Vu Lan Festival Approaches

Hong Anh had a few free hours alone yesterday afternoon and biked out beyond our hotel into the outer reaches of the old Hue City. Here alongside one of the lotus ponds behind the palace area, she found a shop that makes incense used in the temples. The Vu Lan Festival will occur here a week from today on August 7-8 which are the middle two days (full moon) in the lunar calendar. This is a festival to recognize the mother of Buddha and really all mothers everywhere for having given birth to their descendants. The temples will be packed and Hue's vegetarian restaurants will be overflowing, and smells of incense will fill the temples and the air. With any luck we'll have clear skies then and can have some nice views of the moon out on the river.

Thim Lac's Yogurt

Yesterday morning we visited with Thim Lac and Chu Nghien as we do almost every day around lunchtime. Thim Lac makes her own yogurt, so she has become one of Scuppy's favorite people in Hue. She teaches highschool physics in her home in the evenings and some mornings, too. Here the yogurt melts a bit because of the heat so it makes for a delicious creamy kid drink, more like the new liquid yogurt treats sold in grocery stores back home.

Also in this picture you'll see the old style tiles made in Vietnam. I really like the older style tiles made where the color soaks through the top layer instead of newer ones where they put a kind of plasticy film with the design and then a tough glaze on top. They are also nice and cool to lay on when its hot out.

The Kiddie Park

Last night we headed out for a cruise around town on our bicycles and stopped at a large park at the city's downtown kiddie cultural center. Every town in Vietnam has a similar little fun zone, a hodge podge of loudly painted carnival rides, screeching speakers playing out of tune children's songs, candy snacks, and bright flashing lights. Parts of it were a little bit scary for Team Scuppy, but the train was a real hit. Every evening in Vietnamese cities, a few hundred parents and kiddies hang out at such parks enjoying the rides. While my initial aesthetic response to such a place is of a holdout of impoverished, Soviet-style Socialism, upon hanging out on the trains with Team Scuppy I think its impressive that a society dedicates such downtown spaces for children. In addition to Vietnam being one of the best places on Earth for food, it may also be one of the most kid-friendly places, especially for a developing country.

Ngo Mon - The Moon Gate

Pictured here behind Team Scuppy is the southern, main gate into the 19th century Palace of the Nguyen Kings. The gate was designed by Emperor Minh Mang in 1833, the same year he started a bloody war that lasted three years to supress a secessionist southern rebellion at Gia Dinh (Sai Gon). The southern citadel at Gia Dinh was much larger than Hue's and was destroyed during this earlier war when the Nguyen army finally put down the rebels in 1836. What few tourists realize when they see the Palace is that its not really an ancient construction but more a kind of neoclassical work by a modernizing Vietnamese monarchy in the mid-19th century. Minh Mang had extensive relations not only with French but also sent his emissaries out to make contact with American merchants and others. He arranged to buy two steamships and then tried to have them copied. I see the Palace as the possible start for a new modern, Vietnamese kingdom built along East Asian rather than European lines, but fully incorporating mixed influences resulting from the booming trade with the West in the 1800's.

Scuppy's New Wheels in Hue

Today has been a pre-program day. I spent a few hours this morning with my colleague Dr. My in the Vietnam Studies Department and her associate who now works for Vietnamtourism in Hue, Kim Binh. While we sorted out the details for the student tours, Hong-Anh and Thim Lac bought a new bicycle at a shop near the hotel and then Hong-Anh outfitted it with her most prized gadget purchase, the child seat and accompanying windshield. Scuppy was obviously pleased with this as well.

The bike is a beautiful deep purple color, the color of royalty and of Hue.

While they pedaled around town today, I spent a few hours at the Post Office trying to sort out internat access from the hotel room using a prepaid internet card. Figured that out finally, so now we're more telecommunicated than ever but at about 28.8 kbps on a good day. Nevertheless, we are back online in Hue and the first student has arrived en route from Indonesia where she has spent the last month learning to play gamelan. The general group arrives on Saturday.

