Vietnam - Day 4 (Down & Dirty)

GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!! After another pho breakfast we grabbed a taxi to the US Embassy so that Tam can obtain another passport and visa. This whole process took almost the whole day with a lot of paperwork and lets just say "monetary compensation", I'll explain later... When we got to the Embassy we got instructions on what needs to be done. My Aunt stayed with Tam to finish the passport stuff while My dad and Sarah went around the town again. We went inside the Ho Chi Minh Museum and then want to go see the "Hilton Hotel" which was a P.O.W. camp where soldiers were held during the war. What we found out is that everything shuts down between 11am - 2pm for lunch/rest. We ended up walking around Hoan Kiem Lake before grabbing lunch.

Oh what I forgot to mention is that to get to Hoan Kiem Lake we had to hail a taxi. On the way to the lake Sarah saw something suspicious with the meter. So my dad watched and saw that whenever the guy would tap his breaks twice the meter would jump dramatically. My dad called him out and tore him a new one and that's putting it mildly.

In the meanwhile my Aunt and Tam needed to go obtain a police report to get her new passport. Long story short it took some greasing before they were able to get a police report, get a new photo taken and return back to the Embassy to get her new passport only to give the passport right back to the Vietnamese consulate to now apply for a visa.

Sarah wanted me to mention that we ordered lunch for 5 people with plenty of food left over and it only cost us $10 dollars.

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Vietnam - Day 3 (Ha Nam)

Last night my dad, great aunt, and a cousin arrive. I was to tired so I didn't get a chance to see them until this morning (we woke up at 3 am, still not use to the time change). So we all meet up this morning for a quick breakfast and waited for our motorcoach to arrive. We decided that it would be more cost efficient if we hire a private coach to drive us around all day instead of taxi or any other mode of transportation.

The main agenda for today is to drive down to a small French village about 50 miles south of Hanoi named Ha Nam. Ha Nam is where my dad and great aunt was born and raised until their teens. There's a lot of history here in this town. I was told that this village sits on Highway 1 which was a main artery during the war for the northern army to make it's way to invade the south. During the war US bombed this town almost to non-existent and the bridges to try to stop the invasion.

After a very bumpy ride we arrive into a run down village that looked like it's still trying to get out of the war torn era. We started walking around the village with our aunt who introduced us to relatives that I never have meet nor even heard of until now. One of the first houses we visited was my dad's great aunt where they have not seen each other for almost 60 years. They helped raise my dad until he was 5 years old. The second he stepped into the house his aunts immediately broke down in emotions and tears of joy ran down her face uncontrollably and lasted for many minutes. As I looked around the room there was not a dry eye anywhere.

We continued to visit a few more relatives before heading out to the cemetery where my dad's mother and grandmother was laid to rest. We continued to turn back time by stopping by where my aunt's house use to be and where my dad and aunt attended elementary school.

As sundown fast approached we headed back to our motorcoach and started our ride back to Hanoi. We all thought the excitement of the day was over until our cousin yelled out from the front of the car that she can't find her passport. we pulled over and looked everywhere but with no success. We tried to retrace her day but it looked like it must have fallen out of her backpack early in the day. They have all planned to head to Halong Bay tomorrow but have now cancelled it so that she can go to the US Embassy to obtain another passport and visa because we're all supposed to catch an overnight train tomorrow evening to head west into the mountains to the Sapa region. It's been another long and exhausting day so it's now nighty-time.

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