Happy New Year.

This is Bong Mai. Literal translation is "flower of tomorrow". These flowers bloom during New Year. The Viet people believes these flowers bring luck and prosperity to the coming year. Western culture associates evergreen trees with Christmas; bong mai trees are ours tradition for the New Year. Best wishes to all of you in the coming year. Chuc Mung Nam Moi.

There was a lot of fighting around the area where the school is built. My aunt’s husband lost his leg here. He showed me the exact location where he was hit, just a few hundred yards from the main road. I talk about the war during my concerts. I experienced it during my childhood. It’s still rather eerie to hear about the war from another person and to connect my memories and reality together.

The local government gave the VSF the land on which the school is built. I didn’t know this from my previous visit, but on this trip I found out the school is built on an old American army base. There’s no trace of war here, just stories and memories. Soon they too will blend into each smile, each blade of rice plant, each flower, each day.

How befitting is it to build a school on top of an old army base? Viet Nam is constantly changing. It has been 30years, and for the first time I can feel it, deep in this heart of mine.

It’s hard to explain to Caitlin, Luke, and Jason that rice patties and fruit trees surrounded my home. Just a stone throw away were fields of salt. The endless skyline had been filled with houses, hotels, and Café’ bars. Luke said, “I thought you told me you came from a small town? Phan Thiet is about the size of Salem, Oregon.” The sleepy coastal town of Phan Thiet had double and triple in population after the war. It still retain a certain kind of small city charm about it. It’ll never turn into Saigon; I hope.

The next day we went to see the school. It’s so much better than I’ve seen it in the photos. I was so emotional I couldn’t even talk. So proud. So proud. I really like Caitlin’s blog about the school. You can go into the archive and read about it.

It was sooooooo wonderful to see the children. A friend of mine told me of a phrase he learned “It’s not matter how many breath you take. It’s the moments that take your breath away that count. This is definitely one of those moments. I just want to curl up somewhere and cry like a child.

This song by Trinh Cong Son, my favorite Viet composer, keeps ringing in my head the whole time I was in VN. What a simple concept, each day just choose one reason that'd make you happy. You know you get it right when you realize you choose the same reason day after day.

I'm sorry I do not have a recording of this song at this time. I'll record it next year on my new CD.



Each Day I Choose a Reason to be Happy TCS

Each day I choose a reason to be happy
I select each flower and each smile
I catch the wind for you to embrace
The joy in your eyes flickers like falling leaves

Each day I choose the road I’m on
It leads me to family and friends
I wait to hear your familiar footsteps returning home
Crossing a carpet of yellow tamarind leaves

And that is why I am happy each day
And that is why at this point in life
I cherish life, with this heart of mine

Each day I choose a reason to be happy
With my brothers and sisters we seek out others
I choose a place for us to sing
And let our laughter playfully flies

And that is why I am happy each day
And that is why at this point in life
I cherish life, with this heart of mine

Each day I give myself one choice
I choose a lullaby to greet my child’s birth
I choose the sunny sky, choose the approaching rain
And let the rice plants rejoice like waving hands

And that is why I am happy each day
And that is why at this point in life
I cherish life, with this heart of mine

Each day I choose to sit in quiet solitude
To clearly see the motherland and reflect upon myself
I came to realized, why I live
Because my country needs a heart like mine

And that is why I am happy each day
And that is why at this point in life
I cherish life, with this heart of mine

The group went to meet anh Duy the next morning. He’s a doctor in Saigon. The Taxi ride to his house was quite interesting. The driver had to ask for directions several times before we found the house. The house was tucked in an alley and the house number was so odd, it was hard to find. Anh Duy was very nice and gracious. He had a group that he started in VN to help donate books to children across Viet Nam. Anh Duy agreed to donate two closets full of books to two of the schools that the VSF is working with.After meeting anh Duy, we rented a Taxi to take us to Da Lat. We traveled with my cousin Minh and her friend Hong.Da Lat is pleasantly cool because it’s 1,500m above sea level. The city is on a hillside. This region grows vegetables, tobacco, tea, sugarcane, coffee, flowers, strawberries, persimmons, bong Mai, and mulberries for the silkworms. There’s a large lake in the middle of the city. The workers are working to expand the city park.We took cable cars to the top of the mountain to see a beautiful garden and pagoda. There were lots of tourists there. By now I was so looking forward to see the kids that I was not enjoying Da Lat as much as I should. This place supposedly is very romantic. Couples come here for its atmospheric beauty.We stayed in Da Lat for only one night. The next day we rented a Taxi to go to Phan Thiet. The ride down the hill was beyond crazy. The road was so narrow, filled with potholes and steeped. I think a few of us got a bit of car sick from the ride.Seemed like we paid for a four hours amusement ride. We got to Phan Thiet late that afternoon. It was great for me to see the familiar landscape and city streets. Finally, I was home.

The next day we went on an even smaller boat to tour the river. The tour group was smaller because half of the people choose to take the one-day tour. The smaller boat tour took us into smaller inlets of the river. We went to a banh trang, rice paper, factory, and a rice factory. Factory is too big of a word to describe these operations. They’re more like operations in the back of people’s homes. Once again, the scenery was just breath taking.

It’s hard to go down the Mekong River and not to think of the movie “Apocalypse Now”. It’s insane to think the soldiers took special mission trips up and down the river inlets. Both sides of the river are just jungles. You feel like sitting ducks. What a deathtrap.

