Birthday Weekend – Monkeys and Karaoke

Saturday was my birthday and we celebrated in style with a trip to monkey island and karaoke. During the day, Nikki and I went with the Post Language Program to Can Gio – which is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve located at the delta of the Saigon River – a couple hours from downtown. The bus ride down was pretty cool in and of itself, as we got to see a bunch of shrimp farms, took a ferry ride, and stopped to sample water coconut fruit (big seed pods, not to be confused with coconut water).Upon arrival we got to see tons of monkeys (macaques) and "fish" for crocodiles – ie, pay $1 to dangle an eel on a long pole above their jaws… Afterwards, we hopped in a boat to speed through the mangroves at high velocity and check out an old Viet Cong base on stilts. We watched a video on the war, learned about life on the base, and met an old veteran who had fought at the base when he was 15 years old.

After another boat and bus ride, we stopped for lunch at a beautiful beach side restaurant and continued our tour of this country's great food (I had cockles and Nikki had lots of veggies). We walked out to a little hotel on the water and I took a quick swim in the ocean before we headed to a seafood market. The market had maybe a hundred tubs of different kinds of live seafood – marine snails, conch, grouper, stonefish, clams, cockles, squid, octopi, and even a horseshoe crab. We poked around for a while and our teacher Co Chau bought me a great hat for my b-day, which I proceeded to wear all night. It started to rain on the way home and all the streets were totally flooded. Cars/motorbikes were stalling, homes/stores were barricaded with sandbags, bricks, and miscellaneous hardware, and children were swimming in the street – crazy. Our friends Andrew and Ed biked home through it – can't wait for our bikes arrive so I can join them next time!

Luckily, we were able to make it to the karaoke bar where I had reserved a big room for all of our friends. A few were waylaid by the rain (our poor friend David had his car totally swamped with water!), but maybe 25 people were able to make it. We made it only half an hour before the power went out due to the storm – ohh Vietnam – but luckily it was fixed in 45 min or so. Sufficiently electrified, we had a total blast singing classic songs in English and Vietnamese – Nikki and I even performed a couple duets, including GnR's Sweet Child o Mine (I'm sure some still have ringing ears). I was so happy that all of our friends were able to make it and I even got a cake (thanks Huong, David, and Anny!) and some new soccer gear (thanks Minh, Dat, and Thuy!). We sang until they kicked us out and went home very happy.

Today Nikki and I walked around town taking care of a few things before we go to Hanoi next week – I did a final fitting for the tux I had made and we looked for shoes and a handbag to match the beautiful dress Nikki had made. We spent the afternoon at the Caravelle Hotel, where we bought tickets to sit by their nice pool and relax, before heading home for leftover pizza, a movie, and birthday cake….

What a great weekend and thanks to all of our friends here and in the US for the birthday wishes!!