Viet Nam, my motherland ...

My wife and I have had such a beautiful loving relationship with Viet Nam, our motherland, specially Sai Gon where I grew up. My parents left their own birth place in Ha Noi and moved to Sai Gon fifty some years ago. I was born in district number three, in the center of the old Sai Gon. The returning to the land of my birth is and will be always exited me. Something about it always draws me back years after years, even though the similarities of the places where I was born and growing up, has changed so drastically in the last twenty thirty years or so. The population has been exploded exponentially as well. The city has been packed tighter and tighter with more and more people. The outskirt lands are shrinking every day. The buildings are getting taller and taller. The traffics are getting worse and worse. It's very suffocating in the mean time, let alone the growth and expanding of the next ten years.

The old neighborhoods were all gone now, to be replaced with bigger and taller buildings. The main mean of transportation in the city now is motorbikes. You'll see them everywhere. It seems like there are more bikes than people. There are more than eight million motorbikes in Sai Gon and its suburb alone in the latest estimate.

I always get pretty worked up when we prepare for our trip back home. For days, I would be walking around dreaming and planning what we are going to do on our trip in my head. I draw a very detail plan where to go, who to visit and for how long. When it gets closer to the day, I would become emotional over every little we pack. Sometimes, I awake in the middle of the night, and it would take hours before I could fall back to sleep again. The thought of coming back home overwhelm me days and nights.

Every trip we set out to visit at least three big cities and a few small ones of the country. At first, we started out with those famous ocean resort like Vung Tau, Mui Ne, Nha Trang ... etc ... Later trips, we started to visit those inland areas from the very Southern tip of Viet Nam like Ca Mau, Ha Tien, and Rach Gia. Then we worked our way all the way to the Central, then to the Northern tip of Viet Nam. We had a chance to explore more and more of those less famous, and far away locations. Some of the famous and beautiful places like Ha Long Bay, and Hue, we visited twice. This year we already have had a plan for a third visit of Ha Long Bay. This is the most beautiful place on earth. Word is not doing justice in describing it. Same thing with the pictures taken from camera, because you can only see what the photographers see through their limited camera lenses. You want to know, then you have to go there at least once in your life time.

Twenty one years of my life growing up in Viet Nam, I only know very limited number of towns and cities beside Saigon. We did not have that kind of money for it. I did not know how beautiful my country is. Once I set my feet back in Sai Gon, I only need a couple days to recharge, after that we are on our journeys for a long stretch at a time. We only get back to our home for a day or two to get ready back on the road again.

Thirty day vacation seems to be a very long time, but it would never be long enough for me. This year, we plan to visit Ha Noi, Ha Long Bay, Sapa, Hue, Hoi An, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, then China, and Bangkok. If we have a few days in between, we may have a chance to visit Can Tho again.