The rest of Vietnam

 

       I didn’t mention it before but the place we wanted to get to in Vietnam was a place called Dong Tau.  If you google map it (Dong Tau, Vietnam) then you’ll see it (“it” being a road and some green stuff and not much else) on the map near a small town called Yen Cat.  The next biggest city near it is Thanh Hoa city in Thanh Hoa province.  This is where we spent most of our time and is the place I have been writing about.  We wanted to use it as a launching point to get to Dong Tau because we weren’t really sure how to get there.  We asked a few of the people we met what the best way would be, but none of them had ever heard of the place, so we resorted to getting to a national park that is close by called Ben En.

 

       We were told that city bus 16 would take us there.  It was Tracy and I’s job to find out how close that bus would get us, so without knowing any other way to do it, we just got on the bus and rode it out as long as we could.  For over an hour we rode through some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve seen.  Huge mountians that jutt out of flat ground tower over arguably the largest rice fields in the world. (Vietnam is one of the largest exporters of rice). We made it to Ben En and it is a very beautiful place that’s, what I’ve read, home to a large number of rare plants and animals; but we are still no closer to Dong Tau than when we started.  No one on the bus knew what we were talking about and our suspision starts to set in on why it is that this place is seemingly unheard of.

 

 

       Back at the hotel everyone else has done there part on working toward us getting to Dong Tau.  Looking at google maps and finding out how far the bus had gotten us, we found that we could get as close as around 12kl.  We make a group decesion and decided to hike it.  So we took the next day to rest and packed our small day backs with some food, a change of clothes, a sleeping bag, and a tent.  The next morning we headed out early, rode the bus as far as we could, then started walking.  I don’t remember how far we got before we ran into a guy who spoke English.  We told him where we were trying to go and no surprise he had never heard of it.  He understoood though, that we were heading in that direction no matter what, so he told us about a bus we could catch.  We got on a bus to Yen Cat, which is past Dong Tau but much closer then where we were.  So only about a 3kl walk around the corner and we were in Dong Tau; or at least standing in the place where on the map Dong Tau is written.

 

 

 

       We had always been, but espeacially now, were being open to the endless invitations to go and sit and have tea and eat something we had never seen before.  We did our best to live out Luke 10.  Not knowing what we were supposed to do or why the Lord had brought us to this place we kept our eyes open for opportunities and looked for a place to set up camp.

 

       In one of the first houses we stopped in was a boy who spoke very little English, but English non-the-less.  We spoke with him for a little while and tried to communicate that we were looking for a place to stay, he didn’t get it.  We moved on down the road but only about two houses down before we were stopped again by a lady and her husband.   A few people went ahead around a corner of another road while me and someone else waited and did our best to talk with the lady.  A few minuets later they came back around and waved us over.  We turned the corner and found a school with a field in front and a house next to it.  We had been invited in the house and they told us we could set up our tents to stay the night.  So we did and before we knew it maybe half the town had come to see us.  We started a game of soccer and some of the girls threw the frisbee while others sat around and tried to make conversation with the few people (maybe 2) that spoke little English.   All that day we talked and shared with those people as best we could why it is we had come there; a very popular question throughout our month, but a good one, an open door.

 

 

       There were over 50 people that had come out that day,including a police officer who told us we couldn’t camp.  Through one of our friends on the phone that we had met in Ho Chi Minh, we communicated with the police man.  He was either telling us that we had to leave and follow him to a hotel or to the police station, it was never translated clearly.  All the people there were trying there best to get the man to let us stay but to no avail. We packed our things and our new friends gave us a free ride back into Yen Cat were we fortunately followed the police man to a hotel.

 

       The next day we packed our things and walked back to the school where we had been the day before, but before we were invited into the house of the lady and her husband whom we met in the street.  Their daughter, son, and friends were some of the people we had met at the school.  We sat with them for a few hours and ate and drank tea and used a Vietnamese to English dictionary to communicate.  The boy who spoke a little English was there.  He invited us to his house for dinner that night and to spend the night.  So we hung around for the day and spent the night at his house.

 

       The next morning one of our girls was feeling sick, probably because of some of the food we ate the night before.  We had planned on walking a bit farther down the road so we split and a few girls headed back.  The rest of us walked for a few more hours to another town.  We weren’t sure what to do, we weren’t being recieved as well so we dicded to find a bus back.  

 

 

 *Njoc (Bjn) and Lien

 

       For the rest of our time we stayed in Thanh Hoa city.  We had another week before catching a train to Ha Noi only to get on a plain and meet back up with the rest of our squad in Bangkok, then to Central America.  For me, this last week was better than the first.  Our girls, had again, met two other girls at this restraunt.  They invited us to there house the next day.  Bjn (pronounced bean, a nickname) and Lien took us to the market and we bought food to cook for lunch.  We made it to Liens house which had a western kitchen, the first of the likes Id seen in in 5 months.  We made lunch and spent the day together.  The next day they invited us to come to their class.  We all went to thier school and spoke infront of their class.  For the rest of our week we spent time hanging out with Bjn, Lien and their friends.  We played basketball at the school among other things.  We also gave out flowers and free hugs to random people for a few days and on Valintines day.

 

 

 

 

Vietnam was great.

 

The best we could find out, Dong Tau was the name of a town back when the French had colonized Vietnam.  Some how the nam of that town still exist on the map, but is unkown to most people in Vietnam.