Vietnam

One Vietnam story and then on to pictures. In Vietnam and Cambodia, many people must do anything they can to feed their families. Being a developing country, there aren't so many jobs looking for people. Many must create their own jobs - the two most popular being motorbike taxis and street merchants, smartly utilizing the wealth of their tourists. As a rich foreigner (if you're a Westerner, comparatively, you're rich, no matter what you earn) it really is good to go with a little extra money budgeted simply to help boost their economy. Really, if you are bargaining hard to save 10 cents on a pair of pants, STOP! They really could make good use of that dime. But with that said, the sheer numbers of them vs. you require you to choose carefully who you buy from and help, otherwise you will go broke.

Kids though make the best salesmen. It's extremely hard to reject a cute, smooth-talking 8-year old. Especially one who is starving, can't afford school and has learned English on the streets as a way of survival better than any of my students have in the classroom. One little girl in Ho Chi Minh followed our group attempting to sell us gum. We had all decided to pass by her, working through the power of her puppy dog face. She smooth-talked her way into our group and selected our friend Port to be the subject of her business deals for about 2 full blocks. She even kept trying to hold his hand the whole way. Port stuck it out and kept rejecting the offer. Let's take note that I had no part in this whole conversation. I was walking but didn't want to get involved in this one. (I put a lot of kids back in school on this trip!) Well, all of a sudden out of nowhere, this cute little angel who had been schmoozing on Port for nearly 5 minutes realized we really weren't going to buy. The skies clouded over and wind overcame the streets. She then turned to the dark side. She immediately let go of Port's hand, turned around and punched me in the stomach! She literally punched me! I had had no part in the whole affair. I never told her no. Yet she chose to punch me - I guess if you know Port you know he just can't be punched. As she ran off I stood there in disbelief....so as I was saying, choose wisely who you buy from or you could pay for it.

We got off the plane and headed straight for the ocean. Our resort was not real Vietnam, but when you're that close to the beach in the tropics you must always take advantage.

The interesting thing about the beach was that it was flooded with clothing that had washed ashore - everything from jeans to pajamas to underwear. This guy was out cleaning up the shore.

I don't think this was normal. At first I wondered if it could have been clothes that had drifted to shore from the tsunami a year and a half ago. But there's no way - I believe maybe a ship capsized.

The waves were huge and the beach was beautiful otherwise. We were the only people who ever swam in the ocean - makes me wonder what the natives knew that we didn't.