hey everyone,

i started off the day looking out of my hotel window into run-down orange and lime colored buildings riddled with rusty roofs on a backdrop of gray clouds. it would have made a nice painting or postcard. i did some stretching because being in a plane for 7 -8 hours sure does a number on ya.

i'm impressed with the hotel. 3 stars. reminds of a comfort inn. not ridiculously luxuriously but not a roach motel either. just right....

i joined my siblings, grandma, and cousin thy for our free breakfast. thy is superb at taking care of her american family members. she's knows how to sweet talk store clerks or ai dao sowers to get what she wants. she's a skilled haggler too. she hasn't changed a bit since five years back when she graced me with her hospitality. i had a bowl of banh da cua (crab flat noodle soup) for breakfast. so cool to get viet dishes for breakfast at a hotel. no more donuts for me!

my uncle (#3) came to pick us up promptly at 7:30 am. we went to mass at a church my dad often frequented when he lived here. he said the church hasn't changed a bit. we met up with thim lien's mom's sister, who was very cool and gave us recommendations on places to get a massage. a massage here is about $10. so incredibly cheap!

the currency ... 15,000 viet dollars equals $1 american dollar. can you believe that? we bought about 10 ao dai's today, and it cost a little less than $100 or 1,227,000 viet dollars (or something like that).

ba and my dad got some glasses made. my dad got a haircut. we munched on jackfruit, grapefruit, mango, oi, banh bo, vai, and watermelon in my uncle's van as he drove us to all our destinations. how cool is it to have a chaffeur?

we concluded our morning adventure with lunch at my uncle's (#3 -- the one that drove us around). omg it was so good!! we had oysters with sweet fish sauce, steamed crabs, fried frog legs with hot sauce, viet crepes. and you can't end a meal without a plethora of tropical fruit -- and so we did -- mang cau, xau rieng, nhan, vai, and banh da lon.

after lunch, we played volleyball, and it was so funny because we were particularly skilled. so... that means the ball landed just about everywhere but where it needed to be... in the pond... in the pond again... in the pond far away... it hit the guys working on the truck... it went over the roof and returned... it went over to the neighbors twice... it got stuck in between the metal fence... it was hilarious. we did manage to have a number of good rallies, and i have light bruises on my arm to show for it. :)

the next exciting thing we did was joined my older cousin tien (i think he's 30) to "big c," which is where wal-mart meets target meets a mall. kinda eerie. we went to run errands with him because he had to go buy a couple of outfits for his young daughter. we bought some fun pasteries and received interesting looks from viet guys... i bet it was minh-anh who caught their eye.

it's a lot cooler here than i would have thought. but one thing doesn't change -- bug bites! there are all over my foot and ankles. minh-tu hates them. one of minh-anh's foot is swollen so much that she can't even slip comfortably into her flip flops.

now for dinner... we had rice with canh chua, muc sau with mang, thit kho tau, and ca hop voi rau. for dessert, we had more tropical fruit, but this time we had mang cau smoothies! who-hoo! so delicious.

we ended the night with some lively egyptian war, which the cousins called "bai an giang" (translation: the cheating card game). i never knew how fun this game could be. d0oode, minh-anh was on fire! she got about every double there was. but we got to sharing the goods, and cousins got the cards. lots of yelling and red hands.

so now i'm at the hotel. writing in the dining room / internet cafe. the room is spinning, which i interpret was time for hanh to go to bed because maybe she's still jetlagged.