Vietnamese hospitality at is best

    From breakfast into the night, Binh and his family rolled the proverbial red carpet. For all three meals, the family laid the most delicious dishes of food. Since yesterday I have tried four new fruits I have never seen or tasted before.  Jackfruit and Durian are two fruits I can remember the names of.  Binh’s older sister, Thanh, took me by bus up town where we went to a war museum and then to market stretching down a narrow city street.  She pointed out the various Vietnamese delicacies that I would not have had a clue about otherwise.  Of the one I tried, they referred to it as the Vietnamese hamburger.  Two glutenous opaque rice paddies with a pork pate half inch  slice sandwiched in between.  With paper wrapped around it. I was shown how to press the rice sticky substance flat to cover the pork. They joked how it was very filling, which it was as well as being delicious.  After returning  home for a shower, family lunch and  a short nap, Binh drove me on his motorbike over to his school where he worked, Dung Nai Technical University.  There his assistants took me around to the English classes and where I made brief appearances.  Either shyness and/or bad teaching, only a few students could speak English, sort of.  Hot and humid, my shirt was drenched but I continued on meeting and talking with students and administrators for at least two hours.  At the Cantina, I was treated to orange juice and spoke with more students sitting around at the tables.  Binh and I made our way through the barrage of motorbikes and  narrow alley streets back to his house. Another nap followed, whereupon I had another feast.   The brother, Cong, opened up about the problems of Vietnam.  Pollution, resulting cancer, poor educational standards and a government which was more inner focused and less concerned with the people.  His older brother, wife and two children moved to Australia for a better life.  The sister, Thanh, gave me a mask for riding, surprised I wasn’t wearing one for my trip.  Because of the pollution, everyone on motorbikes, particularly the woman, where decorative cloth masks.
   After dinner, Binh, his two sisters and I strolled the neighborhood streets, checking out the church reinactment practice of Christ’s crusification walk to Calvary hill.  We stopped off at a friend’s house for cold yellowing tea which everyone serves.  Their friend is a taylor and his fifteen year old daughter could speak English almost fluently.  She stressed how the school system did a very poor job of teaching English and she had gone online to teach herself.  She wants to study in England someday. On our way back to the house, we stopped off for another fruit delight.  By now my stomach was feeling the effects of too much indulgence.
      Tomorrow I leave these wonderful people and head for Saigon twenty miles away. Thanh, who commutes to a bank in the big city as an I.T. administrator, will meet me in the afternoon for a late lunch.  She gave me a whole list of places to see.