I got up early to get the sunrise shot over the Mekong. The local ethnic Chinese were doing their calestenics at daybreak along the river promenade. We took off at 7 am. with our St. Nicholas parish priest for a visit to two of the 61 ethnic Vietnamese villages settled along the Mekong that are beneficiaries of his mission. My battery is getting low and I left my charger in Saigon. So, I will write in more detail about the program in an upcoming blog. 

For now I let the pictures do the talking.

It just gets better and better. Pnom Penh is what Saigon used to be when it was called the Paris of S.E.Asia,  as I remember it in the sixties. It has the same lay out and architecture but in contrast to Saigon they have not covered every  square inch of the former colonial estates with concrete high rises. I love Pnom Penh. First thing I did was to rent a bicycle and I have probably covered more of Pnom Penh since I arrived at 3 p.m. than the average tourist would by foot and tuc-tuc in a few days. I can stop when something comes in my sites and snap a photo.

The main difference I so far see between Vietnam is that the language is in Sanskrit, the religion is Therevada or Hinayana Buddhism. The architecture of the temples, small house front shrines, remind me of the Balinese Hindu style.  Also the homes in the Mekong estuary are built on stilts, like Indonesia and Malaysia.  

I have not met up yet with my Gig Harbor parish friends.  I am anxious to learn of our parish priest’s mission here. Last night I went to dinner with my new Quebecois friends, Allain and Pierre. Pierre has just spent two months on a film documentary in Burma. His wife and business partner is also a twin, and I learned a few things from Piere about the ideosyncracies of twins that struck a familar note but had never realized that they are unique to twins. Two new precious friends and I hope we’ll soon  meet again.

The former Presidential Palace now "Reunification Palace" with war booty

My main  mission today was to get my visa for Cambodia. I dropped off my passport in the morning and went back for the visa in the late afternoon. I had coffee and breakfast at my, first day here, friend Mike’s place. I like him. At lunch I met two Quebecois, Allain and Pierre. They just retired from journalist jobs in Montreal. We are going for dinner together this evening, then they are off to Nha Trang and beyond and I meet my Pnom Penh bus at 7.30 a.m. The Cambodian consulate was in a colonial villa the way Saigon was for the most part back in the sixties. Once you step through the gate you are in a heaven of peace and tranquility the traffic noises are filtered out by the brick walls and tall trees. The smells of frangipani blossoms, a fountain and fish ponds. The consulate was not far from our old apartment on 425 Hai Ba Trung and I rode to take a look. For all I knew there would be a 20 story building by now. But it had not changed since 2006 only a little more dillapidated. Just a few blocks beyond a branch of the Saigon river crosses Hai Ba Trung. In the sixties it used to be covered with water cress but with the increased population and consumption these rivers had become open sewers. Now they are cleaning them up. The banks are lined with concrete seawalls and all the semi permanent boat dwellers have been hushed away.

The 9.30 a.m. English service mass at the Notre Dame de Saigon was packed. English speaking ex-pats, tourists and local Vietnamese. Father Mario DiCicco, rector at the  Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, California ( http://www.fst.edu/) co-celebrated with two Vietnamese priests and father Mario gave the sermon. Some of you may recall that I wrote in my 2006 log (  https://cometosea.us/albums/log-Vietnam.htm ) that my first wife, Joan, and I celebrated Christmas Eve midnight mass at this same church in 1962.  After mass I crossed the street and paid a visit to the old post office. I totally missed this stop in 2006. It was an emotional confrontation with the early sixties. I made that phone call that made a drastic life change for me and Joan from one of the ornate Honduras Mahogany booths to urge her to come and live a year in Saigon. Journalists like  , Merton Perry who were personal friends at that time used these booths to file their dispatches to the world. Next stop, as I promised yesterday, was Givral. I had my Cafe Sue Nam and Flan; as I had reported in 2006 this is one of the few places that had not changed for the worse. It was a treat and it recalled the wonderful memories of the good times we had 48 years ago. It cost me twice as much as I would spend in this neighborhood on a dinner, but then who cares when it was 100,000 dong or US$ 5.55  But now I must also give credit for the places that have improved over the sixties. The Post Office has been cleaned up and is a feast for the eyes as the below pictures attest to. The downtown river front which was completely cut off in 2006 because of monster hotel construction is now again a promenade.

The afternoon I rode the rental bike down river from Saigon, away from the hustle and bustle and the tourists and I was once again the only occidental. I came upon a slightly older church than the N.D. de Saigon. This church Giáo Xu  Xóm Chiếu,  commenced in 1856 whereas the Saigon cathedral/basilica was started in 1863. There is a connection to Saint John Veanney and the church just celebrated the 150thanniversary of his death but I am not sure how it could be named after him when the church was started 3 years before he died. I will ask the new friends I made, while photographing the church, a church group dressed in a sort of scout uniform. This happy group (see below photos) invited me sit down and offered me a drink of a delicious fruit/coconut mixture. I did not see one single traditional oa dai dressed  lady at mass this morning but here in the hinterlands I did see several women and girls getting ready to go to mass in their oa dais. 

