Aloha from Asia!! Sending Big Love across the miles!! ❤️

My second 30-day Visa is expiring at the end of this week so I must leave Vietnam in order to get my last Visa. Did a long weekend in Malaysia last month for that purpose so this time I’m heading to Chiang Mai, Thailand. It will be this Thurs-Mon and will include an overnight at an elephant sanctuary. I absolutely can’t wait for that!! You can bet your bippy that I’ll be posting after that trip. Admittedly, I’m still a bit annoyed that Vietnam makes us leave every 30 days but if that’s what it has to be, I’m going to make the best of it and set up some great excursions in the process. They’ve been promising to change the 30-day Visa to a 90-day Visa since last Feb before I even committed to this trip but they still haven’t done it. Honestly, it’s Vietnam’s loss because now I spend my travel dollars in a different country and they get fewer volunteer days than they would have if I could have stayed in this country my entire 3 months. Aka I’m certainly not going to fly to another country and just stay there 1 night so off I go to Thailand for 4 nights 😇

Jumping off the soapbox now and moving back to Tuesday Trivia as promised. Every day there are more and more interesting things that I want to share so just want to get caught up on a few of them.

Vietnam is known for its Street Food. There are many markets in the city where you can enjoy it. This one below is called The Ho Thi Ky Flower Market. It is in District 10 about 3 1/2 miles from us. Half of the market is filled with beautiful wholesale flowers and the other half of the market is Ho Chi Minh’s version of Quincy Market’s Food Court in Boston-you walk up and down the aisle purchasing a plethora of food options including Fried Squid Balls, BBQ mushrooms wrapped in thin beef and coconut ice cream served in a coconut shell where the fresh coconut is shaved from the inside of the bowl into the ice cream then topped with nuts and dried coconut.

Or if you prefer dining with your Furry Friends, there is a Cat Cafe about a 10-minute walk from the hospital where we work. Here you can have lunch with the 6 cats that live in the Cafe like Elena and I did today.

I am more of a dog lover for sure but I thought this was a fun way to get in an animal fix😻

Most every house, restaurant, business in Vietnam has an altar like this to honor their ancestors. I find it so interesting to see what is placed on these altars as offerings. This is the altar in my hotel restaurant.

Today there were oranges (yes they are green here) and coffee with incense burning. The gifts change every few days. I’ve seen beers, flowers and candies to date and look forward to discovering what else might appear there. But these red and gold altars always include at least one Buddha and some red lighting.

This past weekend I laid low since I just got back from that amazing motorcycle trip in the mountains and I’m heading to Thailand in a few days. Took a long walk on Sunday to Le Thi Rieng Cultural Park. It had a small Lake with lots of people fishing, an amusement park for young children, a pool and most importantly a bocce court with some men having some highly competitive matches.

I pulled up a chair to watch the Bocce matches, ohhhing and ahhhing at some great throws hoping desperately that someone would ask me to play. And finally, this man on the left who was practicing on Court 2 made the offer! We played two games and I think I might have scored four points total … he completely obliterated Me but it was really fun to be a part of this even if only in the warm up Court. These guys were amazing and were way out of my league!

The other great part of this low-key weekend was a wonderful Vietnamese massage. Sorry no pictures of that (😘) but I can assure you it was a full hour of AMAZING with herbal wraps over my eyes, warm stones on my back, the sounds of birds chirping, aromatic essential oils, soft music and full on AAAHHHHHH….. that is until the last 5 minutes when she made a ponytail on top of my head, pulled my hair moderately and then I heard 14 popping sounds on my Chi spot (acupressure energy spot) on the crown of my head – it felt and sounded like she plucked 14 hairs out of my head!! (I sure hope they were the gray ones). When the massage was over I tried to ask them what is the purpose of plucking hair from your scalp? Due to the language barrier, they did not understand my question. So I looked it up online later and quizzed our program staff on Monday morning. Turns out the masseuse did not pluck hairs out of my head, she did what is called scalp popping … this is when they tug pieces of your scalp away from your skull until it makes a little popping noise in order to help you further relax. Whaaaatttt? I WAS RELAXED until it felt like somebody pulled 14 hairs out of my scalp!!🤣🤣🤣

That’s all for tonight. We all know that 6am alarm rings gently or harshly depending upon what time we shut our eyes the night before. It was a nice Tuesday in Vietnam so sending it your way now for you to enjoy too. Be well mes amies💕