Breakfast at Thanh Noi Hotel

We are now staying at the Program hotel, Thanh Noi, just outside the walls of the 19th century royal palace. Hue is every bit the idyllic and charming, tree-lined town I remember from a few years back. Our hotel is a state-run place, a little shabby in the interior decor, but the staff are very nice, especially Mr. Tuan the head of reception. The hotel is very popular with French tourists and families as it has a pool and this delightful pavillion in the garden where a breakfast buffet of fresh fruit and omelettes is served from 6-930am. We enjoyed our dinner last night at a table under an old bodhi tree, the kind of tree typically planted at the gate of a village or around a pagoda. There is also a very nice little pool, instrumental for cooling off.

Air conditioning saga - last installment - we're getting a new one installed in the room so we can be absolutely frigid in the mid-day.

Arriving in Hue

This is the scene on the approach into Hue's Phu Bai airport. Welcome to mountains, the blue seas and the intense, non-enhanced greens of central Vietnam! Hue like much of the US right now is having a heat wave, but it appears to be mostly over now.

Hue University's staff met us at the airport and greeted us with a bouquet of flowers and very nice compliments for Scuppy and Hong-Anh. Hue has recently upgraded the airport, though everyone's airconditioners appear to be on the fritz just like ours back home.

Today we met with Rector of the College of Foreign Languages, Tran Van Phuoc, and visited the classroom where our classes will be held for the next 5 weeks. HUCFL is in the process of moving from its current temporary location to a new campus 3 kilometers south at the foot of a nearby mountain, so in the future it should be more attractive for visiting classes.

Ben Thanh Market

We stopped in on our last morning in Saigon at Ben Thanh Market, the large open-air market in downtown. Here each morning at 3am come loads of small trucks carrying produce, meat and seafood from the countryside. And as we headed over to one of the most delicious noodle shops in the area specializing in rice noodles with seafood - especially Scuppy's favorite "shrimp grilled on sugar cane" - I met up with the morning refrigerant resupply force. Here freshness happens the same way it has for over 100 years - in terms of huge blocks of ice.

We also received news from our neighbors in Riverside that our air compressor broke and our house is a little on the hot side while we are gone - 96 degrees. That ice looks good!

Cuom and Nhu

Cuom and Nhu stopped by the hotel this evening for a visit. Cuom is my adopted family's youngest son (Thao's baby brother). He just graduated from college and is very serious with his girlfriend Nhu. Cuom just got a job working with an import export company and Nhu is still looking for work. In the last year, they almost eloped, Cuom stopped smoking, and he transformed from a skinny kid brother to a 65 kilo guy. Nhu's family is actually Chinese-VN and so far they don't accept my baby brother into their family as he's not Chinese - but they are a very willful couple ... young love! Scuppy actually smiled on command for this shot, a rare moment!

Ho Chi Minh City

Staying across from the National Archives 2 on Le Duan Street. Its been mostly cloudy and rains each afternoon in terrific monsoon downpours. The city continues to evolve slowly with each new building project and sleek new storefront, but I'm still meeting the same doormen and concierges in the same downtown hotels that I met five years ago. On Friday at the Archives, I was told that the Public Works records from 1954-75 that were unavailable last summer are still unavailable and will be so for another two to three years because the archives is moving locations across the street and preparing new guides - more obscure collections like Public Works sit at the bottom of their to-do lists. When I suggested I might look at records using the old finding aid before they are moved, the staff looked at me with the same look archival staff use everywhere in the world to suggest such a request was not even remotely in the ballpark of possibility.

Team Scuppy, however, has been having a blast! The pool on the 18th floor at Sofitel gives us a great view of downtown Saigon, too. The pic here was taken just after one of the terrific downpours this morning. In the distance I've noted some of the sites of downtown Saigon.

Getting to Vietnam ...

If anyone ever wonders what it might be like for a 1.5 yr old to travel 24+ hrs through airports, immigration and transit lounges, our experience is ... FUN!!! Especially if you are transferring planes at Singapore's Changi Airport (SIN). We flew Singapore Airlines where we got the cheapest fare on their website (http://singaporeairlines.com) and the best service in the air. Scuppy got in a few last phonecalls to the grandparents while Daddy waited about 40 minutes in the baggage security screening lines at LAX.

In Singapore, we stayed in the Terminal 2 Transit Hotel, a fabulous sleep after the long trans-pacific flight. This airport has it all! Even a swimming pool and a movie theater!

Who is Team Scuppy?