and Trung have gone back to Đ̀a Lạt twice and will go again. I suppose it is not realistic to think the child can be found  and perhaps that event on the staircase was the only opportunity. I am trying to atone for turning away from the call. I don’t know if that is possible.. I pray for that little girl. My priest said I am forgiven. It is hard to believe that but I must.

Because I heard those words, “What are you going to do?” I know that if I had responded for her, that however we had done the deed, it would surely have turned out well

 

 

 

 

 

Thiên Trang

Bùi Thị Thiên Trang and I have had an odd relationship over the last dozen years. I responded to her posts on Xanga back when it was my preferred spot for writing and interaction.  She was a student at the University in HCM majoring in English and was quite good with it. She did, however write with some archaisms and some clich́es that jarred. I took it upon myself to correct solecisms and suggest better ways of saying things. We argued, sometimes vehemently, but she saw where her education was somewhat dated in places and modified her writing and showed me some things, too.   Trang supported her education and her parents by tutoring the progeny of the wealthier folks in HCM in English and she worked part time for Cleverlearn, an American English teaching company.

In 2007 I wrote to her that I was coming back to Việt Nam with my daughter, Lilith, who, at 26 was the same age as Trang. She said she wanted to meet me and arranged for us to do that at a restaurant  with her parents.

Trang’s father had been an ARVN fighter pilot in the war and looked like a 1950s Hollywood version of fighter pilot, quite a handsome man in a Clark Gable sort of way. Her mother was pleasant but left the conversation to her husband. Trang and Lilith got on well.

Trang had graduated and was working full time for Cleverlearn and was starting to take on the tension of her approach to work. I didn’t see it then but in hindsight I recognized it later.  She was totally focused on her work.

In 2011 I went back again and Trang insisted she had to meet me again. She was totally buried in her work at Cleverlearn and making time was difficult. She finally asked me to meet her for lunch when I had returned to HCM at the end of my trip. I took Nguyet with me so that she could meet a successful business woman. Cleverlearn had been failing and the American woman who had the franchise for Việt Nam wanted to close it down. Trang interested some men with assets to buy the franchise with Trang as the nominal CEO. The parent company was reluctant to let her keep the company name but she talked them into it.

When Nguyệt and I met with her she was showing the signs of long term tension. She was spending her annual vacations in the hospital. It was apparent that she was the whole company. She is the sort of person who can’t delegate tasks and was doing everything herself including all the details that should have been given to subordinates. She was headed for burnout and maybe an early heart attack. I was very concerned and I told her she should meditate. She is Buddhist and knows about such things. I said if she was unsure, to go to a pagoda and seek help from the tu sĩ- the master. She protested that she had not time to meditate. I answered that when one has no time for it then it is the time that one absolutely must meditate. She didn’t say anything  and I left it at that.

In 2014 we met again. She said again she had no time but to come to the company building and she would try to make time.  When I  got word to her that I was there she abruptly left the meeting she was presiding at and flew down the stairs to meet me. She said we should go around the corner to a small café there.

Trang looked physically healthy but her eyes still looked harassed. I asked her if she meditated. She said she determined to do that after I had left the last time and had kept up at least half an hour a day since. She took her vacations  in Singapore and  California. But she felt like she was up against a wall. She wanted to quit and perhaps go back to the University to teach. Her partners, the money men,  were telling her that if she quit she would be a failure and would never do anything successfully again. She worried that it was true.  I had looked at the map that was on the wall in the Cleverlearn building and had seen that there were now 6 locations around the country instead of the one failing S̀ai Ǵon operation of 7 years before. There were  notices on the wall about partnerships with universities in England and the USA.  She was already a business success and I told her that.  She, in her hands on everything approach had accomplished all that. The backers were passive and did not pay her much at all. She had the salary of a clerk while she built a highly profitable company for her backers. When Nguyệt and I rose to leave she hugged me and said she knew I would come back because she knew she would come up against that wall again and that is when I would appear.

This year I met her for dinner at her house in a nice neighborhood in Thủ Đức where she had prepared a formal dinner for me, Nguyệt and several visiting internet friends from Australia, California, and Taiwan. She has a  freestanding house now that she shares with her parents and her younger sister. Her parents actually prepared the dinner. Her father has not changed visibly since 2007. I was gratified at the deserved affluence. She had, indeed, quit Cleverlearn and had gone to work for a Korean English teaching company that recognized her talents and pays her accordingly.They provide her with assistants to take on the repetitive tasks and the details. I guess they don’t want an early burnout for such a valuable asset.  There are no walls around Thiên Trang now.

