Lunch at the Din Ky

Lai Thieu

Our hotel is down this dirt roadThose guys are fishing right beside our hotel
See the barge on the river?
Mooo Mooo
Entrance to the Din Ky Resort

the main street in Lai Theiu....subject for a watercolor?
center of Lai Thieu
the open air market
Ah...this looks like a painting~I am sketching this in my mind...
We cross the Saigon River - see the separate lane for motorbikes?

Paige is our director and our tour guide today as she points out points of interest along the way.Frank and Jacque talk with Zofia.
geeze, we have a lot of luggage - full of toys and audiology equipment!
Ah, nice - plant strong area!
Judy eat pho for breakfast!

While Jim is eating breakfast in Tokyo, we enjoy a Vegetarian breakfast at the Dragon Hotel. We meet Zofia in the lobby, an audiology member of the GFCHL Mobile Mission who just arrives.

Geeze, we have a lot of bags - full of toys and equipment!

A big bus takes us and all our luggage about 20 kilometers north of Saigon. We are released from the sea of helmets to a smaller highway where for the first time I see a separate lane for motorbikes! We buzz along past shops, shops, and more shops. Across a river we turn left past an open air fruit market and go through the center of the town. About 1/2 mile further we turn left onto a red dirt road to find the Din Ky Resort. Men are fishing for lobster, eel, and other sea creatures right beside the entrance. A barge loaded with cut palms floats by. A red cow looks at us as he munches grass by the roadside. This is a lush riverside, overgrown with banana trees, palm trees, and large flat bladed grass.

We are definitely in the country. We are definitely in the tropics! Stone steps through the grass make it tricky to wheel those city slicker suitcases. My room is on the first floor #25! I like it! Our rooms in Saigon were more typical hotel rooms, these feel a little different. Maybe it's the smell or the location, but I know I am in Vietnam as I sit in this room, hot, muggy, with AC that does not work well, tile floors, and a feeling of being far away from home. Out my doorway I see rich green foliage and is that a water buffalo?

Judy and I head to the open air restaurant walking along paths with trenches of water on each side. We follow stone paths, cross wooden bridges to find a seat at a table with hammocks nearby. We order mushrooms, ‘chancery vegetables’ ( not sure what that is, but looks like lotus flower?) and steamed rice. Judy likes watermelon juice and I love coconut milk right out of the shell! We work on the pre/post test questions as we adjust to our new setting.

After lunch we can relax, find the swimming pool, and get settled in for a week by the river. We can walk to the Thuan Center to continue our teaching.

Sorry Jim is not here. He'd be out fishing with those guys!

The Hospital writes up a good report on our workshop!

Paige Stringer, the director of Global Foundation for

Children with Hearing Loss sent us a nice e-mail with

what the Children's Hospital #1 posted on their website

about the GFCHL week-long workshop:

..the CH1 website with our
program on the home page. Here is the link and below is the
translation (brought to you by Google):
http://www.nhidong.org.vn/Default.aspx?sid=7&nid=2717

This morning, on 27/02/2012, 1 Children's Hospital in collaboration
with the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss (USA) held a
training "Audiology and speech therapy of children" in order to
provide level of knowledge and practical skills for medical personnel
working in the field of audiology and speech-language therapy
children.

Classes are held one week from 27/02/2012 until 02/03/2012, and has
attracted 42 students, including specialist ENT, technicians and
pediatric hearing test specialist speech and language therapist from
the ENT department of Physical therapy and Children's Hospital 1, in
addition to the participation of the Central Hospital, ENT Hospital,
City Hospital Cancer, Ninh Thuan hospital, kindergarten hand in hand
specialist, Center for children with Disabilities education Thuan An,
research Center of Special Education, teachers college Central School
Vietnamese American Affairs, School of germ young practice, 8
Preschools, Hearing Aid company Quang Duc, Vietnam company Medel.

The class is mainly due to the faculty of the Foundation is
responsible for meeting the speech therapy field, audiology, in
addition to the presence of a number of experienced trainers
Children's Hospital 1. Teaching classes organized by 03 categories:
audiologist; audiology technicians and physiotherapy professionals.

Besides receiving the knowledge and skills in the field of audiology
and speech therapy from the foreign experts, this is an opportunity to
exchange experiences, exchange of learning and international
collaboration between Children's Hospital No. 1 with your experts.
Wishing for good classroom success.

"Saturday without a plan" in SAIGON March 3, 2012

This is what we look like crossing the street in Saigon - scared to death!Ah...you just have to go for it, the motorbikes weave around you - most of the time!
Jim and Judy at Jim's "farewell dinner"....
Dessert for Jim's "last supper"...
Dragon for 2012 - the year of the Dragon, and 1952, and the Dragon Hotel!
Waiting for Simser.....
Photographing the orchids at the Botanical Garden.
Topiary fun!
They are looking at a relative of Addison the cat. We have better pictures!
Jim at the Museum of History - elephant tusks!
The Independence Palace, Saigon - The Reunification Palace.
Jim looks serious about this helicopter on the roof.
Who's the guy in the dark glasses?
Busses, bikes, motorbikes all swirl around us as we make our way to the palace.

What we see on the sidewalk....


