Sandy Bottoms and Hammer Pants

Greetings all in this our 30th blog entry. In our last entry, we asked y'all what the former name of Ho Chi Mihn City was before 1975, it was Saigon, and the very first person to answer was Hien from Kuala Lumpur. He will be receiving a nice postcard from Vietnam in the following weeks. We also had our 100th comment posted by Morgan. She will be the proud owner of a new Vietnamese postcard as well. Now you can hope to get your very own Vietnamese postcard signed by Nadine and I only if you are the next person to correctly answer this week's question OR post the 150th comment. It's always good to set goals.

We are still in Thu Duc, Vietnam, the city outside of Ho Chi Mihn City, or Saigon, if you knew the answer to last week's question you would have known that. We just finished teaching English to a group of nuns and are about to resume traveling north through Vietnam. Before our trip started, Saigon would have never been a city either one of us would have thought we would end up staying in for a month.

After our first week of classes, we were eager to hit the road again, even if it was for a weekend. We jumped on a late night bus and headed to the beach town of Mui Ne where we arrived early in the morning. Our only plans for Mui Ne were to soak up some sun on the beach and a little more on top of some sand dunes.

As we walked the beach under a cloudy sky, we were amazed by 2 things, 1) the number of white people/tourists, as we had seen none in Thu Duc, unless you count looking at each other, and 2) the number of wind and kite surfers gliding across the water. Everywhere there was someone in the water flying in the air or roughly being dragged by the wind. Mui Ne was the perfect place to take in some wind or kite surfing. Because as you walked on the beach, you were either face first into a slapping wind, or pushed down the beach by the wind. Kind of like that nagging relative trying to get you to eat that old fruitcake from last Christmas. Alright, I'm going grandma.

From these aerial escapades, we walked back along the safety of the wind blocking, tree-lined road. Within the hour, we ran into two people that we had met earlier in our travels, a girl from Quebec, and a couple from England. We had met the girl from Quebec at the Vietnamese embassy in Laos a month earlier and the English couple in New Zealand back in July. I have a strong suspicion that the English couple may be following us. We caught up with all three of them, made plans for dinner, and headed right back to the cloudy beach where we spent the afternoon watching people get battered by massive waves and an old scraggy looking dog playing with an old fishing net. Oh, the pressures of travel.

White Sandhills

The followingt day, our jeep greeted us in front of our hotel to take us on a tour of the area and sand dunes of Mui Ne. We passed our first sight, the fishing port, being that we wanted to see the sandy sights while having enough time to catch our bus back to Saigon that afternoon. We were on a tight schedule here.

At the white sand dunes, we jumped out of the jeep, and walked to the top of a couple of steep sand dunes. The only drawback was that fact that the wind was blowing like an angry stepmother and it felt like small needles piercing our skin, so we ran away, and went to a smaller, less windy hill.

Tilt your head to the left, now you can enjoy this video. Talk about an adventurous hill to take on!

After sand had entered many of our orifices, we jumped back in our jeep, even though I'm not sure why we needed a jeep anyways since we were on a paved road the entire time, except for a small portion of sand at the White Sand dunes, and made our way to the Red Canyon. This small clay canyon was a great spot to climb and take some panoramic photos of the South China Sea, Nadine, and some red clay. While we were searching for a way to reach the top, we crossed a group of monks bypassing all paths and climbing straight over the rocks to the top.

Deep in the Red Canyon

After a few photos, we started making our way down. Instead of returning from the point where we just came from, we decided, what the heck, why not go the other direction. Other than having to lower ourselves down some rocks and climb over a few fences, the way down wasn't that difficult, even though we happened to be the only ones going down this way, but we made it back to the original path safely. Later on, when Nadine asked a local why that area had been fenced off, they promptly responded that "some of the rocks had been crumbling and falling down, so officials didn't want anyone to get hurt." Oh! Maybe we shouldn't have come down that way. And that is where we just came from. I can't believe a pregnant woman like Nadine was making those type of dangerous decisions. Shame on her. Clare, I promise you, it was your precious daughter's decision to go down that way, not mine.

We finished the jeep tour by visiting the red sand dunes, but after the red canyon, it didn't seem quite so red, more of a light pink. We then ran back to the hotel like Lloyd Christmas in Dumb & Dumber while the driver drove, packed our stuff up, and waited for the bus out on the street. Unfortunately, our bus was about as on time as a 9 fingered Alberquerque kid with a date with a hand model, not very. More accurately, our bus was two and a half hours late. That left us enough time to do several sets of jumping jacks on the sidewalk and have a strawberry shake.

Nadine teaching in a traditional Vietnamese hat

For the past two weeks, Nadine and I have been teaching English, and staying in one place longer than 4 days. It has been great, and we have found a solid daily routine. We wake up at 6:30, get dressed, catch the bus to the nunnery, eat breakfast with fresh orange juice, teach English for an hour and a half, take a 20 minute break where we try to avoid eating all the food being offered to us by the nuns, finish our morning session at 11, eat a healthy lunch of fish and fruit, either take a siesta, check email, or both, teach from 2 until 4, eat dinner with the nuns or on our own, return to the hotel, go to the gym to lift and run 2 miles, and finally back to the hotel and off to sleep. That has been our consistent routine for the last two weeks. And you know, it's nice to have a routine every once in awhile. But then again, after these two weeks of work, we are ready to start travelling again. It's amazing what two weeks of hard work will do for you.

Using a scooter to get to the next clue

We have tried to make the past two weeks educational AND fun for Sisters Vianney (Sr. Fix-It), Thuy Linh, Thu Trang, Tuyet Tring, Rosa Bong, Marie Marthe, and Mi Hanh. We played Go Fish one day, bingo another, and had a couple entertaining Scavenger Hunts. Once again, we went in wanting to give of ourselves in a concrete way, but we came away feeling that we had received so much more than we were able to give to these Sisters.

I know where the clue is hidden

One of the gifts that we are coming away with is a pair of fat pants for Nadine. Now that her belly is expanding, and we are positive it's not a result of some occasional gas, we have had to get an extra pair of pants made for her, some Hammer pants. You know the pants I'm talking about, the same pants M.C. Hammer wore back in the 90's. Big, baggy, colorful, you can pull them over your shoulders they are so big, or even hide a small animal inside them. You probably have a pair yourself. If you would like to be in solidarity with Nadine, pull them out this weekend, and sport your very own pair of fat pants. Even if people laugh at you, just think of the fact that Nadine is wearing hers around the world and not letting it bother her at all. I know that at least her friends from JVC Washington are wearing theirs. Anyone that wears their fat pants and emails me at jwhit003@gmail.com with a pic of them, I will post it on our next blog entry.

State of the Belly, Part 1

Here is our inaugural State of the Belly video report. We will post a video report of Nadine's belly every couple of weeks so you can follow her expansion. It might also help you to better guess the sex of our baby in the near future.

Once again, we are both feeling good and energized to complete the last two and a half months of our epic around the world trip. We will barely have enough time to break the ice in that tiny country we call China, which we will follow with Hong Kong, Macau, South Africa, and Italy. Then we make our return to the U.S. to embark on a miniature tour of the Midwest.

This week's question is the following. First correct answer will receive a personalized Vietnamese postcard signed by both Nadine and I.

In alphabetical order, what coutries border Vietnam? Spelling does count!

Peace and love from Vietnam
JW