OK, I'll resume the Vietnam posts in a minute. This just in: The Lunar Prophecy in today's issue of Taipei Times states that today is a good day for... "Taking a shower". Ladies and gentlemen, I'd love to continue typing, but I have an appointment with Mr. Washcloth! I have been waiting weeks for this! Not to leave the rest of you hanging, but the remainder of the prophecy states it's "a good day for shaving one's head for becoming a priest or a nun". And it's a bad day for Weddings and Funerals.

You may return to your regularly scheduled lives, now.

We drove out of Saigon on Highway 13. This road travels all the way to Cambodia, but we were headed to Buon Ma Thuot. Besides a nice hotel called the Dam Sam,we bought a lot of very good, very strong coffee. The Vietnamese drip the coffee over a healthy dollop of sweetenened condensed milk. It's very good, and will give you a sugar/caffeine buzz that certainly keeps you alert!

I immediately went to the Benh Tranh market and bought three stainless steel coffee dripper. These are comprised of a little perforated saucer that sits atop your glass, and a cylindrical cup with a screw-down plunger that fits into the saucer. We are keeping one, but still trying to figure out who to give the other two to. I've been drinking the coffee this way almost daily. Quite a lot, considering I don't drink coffee! The smell alone is intoxicating. The odd thing in Vietnam is that they serve you tea with your coffee. Yes, that's right. You sit down in a cafe, and they bring you a pot of tea while you wait for your coffee. Very strange. Their tea is pretty good too, though!

So, one of the stranger experiences was being in a rather unremarkable city called Quang Ngai. It was late afternoon, and we went in search of a cup of coffee. We found a nice cafe down a side street. It had a large open courtyard, with some covered areas. It was very large, as a matter of fact. But we were the only two customers there at the time. They were quite excited to see us wander in. We sat down, and they immediately brought us a menu. We ordered two coffees, and, soon after, a pot of green tea was brought to the table for us to enjoy while we waited.

Suddenly, two stereo speakers high in the rafters came to life. Blaring forth were, oddly enough, Christmas carols. I looked over at the service window, and the man was nodding to me with a big smile. I smiled back. The Christmas carols were, well, loud. Really loud. I looked back at the kitchen. The man smiled again. I smiled again. Megan and I were doing our best to talk over the music (this is April - did I mention it was April?). Our coffee came, we watched it drip, wrote postcards, and listened to loud Christmas carols.

Then this other guy comes out. He walks past me to a television set mounted on another rafter. He snaps it on, and turns it to The Cartoon Network. And he turns the volume up, yes, really loud. Is it not a universal road to insanity to listen to two competing sound sources, or is it just my personal cross to bear in life? It drives me nuts. And this was driving me nuts. But the guy watching the TV seemed perfectly content. I waved to the guy in the kitchen and he waved back and smiled. I motioned for him to come over, and I tried to communicate that, ok, the Christmas carols were great. The TV, even, was fine. But not both at once. He was a little confused, and turned everything off. The guy watching the TV loooked annoyed, moved to another area, and began watching on a different TV, while the other guy turned the Christmas carols back on.

The oddness did not stop there, though. The waiter comes out again and motions to us with a camera. He wants to take our picture. OK (being foreigners, lots of people want to take your picture). So he makes a rather large production out of taking our picture. He turns the lights on. He turns them off. He stands, he squats. More people come out to offer advice. Then he asks me how many pictures. I'm thinking, as many as you want, buddy, but I say two. After he snaps them, it soon becomes apparent that he expects us to pay him for this service. He is going to sell us our own picture. I let myself get annoyed, tell him we both have cameras, why would we pay him to take our picture? And I convey to him (this is all in pantomime, mind you) when does he plan on delivering these photos I'm paying for? It was turning into a bit of a scene, when I finally told myself that the 10,000 dong he wanted for the photos was about sixty cents American. I paid him and we left. We never saw our pictures.

But you can look at some pictures. In my organizational methodology, these are my coffee pictures. Hope you enjoy them.

We've been back from Vietnam for about a week now, but I've yet to post anything. We were in the country for ten days: five for a teacher conference, and five sightseeing. We hired a driver and a guide, and traveled north of Saigon. It was an incredibly varied trip - beautiful sights, and amazing, outgoing, and friendly people. The food in Saigon was wonderful - also in Hoi An. But between those two points we were in some pretty rural areas, and the food left a bit to be desired. It's hard on one's psyche to eat lots of not particularly good food. But it's part of the experience.

It would be difficult for me to capture the whole trip in one long entry. It'd probably be longer reading than most feel like doing in front of their computers. So I think I'll try to break it up into separate entries. Either that means that several posts will be following this one, or I lost my impetus, and this will be the last post on Vietnam....

But to wet your whistle I'll include here about twenty or so photos that capture just a bit of the flavor of what we saw. Hopefully lots more will follow. Hope you like them!