Vietnam House is a great restaurant for lunch. Nice and cool on a hot hot day in Saigon!
Jim takes some Chinese kale sautéed in garlic.
Vietnamese pancake.
Such a quiet spot for a delicious lunch.
flowers at the market
Dragon fruit and watermelon
Ba Na Na Nah!
Jim buys a paint brush.
Jim makes a nice friend at the market.
It is very warm and overwhelming at the market today.
Jim crosses the street. See the old market and the tallest building in Saigon behind it?

Up every morning at 6 or 6:30, we can sleep this time except this is the only morning we receive a ‘wake up’ call at 6:30! We are staying in the Hoang Hai Long Hotel. That’s funny, we never asked for a ‘wake up’ call.

Later in the day, we find out Judy Simser asked for one and we being in 904 and she being in 1004 got her call! She asked for the call but never got it! Ha ha!

Judy has graciously agreed to run the Saturday Parent Meeting with Paige. That gives us a day free! It is Jim’s last day in Vietnam. He must return to work on Monday. It takes over 36 hours to travel home! He is flying via Tokyo.

Jim & I enjoy a leisurely morning. Jim has to pack because he is leaving this evening. Breakfast at 9:15 really does taste more delicious than at 7 or 7:30. Today we have corn fried rice, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, homemade yogurt over papaya, a veggie omelet, and coffee.

We have a day in Saigon ‘without a plan’. We start walking toward the market. We admire all the fruit and flowers. We bargain a bit with market sellers trying to get good deals on t-shirts, scarves, and trinkets. Jim has fun with a lady selling necklaces who ends up giving us a good deal about half of what she originally wanted which is just double what everything is really worth and then she begs Jim for one American dollar which he, of course, gives her. We go out of the market, onto the street, and then back into the market in the next doorway looking for a deal on t-shirts only to discover that THAT same lady was on this side, too. We laugh and laugh. She knows a lot of English. She says she learns it just from selling things to people, never went to school. Bantering with her is fun. However, this is her job and our fun. That does seem a little crazy, but crazy fun. We make some good purchases for her and for us.

We meande down the wide sidewalks. It is a HOT day. We drink plenty of water as we go. It is nice to step into the fancier airconditioned shops!

We find our way to the Vietnam House for lunch (air conditioned!). Jim spies a delicious dish on the table next to us. We ask the people what it is; Vietnamese pancake. We order a vegetarian one – yum! This is a kind of crepe. See photo. The rice flour with little bits of corn is so light and tasty. Filled with mushrooms and bean sprouts we savor every bite. Also try Chinese kale sautéed with garlic and love it! All of this we wash down with a bottle of Perrier. When the bill comes and is about $15 US dollars, we say; “Nice!”

Back into the heat, we walk over to see the old Post Office, the cathedral, and then down to the Independence Palace. Knowing all we know about the “Vietnam era”, this is a bit weird especially when we see the helicopter on the roof. We know this is where the South Vietnam leader surrendered to the Viet Cong in 1975. We saw the room where Nguyen Van Thieu sat and waited for the transfer of power, only to be told that; “He can’t transfer what he does not have.” We are fascinated to hear the Vietnamese talk about this pivotal point in history that way. The palace is well, quite palatial! Evidence of Feng Shui in every room, makes the place peaceful and beautiful. We marvel at the largest lacquer painting in Vietnam. The press room, the gambling room (!), and all the dining rooms bring us back to that time and make us realize how much has changed in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 40 years.

We take an air conditioned taxi across the town to the see the History Museum, the Botanical Gardens, and Zoo. How nice to meet Judy, Jackie and Frank there! The best time to be at a zoo is when they feed the animals. We see how MUCH the elephants eat – all plant strong! I love seeing giraffes, haven’t seen one since I was a kid! The monkeys are all camouflaged in the trees, but we spot them. We see a cloud leopard – Addison the cat’s relatives! Well, we see the cage for the cloud leopard, he must be inside sleeping. The animal topiaries delight us as we try to quick as we can figure out what they are. Orchids are outrageously gorgeous!

Back to our Dragon Hotel to the wonderful cool air condition room – ah! We plan to have dinner at the World Hotel across the street. Crossing these streets is always a risky business. You just have to find a time when the motor bikes aren’t too thick and just go for it! We join another couple and whew, make it just fine. Our dinner is fantastic. Jim has the vegetable curry, Judy has a cobb salad, and I choose two vegetable dishes; sautéed vegetables and layered potato. We toast to a wonderful week completed. We are a fine team. All being trained by the same amazing mentor – Dr. Daniel Ling, we are all carrying on the amazing teaching he gave us. Oh, we miss Dan Ling, but feel close to him as we share our techniques and strategies based on the Auditory-Verbal Principles Dan professed.

Today we are talking about one of the other incredible professors of spoken language for people who deaf, Alexander Graham Bell. Why?.... because March 3rd is AGBell's birthday!

No, we did not have b-day cake for dessert, but sticky rice with mango and syrup AND homemade chocolate ice cream make this farewell dinner for Jim quite special.

Paige and Laurie meet us in the hotel lobby to say “good bye to Jim”. Judy and I ( along with Hien, the bell boy) escort Jim to the taxi. Jim is off to the HCMC Airport flying to Tokyo then waiting for 12 hours to get the direct flight to Boston.

It’s been a great week teaching the professionals at the Children’s Hospital #1 in Saigon, Vietnam. Judy and I carry on as the GFCHL Auditory-Verbal Therapists, but we sure are gonna miss Jim!

Tomorrow we head over to Lai Thieu – about 20 kilometers north east of Saigon to the Thuan Center to coach more therapists.