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The Australian and the California lass were typical children of wealth who  travel about and do a term or a year at the University in London then wander a bit and pass another term  at the Sorbonne or in Madrid. Jenna was taking a few months to work for Trang’s company before heading for London for a term at Oxford. The two Taiwanese were less affluent and worked for what they had. They saved their money sufficiently to travel for a year and would graduate as engineers.

I felt very good. I watched Thiên Trang go from hard working  student to CEO and then to some affluence and  perhaps I have  helped along the way. She  thinks so.  She said once I  always show up when she needs a lifeline. It does seem to be that way. I don’t tell her what she should do to change her situation. I have helped her to  see that things are not as they seem, that the walls  that confront her are illusion.

I  think she is past all that now.

2016

I worked a lot of overtime over the last two years and knew I would have the money to go back to Khánh Hòa  back in August of last year. I went online and secured the airline ticket in September to go in March 2016 and then told my boss.  He was disconcerted and said well, that was irregular but I reminded him I had done it two years before also. This job of mine is low paid and for me that is an advantage. It provides enough savings that I can go off to Việt Nam for an inordinate amount of time- the company only permits 2 weeks off a year vacation- and still have a job when I get back. The turnover of employees is great because most just stay long enough to get a “real job” that pays more and they are expensive to hire, so if a long time employee who doesn’t call in sick and is always on time takes off and then comes back he still has a job.  At my age that is important. I can’t just walk into a place and get hired.

I was cynical about the flight because United Airlines was the cheapest ticket by a large margin and I hate them. United does not even load luggage for a percentage of economy class passengers and the staff is rude and gives the impression that the passengers are just the cross they have to bear in order to get to go to exotic places and wear fancy uniforms.  I bought my ticket from UA but none of the  flights was UA and the 4 long stages were on All Nippon which, like Asian airlines in general, is excellent and the staff acts like they want you to come back to them and they don’t ship your luggage to Chicago for sale at auction. It turns out that United doesn’t fly to Sài Gòn any more and farms out its fares to ANA.  I paid for Motel 6 and got the Hilton.

At TSN, my vicarious family was all waiting at the gate on the street for me and the taxi drivers were nonplussed. Foreigners with backpacks and ragged suitcases don’t have local people waiting for them!

This time I did what I advise as the first thing for old soldiers to do  who ask me what to do when they go back to see the country where they were soldiers so long ago. My host, Thông, and I went on a tour. I always wanted to take a look at the Delta region. The pictures I have seen and what I heard from soldiers who had been there was fascinating and made it seem  a bit like southern Louisiana.

We joined a domestic tour group, all Vietnamese with a Vietnamese speaking tour guide. The tour  took us first to Mỹ Tho then to Trà Vinh thence to Bạc Liêu, Cà Mau, up to Bạch Gia then back to Sóc Trang and Bến Tre where it ended and we returned to Sài Gòn. We saw the fabled floating markets which are now mostly sustained by the tourist trade. I was interested in the watercraft- the little boats and the river freighters.The smaller boats up to even 10 to 12 meter in length all seem to be propelled by a type of long stemmed outboard motor I have not seen before. The freighters when loaded have their decks awash and their open holds are surrounded by  high coamings which, along with the upturned tips of the bows, and the cabins are all that protrude above the water. The small boats with the stand-up oars are rare now, replaced by those efficient looking outboard motors.  I was really interested in the water traffic, the freighters and the small working boats. My young adult years were spent on the water, mostly on seagoing fishing boats and my father was career navy so watercraft have always been my special interest.

At about nine o’clock while we were going back to the dock the foreign tours appeared on the water. The locals, and I guess I was a local on this tour,  are all up and out on the water well before dawn. The foreigners don’t get out until after 8. Back home we all that “burning daylight” i.e. wasting much of a morning.

I loved the small boat tour on the canals with the trees and bamboo arching overhead and hiding parts from view from the air.

I was privileged to be able to converse with the woman who paddled our boat because the tour guide insisted on placing the foreigner  in the bow right behind her. She was 20 years old and supporting her family, her parents and two siblings with the work. I left her a substantial tip when we debarked.

The zoo and the fancy restaurants were kind of a waste of time though de rigueur for a tour group. I enjoyed the night market in Bến Tre though it, like the floating market, seems mostly oriented to the tourists. Thông and I  enjoyed talking to the sellers.

