Day 2...

Mark in Jail! Just kidding... looking through the window of his room, which you'll notice has no glass, just shutters.

We awoke bright and early in our Nha Nghi, (guest house) which was clean and quite comfortable, although the awful, everlasting nylon bedding was quite old. All newer establishments have cotton bedding; a fitted sheet over a very firm mattress, with a lightly padded quilt and pillows. We're lucky to have mattresses; traditionally, people sleep on a woven mat on a wooden board bedstead, which is the case at Xuan's family home where Mark stayed on his way back.

When there is a mattress it's usually two or three inches of thin foam or maybe the corrugated egg-box type and for the more affluent, the ultimate luxury of a thick mattress, which is equivalent to sleeping on a carpeted floor. Mark's very lucky; he found an extra padded one for his bed! Western comforts are creeping in and they'll soon be as soft as the rest of us.

However, I digress. We had breakfast with Canary; an older woman who seems to work for the Education department here. This is the English name she chose for herself when attending the English school where both Mark and I taught her last year. She and Pharoah, a young man who joined us last night and booked us in at the Nha Nghi, used to travel to Bien Hoa by bike at least once a week for evening classes. That's dedication!

Then it was back a few kilometers to meet Xuan at the English school and have a tour of the Catholic Seminary with her brother Peter who's studying to be a Priest. That's him at the top of the steps.



Certainly a very impressive complex of very new church, college and dormitories, as you'll see from the detailed model displayed in a special building to illustrate the church's history in Vietnam, which (as always), came with missionaries a couple of hundred years ago, even before the occupation of the country by the French who rather liked the climate.

We spent most of the day with Xuan to make up for arriving so late last night.


After a snack prepared by her sister at her little shop in town; small pancakes with shrimps that she called fried pudding... quite delicious... she took us to her family home about 8 km outside the town, where they prepared a delicious meal of fried chicken with veg and rice, among other things. Time was marching and at 3.00pm we had to insist on leaving, although they wanted us to stay the night.

With only two hours of daylight left, we just needed simple directions to the road that would take us to the coast. Xuan and her brother, who's a lawyer, (the family have everything covered), after trying to convince us to take the Hanoi Highway, finally insisted on showing us part of the way until they were sure we wouldn't get lost!








We finally made it to the coast before sunset and found a very nice Hotel; more expensive than the usual Nha Nghi, but worth it for the comfort and the nearness of the beach where we watched the sun go down before eating at their restaurant.