Happy Lunar New Year!

 I write this on the 3rd day of the Lunar New Year (also known as Tet) and most of our city is still on holiday.  The streets are quieter and many businesses are closed since many people spend time with family, often traveling into the countryside to do so.  Tet is a big celebration in Vietnam!  

 Our final Friday of first semester we were invited to watch the show put on by students as well as some of the staff.  Some instructors were presented with certificates for their years of teaching, and there were other presentations.  And many, many dances put on by different departments and students in different ethnic costumes.  The dragon dance was pretty remarkable.  The event lasted over 3 hours!  Then we were treated to a fancy lunch by the university.

The next day, our students invited us to a lunch organized by the 3rd year class representative, Cat Tuong.  All 3 classes of students were invited and the faculty, but we were the only ones able to attend.  The students graciously allowed us to bring along our visiting friends from Traverse City, Tim and Sue.  We were happy they could meet our bright students and speak with them a bit since the students can speak English.

Cat Tuong and Thien, also in the 3rd year class

Cat Tuong and Thien made up a quiz for the students (with prizes for the 2 top winners!) and we were the topic. It was very funny.  One of the questions was:  "What is Dr. Robert's other job besides optometry?"  One of the guesses was "being Dr. Kimberly's husband!"  But the answer was "pilot," because he has told them flying planes is one of his hobbies.  After lunch the 3rd years asked us to go to karaoke with them, a few doors down the road.  Our first karaoke experience!!  It was a lot of fun.  At first I said no way would I sing, envisioning the American way of being on stage and everyone watching you.  The Vietnamese way is so much better!  We rented a karaoke room for about $4 an hour; 2 microphones were on the table so we could sing 2 by 2.  Much less intimidating than singing by yourself on a stage!  An attendant came in and took a drink order (but ordering is not required) and we sang along to Vietnamese songs and also chose some Elton John and Beatles for our part. 

Around the karaoke table!

The karaoke setup.  Lots of songs to choose from.

The next day we began being tourists with Tim and Sue.  We booked a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which are still in HCMC but WAAAAAY out of "town."  The bus ride was supposed to be 90 minutes but was more like 3 hours because of a massive traffic jam getting out of the city.  But, the tunnels were interesting.They are part of a larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country and were of great importance to the Viet Cong in their resistance to American forces during the Vietnam War.

Display of a booby-trapped
tunnel

Sue, in the 100 meter tunnel
tourists could traverse .  It's really hard
to walk that far in a squat, and in
an airless tunnel!

The bus ride home was much better, and we could start preparing for our early morning flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia (only 50 minutes) to see Angkor Wat and other temples.  I did already post some of my favorite photos on 2 different facebook posts, but here are some more of my favorites.  The scale of the temples is amazing. One of them was dedicated in the year 953 AD!  Most of them were built in the 12th century.  Here's a nerd fact I learned:  The entire city of Angkor used up far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids combined, and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris.  The pyramids used limestone quarried 1/3 mile away, but the city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 25 miles to the northeast.  That's a lot of elephant labor!

Elephant rides into the temple area (we used a tuk tuk with a friendly driver Lun).

Trees growing over ancient temples

Angkor Wat, the "big" temple.  (wat means Buddhist temple)

The day before we hit the temples we went through the Angkor National Museum and learned a bit about Buddhist and Hindu mythology.  Fascinating stories, although they seem to change as different groups adopted the story.  It got a bit confusing!  I'm happy I don't need to keep all those gods and goddesses straight.

The detail and stone carving is
breath-taking.

Bob and Tim outside the temple Pre Rup

Narrow steep steps with no railings to climb up

 We did get "templed out" with the heat and climbing but could spend time in the night market or at our hotel pool to relax.  Thursday evening we headed back to HCMC ready to experience a bit of the Lunar New Year's Eve on Friday Jan. 27.  We took the bus to a "walking street" (Nguyen Hue) here which is called "Flower Street" for Tet. Over 100 kinds of flowers are displayed, as well as several chicken/rooster displays since 2017 is the year of the rooster.

Entrance to Nguyen Hue, the "Flower Street."

A lot of pretty Vietnamese girls were there in mostly red ceremonial dress along with photographers to take their posed photos.

In the plaza is a fountain, just like
Charlevoix's! It sprays off then quits
for awhile.

Children (and their moms) were loving
cooling off in the fountain.

Lunar New Year's Day I could hear a big noise from the road so took this picture of a parade out my window on the 18th floor.  A dragon parade with lots of drums!

The Tet tree in our apartment lobby,
replacing the Christmas tree of a couple
of weeks ago.

Stop sign in Cambodian.  The Khmer
script is so pretty, influenced by Sanskrit.

 That's enough for this blog!  Tim and Sue are back in Traverse city after a 4 hour flight, 4 hour layover in Shanghai, and a 14 hour flight to O'Hare in Chicago.  They arrived home the same day they left (local day/ time of course), amazing!  It was so nice to have Americans to share some of the interesting cultural differences with for a week.  Now we have all week still on Tet holiday before beginning Semester 2 back at our university.  We'll use the time relaxing, preparing, and seeing the city on our motorbike, still a novelty to us!  

Thanks again for following our Vietnam Adventure.  It's almost February; time is flying along!