Back in Sài Gòn we spent the night at Thông’s oldest daughter Ly and her husband Giang’s apartment. It is one of a row of nice two room units with a large back yard bordered by a high bank and a tree lined water channel. Access is by a lockable gate that only the residents have keys for. Back home only the affluent can afford to live in gated communities.  The keys are different from what I am used to and can’t be copied by any of the key copiers that ply their trade on the streets.

Ly is pregnant with twins. Her sister Nguyệt, my protégé  of 13 years has one on board. Both are due in May.

Ly, Nguyệt, and Hải, Nguyệt’s husband. Thông is reaching for the quả mịt

Kim Anh, their mother is in a constant flutter and will be down from Cam Đức along with Ly’s husband Giang’s mother from Vũng Tàu to help out for a couple of months.

I convinced a reluctant Thông to fly with me on Vietjet to Cam Ranh instead of taking the bus. I used to like the buses back when they were regular buses with low back seats. The trip was a social occasion then with everyone talking together and sharing food. Now the intercity buses are almost all sleepers and the passenger is isolated in a cocoon that is quite the wrong shape for my size 12 (30cm) feet and they are kept much too cold. I avoid them now. Thông is afraid of flying. I didn’t like to fly after I left the Air Force and swore I wouldn’t fly again. That changed when I wanted to go back to Việt Nam. The train doesn’t go there. I pointed out Bãi Dài to him as we approached Cam Ranh and he looked but his voice got squeaky.

Back in Căm Đức I resumed my old habit of walking daily in different directions on different streets and out into the countryside. That is my preferred sort of tourism. I walk and I stop to talk whenever someone calls out to me. People are curious about the foreigner, and now I have the status of Cam Đức’s own American and I talk to strangers and to old acquaintances, drink tea or coffee or rice wine with them. I love it.

I passed Easter Week in the Xitô (the French Citeau order) monastery. Two years ago one of the thầy (brothers) gave me a wooden cross on a cord and said I have to wear it always which I mean to do.

With the political system back home deteriorating rapidly and no credible prospect of improvement I am thinking seriously about settling in Cam Đức permanently. Thông and Kim Anh have already picked out my building lot which is, coincidentally, right next to them. I have ten acres in Florida that I can sell for enough to build a house with air conditioning for my wife. I just have to convince her that it is time to go. She is averse to leaving her hometown and is afraid she can’t get the necessary medicines for her diabetes there. She can, I know now, and she would love it once there. She is a retiring-this-year primary school teacher and has tutored Chinese exchange students in English. Were she to come with me to Cam Đức I would make sure the whole town knows of her talents and we would be flooded with requests for tutoring in English. She is not happy with the idea of retirement and wants to continue teaching. Working for the government, that is not possible. She retires when the rules say it is time. She knows the future on this side looks pretty grim. My daughter Lilith, the one who has been to Việt Nam with me, and her husband are solidifying their connections to Peru where they have a way in because their oldest child, now four, was born there and is a citizen. They are learning Spanish  and planning to maybe go back down there.

One way or another I will go permanently to Cam Đức. If I don’t make it while alive, I have made arrangements for Lilith to take my ashes there. I mean for them to go into the garden at Hời Ấm Thừa Sai, the convent that used to take in throw away children, disabled kids whose families could not support them so they would be left on the streets of the cities. There are far fewer of those now with the ever rising general prosperity and now the kids there are mostly retarded or autistic with a number of them being day students whose families take them home in the evening. In a roundabout sort of way I was the agent of the convent’s acquisition of support from a group of wealthy widows in Mobile, Alabama, when the place was physically falling apart and the sisters were starting to look for alternatives for the children and contemplating transferring themselves to the convent in Nha Trang.  The disposal of the ashes actually depends on Kim Anh and she wants them to go to Xitô where the chủ thầy has already said there is a place.  I am healthy, though, and It seems that these alternatives are some years off still.

 

 

Breaking a Leg

Broke his cheekbone

 

I was in an accident on my scooter
March 31, Easter. I broke my leg. I did
not think it was broken at the time. I just
knew that I could not operate my knee,
but it was, indeed, broken. My job as a
security guard was put on hold for the
duration but I will still have it when I can
walk unassisted again.
I have been a security guard, mostly a
gate guard at beach resorts since 2005.
My friend in Cam Đức, was the
Vietnamese equivalent of a sharecropper
as it was a hundred years ago in Mississippi .
A couple of years after I started working

at Regency Towers beach resort the
political and work disabilities were lifted by the government from the Catholics in Việt Nam
and large and/or foreign employers were then   allowed to hire Catholics.

There is a long beautiful Pacific Ocean beach near Thông’s village in Khánh Hòa that was being
developed to lure foreign tourists. Beach resorts were going up on fifteen to twenty miles of the beach. It
occurred to Thông that maybe those beach resorts needed security guards like the ones in America so he
took himself out to the beach and was hired as a gate guard at a large complex then under construction.
His income more than doubled and money came in regularly instead of being concentrated in a three month
period leaving the rest of the year to catch as catch can odd jobs and a low calorie diet.Thông was not
content to work only his assigned hours and gladly worked on his days off substituting for other guards who
wanted extra days off or were sick.

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Thông and I worked the same jobs for the same sort of employers for several years. For the last year I
have been working at a shipyard, still on the gate. Then I broke my leg.
I have been supporting Thông’s daughter Nguyệt in school since she was fourteen in 2003. The accident
induced hiatus from my job put me in a bind because for up to three months I have no income except just five
hundred dollars a month Social Security. I had some savings because I am always putting money by for the
purpose of buying my next airplane ticket to Việt Nam but still sending the money Nguyệt needs would be
tight.

Fortunately I had insurance on my scooter. The adjustor came to the house and got out his clipboard and
calculator. His laptop computer was mounted in his car and was Wi-Fi connected to the internet. I said nothing
to him beyond greeting him. I did not point out to him that the front end of the scooter had been modified by a
previous accident and some fiberglass and an ad hoc headlight. It was painted though, and looked good. He
asked me no questions, just looked at the scrapes and breaks and the pieces of the plastic fender. Then he
went to his laptop and looked up the prices of the affected parts. He was amazed at the cost of plastic fairing
parts and did not consider repair of damaged pieces, just replacement parts. When he was finished he wrote
me out a check that was what I had paid for the scooter in the first place. The scooter was not operationally
damaged, only aesthetically. The money was gravy and would keep the support going to Nguyệt while I
recuperate. I would not have to eat up my Việt Nam travel fund after all. Last week the telephone rang in

the middle of the night and I managed to get up on my crutches and get to it  in time to answer it. It was

Nguyệt. The connection was bad and she sounded frantic. I could not understand he rin Việtnamese or in

English. I spoke slowly, supposing that the quality of the sound was as bad at her end as it was at mine and

told her to put it in email and I would answer quickly.
She has the laptop I sent her when she started grad school and connects to internet with it but she didn’t
compose the email immediately. She said later she was too distraught at the moment. 6 hours later her note came
to my email. She said her dad had been in an accident on his scooter and had broken his leg. She said the
situation was very bad.

I emailed back and asked her for details.

Over the next two days we traded many emails and phone calls and I found out that the situation was,
indeed, very bad. She sent pictures of him in the infirmary bed with his leg wrapped up in what was only
a splint. He could not get the operation it needs without payment of 18 million đồng first, about $860. I know
he has a couple of hundred dollars in savings but there is no monthly payment plan so I had to promote the
rest. Actually I found nine hundred dollars and sent it by a money transfer company that takes the cash to the
recipient’s door, but it takes three or four days so I emailed Nguyệt with a scan of the check and the particulars
and told her to tell her mother to take it to the gold shop and see if they could promote a loan for a week. I
think the gold shop will do it. The proprietor knows me from the times I have stayed there. Time is important.
The sooner the bone is properly set the more likely a good outcome.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Kim Anh, Thông’s wife called at midnight. It is the first time she has called that I have understood what
she said. She normally talks too fast and the connection is always bad. Last night she spoke slowly and
enunciated each word. She said that Thông’s leg had been operated on. She had taken my email detailing
the $900 I had sent to the doctor and that said that the money was coming. It was done immediately. It
will be two days before the money actually gets there.

     Tôi còn cầu nguyện cảm ơn Chúa.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
And an update:

Thông got his leg fixed and now I find out his cheekbone is broken, too, but that is covered by the money
I sent. That might be tougher than the leg. When I broke my upper jaw back in ’72 I had to have my jaws
wired shut for three months and could only “eat” through a straw. Everything had to be pureed. The string
beans were a bit much, the strings got stuck in my teeth in a tangled mass. I hope he doesn’t have to go
through anything like that. Whatever happens Kim Anh will take very good care of him. He also has

fourth degree burns- that’s to the bone- on his leg and a hand. I will see how that came out when I go back there.