Right after lunch the family that hosted us sang Cai Luong (Vietnamese traditional songs and the style in which it’s played). It was great. It’s so rare any more to see people perform in traditional instruments. The new Viet music is a bad mix of disco, rumba, techno and new wave. All the singers sound alike, male or female. We heard this contemporary music blasting everywhere we went. After two weeks, all of us were ready to smash a few speakers in Viet Nam.


The tour was fun. It kept us busy all day long with sight seeing and stops along the way. We went to the candy factory, then to a rice cakes factory. Several of us tasted the alcohol soaked in cobras and scorpions. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. The tour was very well organized, very impressive for Vietnamese standard.

We got to the city of Can Tho by 5:30pm that day. It’s weird that it’s only 5:30 in the afternoon because it seemed like it had been such a long day. We’d done so much already.

After a short break we rented a couple of motorbikes with trailers to take us to a barge on the river for dinner. We never made it to the boat. As soon as we got to downtown Can Tho, the soccer game between Viet Nam and Philippines was over; Viet Nam won. The local took to the streets with flags, banners, horns etc…. in celebration. Jason and I left the motorbikes and walked to film the event. I’ve never seen anything like this before. The crowd was so wild. They hammed it up to the camera. Jason and I started to lead cheers and the crowd got into it. We literally stopped traffic. At one point, the people picked up Jason and tossed him up and down. Jason’s a giant compares to these guys. I lost my voice for at least a week from yelling. It was so much fun.

Jason visits the mannequins at Cu Chi.

Nhan: dragon eyes

I was on the second deck looking down at the motocycles on the main fairy deck. Any other fairy rides in America, all I'll see are cars.

I don't know the name of this flower. Sorry. I like the photo though.

An alcoholic drink.

Caitlin sipping on tea at the end of the Cu Chi Tunnel tour

Skinny Luke got down a small secret entrance at Cu Chi Tunnel.

Sideview of the Temple

The next two days of our trip were spent on the Mekong River. We met Cousin U?n at the tourist station and boarded a bus to our destination. Long bus ride, the tour guild was very informative about Vietnam’s culture and facts about the river. The countryside scenery was so beautiful and peaceful. Many lotus ponds dotted the landscape.

As soon as we get to the river we all know this will be no ordinary trip. Houses were built on the river edge. So much life here. You don’t want to blink an eye incase you might miss something. Everywhere you turn there’s an award-winning photo to be taken. The lighting was a bit harsh on the digital Nikon cameras Luke and I used, but we managed to get a few good photos.

I was blown away by the abundant of drooping Nhan trees along the river edge. Nhan is a tropical fruit; the literal translation means dragon eyes. We also call these fruit lychees in the US. These fruit trees brought back so many memories for me. My grandmother used to surround our house with these trees. During the season when the Nhan ripens the fruit gave off such strong intoxicating scented perfume like fragrant. Cultivators found a way to make the nhan tree not seasonal but to fruit all year round. Somewhere along the way the nhan fruit seems to lose its fragrant. It had been so many years since I ate ripen nhan from a tree. They were soooooooo good. U?n, Luke and I had fun spitting nhan seeds at each other. Caitlin and Jason were just chilling in the hammocks under the shades of these trees.

Two weeks went by like a whirl wind. I wanted to blog every day, but that was much harder than I anticipated. The internet connection was so slow. I tried several times to get connected, but failed.

I seemed I tried to live a whole year in two weeks in Viet Nam. Hardly sleep. Crazy.

Jason and I went two nights without sleeping on our 13 days trip. We had many great talks, half of which neither one of us could remember because we were so exhausted. I caught up on my sleep by sleeping the whole plane ride back, awoke just enough to eat lousy United Airlines meals.

Boarded the plane November 21st
On the plane ride we met Herbie Hancock and his band, great people.
We were all so excited that we finally got to go to VN.
Landed about 10:30pm at Tan Son Nhat Airport. Didn’t see any family members, they thought I was coming the next day. My cousins met us at the airport shortly after I called and we went to their house. We left all our big suitcases there and went to our hotel.



The next morning we got up very early and went to Sinh Café to get our tickets to go to Cu Chi Tunnel.

The first part of the tour we visited the Cao Dai Temple. We saw their worship service. Very cool. Cao Dai is a religion based on the combination of several religious teachings.

Had the first Vietnamese meal at lunch.

Went to Cu Chi Tunnel. Cu Chi Tunnel was the last stop of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Very crafty tunnel system that helped the North won the war. For each one of us, at different times during the tour, it no longer became a tourist attraction. Seeing a disable American tank, bomb craters, human traps, bombs, guns, made us realized how far removed we’ve been from this war. Sad.

I sat next to Luke on the bus trip back to the Hotel. Luke was born 5 years after the Viet Nam war ended. It was interesting to see how the visit to Cu Chi Tunnel affected him. I’ve talked to handful of close friends in the US about the war. It was the first time for me to share it with people I care about, Caitlin, Jason, and Luke, in person. I can understand why American Vets don’t want to share their stories. You feel so empty to have to be so vulnerable. Although people do care, their blank faces send you further into the abyss of loneliness.

Today was different. I didn’t have to share my personal story and yet I feel a warm band-aid over my wounded heart.