Friday, 27th of August 2010
At 6:30 Nathan said he would pick us up. 6:27 the phone rings … where are you??? On our way Uli replied, just on the to the lift. No breakky – I do not function.
At 8 we stopped at a nice place to have some breakfast. Only noodles and soup, no baguette. What!!! In VINA and no baguette!!! We left. Christine, a family friend of Nathan who joined us for the ride is from Hong Kong, and she does not have noodles or soup for breakky either.
Helpful driver found a place. A cut of Lipton tea, baguette and some fried eggs. Yessss!!!
Then into town to pick up Father Duong. After one and a half hours we branched into a narrow road, small bridges and not much traffic.
In some places people were drying their rice on the road.
Father Duong earlier mentioned that we will go on a ferry. What ferry ???
Soon the road ended, but no ferry. We all got out of the car and grabbed our bags. A small long boat, not very wide was our ferry. Hard to get into, but easy to fall out!!!
Trip took about 10 – 15 minutes to a remote area, which can only be accessed by boat. We are in the Mekong delta after all!!!
We stopped right in front of the church. Father Long helped us to disembark. The children were already waiting. We had a short meeting and then wanted to take pictures of the children and give them our presents.
They just had their lunch, so we handed over the cloths Annette Harper has given us for the children.
We established an order and took pictures and Uli handed out the presents.
Smiles all round, and then we had lunch. Very nice, they had quails for us. We preferred chicken and noodles, nice fruit and even steamed Chuoi, pronounced tschoii = bananas. When we pronounced it sounded like Choi – which is broomstick!!!
All the paperwork was in excellent order and we agreed to support the 20 children through the Saigon Times Foundation.
Back in the boat, back in the car and at 4:15 we were back home. Most of us had a nap or two in the way back to Saigon. We said our “Good byes” to Nathan and Christine.
Matt downloaded the pictures and photographed the profiles so we do not need to carry the paper and pictures home. Later on went out for dinner with Tam.
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