I have had to insist to Nguyệt that she not feel she has to put grad school on hold while she returns
home to help take care of Dad. As an unmarried daughter in a traditional society it is difficult for her not to
do that. I think I convinced her that she can help her father more by finishing her education and using that
MBA to lever herself into the middle class (for a start). She is working now part time for an export/import
company that deals mostly with companies in Taiwan.

Up the Coast to Nha Trang

Đi du lịch ở lại Nha Trang

Ông Thông mời Ông Mỹ đi du lịch đến Nha Trang thăm Ông Bụt trên thành phố. Tượng nó được nổi tiếng vào khắp thế giới mà Ông Mỹ chưa gặp Cả hai bạn lên xe máy đi dọc theo đường mới theo bờ biển hiện nay đầu tiên gần Cam Đức lên Nha Trang. Người ta được xem bờ biển và nuí đẹp ở bên đường nó. Có nhiều thuyền đánh cá và nhiều nơi nghỉ mát ở bờ biển đang xây dựng.My host in Cam Đức determined to introduce me to the Buddha that dominates Nha Trang and we went there on his scooter along the new tourist oriented coast road that, when finished,  is to extend from the airport at Cam Ranh to Nha Trang. Ông Thông làm ở lại một nơi nghỉ mát đang xây dựng ở bên bờ biển. Nó là một người bảo vệ.  Ông Mỹ cũng làm bảo vệ ở lại một nơi nghỉ mát xây dựng 35 năm  rồi. Ông Thông is a Security Guard at this under-construction  beach resort south of Nha Trang. I am a Security Guard  in Florida at a beach resort. Ông Mỹ ngồi sau Ông Thông vào xe máy Đến Nha Trang thì Ông Thông đưa Ông Mỹ lên núi đi thăm Ông Bụt. Ông Mỹ mua cái quạt rất trông trí công phú. I bought an ornate and very beautiful folding fan from this lady. A Security Guard in uniform. Ông Thông has a similar uniform in his job and gave me one which I wore to work on one shift. Ông Thông insisted that one of us be in each of the pictures we took. How else would people know we had actually been there? I generally neglect to get pictures of myself. I didn’t go there to see me. Tháp Hoa Sen Lotus Tower Sau khi thăm Ông Bụt thì Ông Mỹ hỏi Ông Thông đi du lịch thăm những tháp Cham là Po Nagar chưa. Ông Thông chưa bao giờ gặp Po Nagar vì vậy Ông Mỹ mời Ông ấy cũng đi lên núi Cham. Ông Mỹ cũng làm hướng dẫn cho bạn. Ông Mỹ từng đi du lịch thăm Po Nagar hay lần rồi. Then I asked Thông if he had ever seen the Cham towers. He said he had not. I had been there twice before so I got the opportunity to act as tour guide for him and we went to Po Nagar. There has been a lot of reconstruction since I was last here four years ago. All the smooth bricks are the work of the Ministry of Tourism. I am glad they did it. The towers were deteriorating. I could see the progression of it between 2003 and 2007. Po Nagar is the major tourist destination inNha Trang. These towers are up to a thousand years old and were built by  a Hindu culture that flourished in this area before being subsumed by the Vietnamese migration south. The acts are also new additions since I was last here. There is “traditional” music and ritual dance that may or may not represent practices of a past era. The idols and “priests” inside the towers are also new. Four years ago there was just a platform inside and there were always supplicants , usually women pleading to get pregnant or to have a boy child. The western tourists stumbled on them in the dark while they flashed their cameras. The supplicants never reacted and were so intent they did not show any sign when  western feet came down on a their backs. There are no worshipers now. European tourists

Nhà Mới

A New House

After visiting Nguyệt’s house in Sài Gòn just before getting on the airplane to come back to Florida and being appalled at the minimality of the place, the squalor as it were, I determined that it had to be improved. I told her to go find another place, that I would figure out how to pay for it if she could get a better apartment. That would make things pretty tight for me back home and it is added to the support I promised for her little brother to go to trade school but it had to be done.

