This morning Mr. Nguyen Chau from Falcon Shipping came with a colleague and driver to take me to coffee and show me his offices. Chau was my agent in 2006 when I entered Nhatrang. He was of a lot of help to me then. He has moved up on the corporate ladder and is now the director of the Nhatrang and the Guang Ngai branch. We had coffee in an upscale coffee shop frequented by the young professional men and ladies of Nhatrang. I was able to update my Vietnam web page with all the current contact information for anyone  aspiring to cruise to Vietnam and I also passed the information to www.noonsite.com   

This evening I stopped at the restaurant where I am supposed to get the “local” prices, after I impressed T.J., the owner, with my 1962 Vietnam drivers license. His little restaurant makes the best Cha Gio I have eaten thus far in Vietnam. I met a very unusual Dutchman at T.J’s place. Arjen IJff. He grew up on a farm in the Beemster. He was born in January ’75 from a Vietnamese or Chinese mother and an American father and left at an orphanage in Vinh Long, in the Mekong delta. The Dutch ambassador’s wife, Mrs. van Rooijen rescued several hundred orphans and flew him in a plane load of other orphans to Holland just before the fall of Saigon, in April 1975. He was then adopted at three months old by the IJff couple. He is seriously searching for any information on his birth parents. I enjoyed his company very much and we will be sure to see each other again in Amsterdam. He has his own graphic design business in Amsterdam www.vuongdesign.nl        

The Cham Towers were lit up tonight and this is one of the photos I took: