Farewell to Viet Nam

 On our last night in Viet Nam as a group our tour leader, Phi, arranged for us to go to a Water Puppet show. It's apparently a traditional theatrical style unique to Viet Nam.  The show itself was interesting, but the experience was kind of bizarre because of all the activity in the audience.  We were in the very back row, so could see everything going on down below.  There was a large group sitting in the middle that kept standing and sitting and trading places with each other, and finally got up and left en masse.  There was another group that apparently had a medical emergency with one of their members, because there was a sudden gasp, then about 8-12 people got up and rushed to the side, looking down below.  I was concerned that something might be happening in the theater, but it was contained to their group. 

So then that group was gone.  And the people sitting directly in front of us seemed to think they were at a coffee shop and talked all the way through it.  Since I’ve never seen a water puppet show before, I didn’t know if that was a normal thing or if we just happened to hit a particularly lively evening.  The music was great, though, and the puppet stories were interesting.  Afterward, Phi explained the mythology which put a lot of what we had seen in perspective.

 After the show, we went to dinner at a restaurant our guide recommended.  Like so many other meals I’ve had at tour guide recommended places, the quality was been hit and miss (the best food really is to be found with the street vendors and little restaurants packed with Vietnamese locals).  We ordered the special Hanoi spring rolls, which are shaped into triangles instead of rolls, and fried.  They were quite good.  Jeff ordered the Bun Cha, which came as a plate of grilled meat on compression skewers, cooked noodles, bean sprouts and fresh mint with a small bowl of sauce on the side and two small empty bowls for eating out of. You build your bowl as you go, mixing up the meat to veggie ratio as you desire.  That, too, was quite good.  By the time our plate of fried rice arrived, we were full and could have done without it.  It’s just as well it arrived last, because it was the disappointing dish of the night.  I’m glad we hadn’t filled up on it before getting our other food.

From dinner, we went back to our hotel for a quick drink.  Jeff had picked up a bottle of Vodka Hanoi and some mixers, so we all stood in the lobby and had a toast to Gary, for his service and in honor of his trip, and as a final farewell with a leave-taking much different from the last time he was here.  There were hugs all around, then we went out for our last beers together.

This has been a good group with whom to travel.  The age range has been good, and we’ve all made friends and promises to visit one another, in England and Australia and Minnesota and other parts of the world.  Some in our assembly are heading straight home (wherever that may be), and others still have weeks or months left to go, with many more places to see.  What we all have in common, whatever our age, is a curiosity of the world and a young heart. 

Members of the group enjoyed hearing Gary's first-hand perspective of his service in Viet Nam

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