I  reordered some of my own expenses to increase what I send to Nguyệt and my daughter is helping , too. Nguyệt is is beginning “additional education” or, as we would call it, grad school, in the fall.  I promised to see her through to graduation from the University and am happy to add grad school to that.   I will have two kids with college degrees, even if one of them is not actually related to me.

Thương wants to be a motorcycle mechanic but I told him no. While there are many millions of scooters in Việt Nam, they are yesterday’s job market. He is a young fellow and the future is not in two wheelers. Their abundance must decline and automobiles must increase and there are more motorcycle mechanics on one street in Sài Gòn than there are in Georgia. That same prospect led me to propose A/C and Refrigeration training because  there is more money in that and the market is only beginning to open. Right now there is far more equipment than there is repair capacity but now I think he made the better choice. For now. Auto Mech costs a third of A/C and does not take so long.  So if he does well with it and shows some aptitude for things mechanical, then when he graduates from that I will push hard to go back for A/C. I want him to be prosperous. Thương and Nguyệt have already assured me, unbidden that they will take care of Ông Mỹ in his old age. I like that.

So Nguyệt and Thương and Lý and Khanh and Nham have a new place. They found it and moved within a week of my saying I would support it.  They could do that because Lý and Nguyệt both save money. I had told Nguyệt she should long ago. She did not “take my advice,” so much as it legitimized for her a propensity to stash đồng for that ngày mưa. She could do it without worrying that If  I knew  she had a stash I would think I was sending too much.  It was part of the reason for the scroungy mouse hole they were living in.  But I told them I would be sending more for them to get a new pad so they got a new pad, and for less than I had suggested.

Nguyệt sent me pictures.  They are kind of blurry and too much pictures of Lý and Nguyệt in front of the things I wanted to see but they show me that it is a nice place.
The house has windows(plural) and the bathroom wall is tiled so there is a shower and there is a door. There are cabinets and a sink with water. There is a staircase with a hand  rail.

That’s Nguyệt in yellow and Lý in pink.

By the way,  Lý needs a husband. She is educated,  industrious, sweet and 24.

Nguyệt’s house

With time getting short I wanted to see Nguyệt’s accommodations in Sài Gòn. After all I am paying the rent. I knew it was a hole and did not worry about that much because I had lived in holes in my own college career but was unprepared for the true extent of the holeness of the hole. The neighborhood is not too bad as student ghettos go. The street is a bit narrow  and two motorbikes make navigation tricky.   On the street where she lives. Nguyệt was living there with her older sister  and her brother and a couple of cousins,  all students.  Lý, her  sister,  also has a job and is the only other support for the household besides the stipend from me. The whole place measures out to about two hundred square feet on two floors. Downstairs is the living room, kitchen, and benjo- that would be bathroom in your house or my house but here it is just a rickety toilet behind a curtain in a tiny space with almost no room for the user’s legs. Benjo on the right There is no shower and water is from a tap on the end of a pipe that sticks up through the benjo floor. Bathing was taken care of in facilities at the university for the two girls and their cousins who are university students. Little brother Thương, who is going to a trade school, had to wash out of a bowl. The ground floor is where the girls sleep and they must share it with four motorbikes and a bicycle.  At night vehicles must be sequestered inside or they will disappear. The boys sleep upstairs and risk their  physical integrity the staircase every time they ascend. There is no rail around the access hole in the floor above. There is a window The kitchen is a simple shelf with the ubiquitous two burner gas hotplate on it and a water bottle on a stand. There are no cabinets. Everything must be stored beneath and food preparation was mostly on the floor. At least the floors are tile and are washed thoroughly before time for dinner.  Food storage is nil. There is no refrigeration but for the most part refrigeration is rare in Việt Nam yet. The day’s food is bought at market each morning and is fresh. Stored food is things pickled and preserved in big jars. There is one window upstairs and the doorway downstairs for light. Inside there is one electric outlet on each floor that sometimes is live. “Hết điện” – outage- occurs often. The beds are straw mats that are rolled up against the wall in the daytime.   Sleeping on mats on the floor or on a Vietnamese bed, which is a sleeping platform with no mattress, is much better than with a mattress when there is no A/C and it is 100+ degrees Fahrenheit. A thick soft mattress is an excellent insulator and is miserable in hot weather. I am glad I got to see Nguyệt’s house finally. I wish I had seen it sooner but, of course, I was half a world away until a month before.  Hearing about it is not nearly so impressive as seeing it up close. Nguyệt has been living there for two years, Lý for five.  I knew immediately on seeing the place that it had to change.