Before you switch the channels. I found a used NIKON D-50 with a 28-200 wide angle zoom lens for $415. When I deduct the cost of sending the old D-40 that I left at Rose Marie’s I should have no trouble recovering the resale of one of the two cameras. Right now the old D-40 is somewhere in Louisville, Kentucky bouncing around in the UPS system. This larger zoom and wide angle lens will definitely improve the pictures. I’ll be able to pull in shots like birds and whales that I could not manage with the older lens. So, I will be able to keep your subscription rates at the 2009 level. I went ahead an rented the bicycle this evening. Sure, beats walking and I cover a lot more ground. Below are a few shots with the new camera of the lights of Saigon.

For the second time, the first in 2006 on “Fleetwood”, I feel like I am home again. Of all the countries that I have now visited in the tropics, there is a unique feeling I experience here. The warm air, the smells, the noises but especially the warmth and openness of the Vietnamese.

The flight from Hong Kong was very nice in business class. I went through customs at Tan Son Nhat without a hitch but getting the checked back pack was a challenge. It took nearly two hours.  I got to a hotel at close to midnight. In the dark I could not quite find the area I wanted to go, where I was in 2006. I found it to-day and changed hotels. Last night I paid $28.00 this one is about $14.00 It has a/c but definitely a class or two lower. But all I need for now. I like the area here, Bui Vien, because this is where most of the small hotels, restaurants, tour operators are that cater to the back pack crowd. This morning I had breakfast at a small restaurant that turned out to be owned by Mike a Vietnamese-American repatriate. He gave me lots of information and I expect to see more of him. There is WiFi everywhere but on the ones I have used so far the providers do not accept cookies and that’s why I cannot get onto Facebook. So, I am unable to react to messages I get from any of you who use these to communicate with me. I am trying to make an effort to enlarge my Vietnamese vocabulary now that I’ll be here three months. Everyone appreciates my efforts and are ready to help me along.

I am still using the orthopedic sandal that I got after the foot operation. The walking I did this morning, searching for the right neighborhood, did not enhance the healing process and I got blisters on the new sandal I wear on the left foot. I have reserved a bike, $2 a day, for to-morrow morning and will pedal to church and roam my favorite spots. After mass I must go and have a  Cafe Sue and creme caramel/flan at Givral (“The Milk Bar” according to Graham Greene in “The Quiet American”) as we used to do in the sixties and I did in 2006. On Wednesday and Thursday my foot was still draining a small amount of blood but yesterday and today that had stopped and I am hoping that the incision will start to fully heal.  There were several places around here that rented bicycles but hardly any tourist is brave enough to join the e-z- riders on their light motor bikes. I have no problem with it. The traffic looks chaotic but there is a system and no one is out to force a road rage like the occidentals.

In order to keep you subscribing I am making an extra effort to improve the content since there will be no photographs, for a while. While going through security, in Seattle, on my way to San Francisco I discovered that the most important part of my retenue, my NIKON D-40, was still at Rose Marie’s house. She sent it to San Francisco, overnight but the UPS store mis-addressed it. Hopefully it will reach me in the next week here.

I left San Francisco at Noon Dec 31st, crossed the international dateline and arrived after a 14 hour flight in Hong Kong. The last time I was in Hong Kong was in January 1962, when Joan flew in to spend a year in Vietnam. I have a two hour layover before the flight continues to Saigon. The flight was full and I ended up in economy. It does not look much better for the next leg. The face lifts have healed well and the biopsies were negative for any malignancies. But my foot is still not quite healed and I am going to have to be careful for a while. I have been spoiled by many while on the Westcoast and celebrating the holidays. Wednesday night I stayed with my friends Bill and Laurel Wood in Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco. We had a very enjoyable visit and I met several of their friends. We became friends when Bll and Laurel lived in Gig Harbor.

I worked up two short slide shows of the visit, one with mostly photos of Mount Rainier and the train trip to Oregon at :   https://cometosea.us/albums/albums/ScenicPacificNorthWest2009.pdf  and another one with family photos of the holidays at :https://cometosea.us/albums/albums/Family%20N_W_2009.pdf

John, my oldest son, and his girlfriend Jessica came up from Portland for dinner with his two sisters and families the Saturday after Christmas.

I plan to travel from Saigon to Pnom Penh this coming week. The priest of my Gig Harbor parish, father Hung, will be there with a small group of the St.Nicholas church to visit the ethnic Vietnamese familes in Cambodia where father Hung used to serve before coming to the United States. He maintains a support organization to assist these mostly very poor villagers.