Let's build history: Đại Nam (Bình Dương)

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Today we visited a really monumental building site. A really wealthy local Vietnamese in Binh Duong decided to set himself a historical landmark and has started to build a really giant sort of "theme park" of vietnamese history...

Sorry! We have to leave now for Nha Trang. The plane leaves in 2 hours...

Night out... at the "goat specialties restaurant"

Tonight it's my turn to have my night out... it's actually just some sort of "drinking out", which most of the men do here "traditionally" right after work ;-) referred to as "nhậu".

Driving there: this is about 9 pm on Saigon's streets....

This is how it looks like inside the "goat specialties restaurant". Apparently, we were ordering...

Driving back... well, each of us had about 3x0.5l bottles of "Golden Saigon Export" beer, so we fitted perfectly into the traffic flow ;-)

Some photos of what dishes we had...

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I think I could get use to that... Seems that people here tend to stick alot together in many senses. To see how my really caring cousin and his friend help out each other in so many things in every day´s life, what they do together is quite impressive. Of course, we do have our bonds with friends back there (Germany), but the people here really live it up to another level. Probably, once life is harder, you tend to stick more together...i guess. Or maybe it's just because they drink "Golden Saigon Export".

Life in Saigon...

The kids just discovered their new favorite "fruit" in Vietnam: sugar cane!!! They can eat loads of it. You can buy them ready to eat and packed in the fridge at the supermarket (or on the street, if you're brave enough). As said before, it's amazing how many different fruits, flavors you get here. They got to know them at the fruits festival, which I hope to get posted here soon... (provided a mini firewire cable.. can some one email me one ;-).

Yesterday evening, we had a picnic with old school friends of Nhu (also known as Lu Hoa)... of course with lots of kids as well. It was more sort of a banquet for around 30 people at the river side, so they all really enjoyed the breeze...






I'm planning to go to Vinh Long (Mekong Delta) with Nhimmy by bus and ferry, which is going to be a bit tough, but that's probably how around 80% of the people here travel, so she gets to know that major tough side of Vietnam as well. So I guess it's a better idea to put that at the end of our trip, in case it's too much for her.

Beach photos from Mũi Né...

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These are some of the beach photos from Mũi Né... found on another memory card ;-) We have been to a fruits festival today, but I havn't found a firewire cable to transfer the videos from the HDV camera :-(

Next days will be a lot of visiting relatives, organising sort of picnics with loads of people (20-30 depending on their availability...)

An-Nam On Tour...

I just accidentally found this tiny video fron An-Nam from the airport. Not really hidef, but funny to watch ;-)

Central post office... old & charming!

We had a relaxing day in the city: wandering around with the kids (stroller + buggy board, which wasn't always easy due to the road conditions), going to the central post office, which has been there since francophonia wasn't a matter of nostalgy... I think the kids got a bit tired as you can see... but Uncle Ho is looking after them ;-)




Saturday we should be leaving for an island Trip (Phu Quoc), but it seems that the weather condition isn't quite good (stormy, windy) so we will probably have to switch to Nha Trang ...

I'll try to get some more photographic impressions from Saigon to post here. It's amazingly busy all the time here, even at night time. Hardly any building site stops working during night time: weldering, hammering, carrying... everywhere!

Sorry... we went to the beach!

Sorry... we forgot to leave you a note about where we were going: Mui Ne is next to Phan Thiet, about 4 hours drive up north from Saigon ( more info: german, english ) and it was amazing. I just spent 2 hours putting images together so you guys can see how amazing it was. We only had a few days at the Terracotta resort, but the kids really loved ...... "the swimming pool" ;-(

Please do not forget to read the caption/comment below the photos, 'cause they took most of the time ( i didn't want to just upload the files and that's it ;-).


PS: In case someone's wondering... yes, there have been some complaints about german/english/vietnamese/serbo-croatian writing... so i decided to use "senglish" (simple english) so everyone can read (and I can also write;-). Hope you'll have fun watching the photos and please leave us some messages... 'cause we really love reading them, even though it makes us miss you guys a bit!

Love! Peace! and Rock'n'Roll! (...and God saves the german EM soccer team)
5xn