Day 9 by Don	Day 1-2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, Back Home
	Today was a good day, very easy, but as all of our days, it was very long.  After Terry says we should all do Mt.  Kilimanjaro together in lieu of racing, we head back the Hoi An vocational school and finishing up the painting of the fence where the locals did not get to finished.  Kilimanjaro is over 20K' in height!!! In the taxi, we all talk about it.  It would be fun to for the three of us and Deb and Dave and Terry's brother and go hike it.  S#$%, it's over 20,000 feet in height!  I hate climbing.  My friends hate me! It would be fun!
	Lihn and I have to go to the bank to transfer some funds to the gentleman who we purchased the extra terminals, keyboards, and mouse from.  Lihn went with me and allowed me to drive both of us on her motor bike through the Vietnamese traffic.
	If you have ever seen traffic in Vietnam, you will see traffic without any rules, yet constant communication between everyone.  There really is a loose sense of right and left sides of roads.  There has been many times where we have driven home down a road at night that has a center divider, and have a motor bike traveling in the fast lane towards us...that's our side of the road's fast lane...without their head light on! There are few stop lights.  Everyone just weaves in and out amongst each other, honking all the time and in a sense, much more efficient than in the US! It has been many years since I have driven a motor bike, and I wasn't use to driving one without a clutch.  Back in the 'old days' of my biking experience, clutches were on all the bikes.  While I was driving to the bank, concentrating on down shifting with no clutch, I miss the bank and drive into another parking lot which Lihn thought was very funny.  I do master the art of honking at anything that moves within a radius of one mile! After the several weeks here, it will be very boring and mundane to have to sit in traffic with our big SUV's, lanes, traffic lights, speed limits, and people that don't understand that honking is a form of socializing.  I will miss it here as usual.
	Lihn is the helper from the Degenhart foundations that is offering us some help and she is just awesome, so much energy and so optimistic.  She smacks me on the arm because I forgot my glasses and she has to help me fill out the transaction at the bank.  She is always fun to be around.
	When we get back from the bank, Terry and Linda have most of the fence finished, a few minutes later and we are done! It is good since we all got so very dehydrated yesterday.  It was very hard day yesterday.  We are proud of our accomplishment, but know that in a couple of months, the fence will need painted again being in the harsh and humid Vietnamese environment.  I joke when we see any terms that we don't understand, such as the Vietnamese print on a shirt Linda is considering buying and say it says something like "You Fence is Rusting and Will Need Painting Again in 6 Months!!".  Our fence is the most beautiful fence in all of Southeast Asia!
	Deanna and Robyn decide to stay and help Karen out with the school projects while Terry, Linda and I head off into town for about an hour.  Karen is a school teacher from Hawaii, who comes for a month or so and helps out with the kids.  She is trying to help out with putting together a library of Vietnamese books, and also social nights such as Bingo to get the kids more active here.  She seems to really love it here.  She adopted a child from the Hoa Bihn orphanage twenty years ago, the same place where Sara is from.
	We head off to the tapestry 'factory' and learn how it is that they make silk.  We don't spend too much time as we have to get back by 11 to get Deanna and Robyn.  After we pick them up, it's time for everyone to do some real shopping for clothes and stuff.
	Linda is Terry and my fashion coordinator and we both buy several nice shirts.  Deanna, Robyn and Linda buy some dresses.  All of the clothes pretty much have to be tailored so it won't be until tomorrow that we can pick them up.  It starts to rain, so we head out to our normal lunch hangout over looking the river on the second story balcony.
	After lunch we head out to the Japanese Bridge of Hoi An.  Robyn and I buy some chop sticks.  Terry wants some pictures of a modern biker but can't get the person to come down in price.  I get to do what I like and get to negotiate for him and Linda and we get three of them.  It is during this time when it really starts to rain as Linda and I remembered it back several years in the jungles.  The streets are emptied.  My friend the wind is blowing madly though the streets of Hoi An!
	We do some more shopping and then head back to the tapestry factory.  Terry and Deanna buy some tapestries, and I have a hard time not buying one that is a street scene with shadows, but I am discipline and don't by any, especially after the one I purchased in Hue.
	Karen is putting on a social night, so Terry, Linda and I decide to stay in Hoi An for the event, and Deanna and Robyn head back to Danang to teach English at the 'Family House 1-5" that has the orphan children.  Since it is about 4:30 and the social night isn't until 7PM, the three of us walk the streets of Hoi An.  Since all of us are running out of money, we head off to the Vietcom Bank.  On the way back, Terry and I are now Linda's fashion coordinator! We talk her into going into one store and buying a jacket outfit.  Terry and I both can't believe that we can talk her into buying one as she is one that is completely REI in her wardrobe.  She looks as lost trying to decide what to buy as Terry and I were buying something nice for ourselves.  It's funny to see her this way, Linda who will walk through the dirt and mud with us through the jungle with leech infested rivers, now buying a night formal jacket.  It looks extremely nice on her.
	We try to pick up our clothes, but none of them are ready and we will have to pick them up tomorrow.
	We did find an awesome market completely of locals.  It seems like a market that you would find in Istanbul.  There is a narrow alley way, with the vendor's items for sale on each side.  Some vendors sit on their products, others on chairs amongst their wares.  There is many different types of tarps tied together that cover the walkway, and keep us somewhat dry from the rain.  Some parts of the path you have to squeeze through to get to another alley way.  People are selling pots and pans, clothes, hammers, anything you would need if you were to go to Safeway, Home Depot, etc in our country but on a smaller scale and more quaint.  After squeezing our way through the passageways, we come to an overhang looking out over a covered fish market.  As we walk between these people, I almost feel like Captain Picard as he walks though the Borg ship.  The locals look up at us, analyze without smiling, and then go back to their tasks at hand.  This is truly a local market in which they have no interest in selling to us, as we have no interest in buying.  There is squid, octopus, shrimp, and many types of fish.  Although the floors seem in a constant state of being washed down of fish parts, stepping in a puddle, it doesn't feel like it's all water.  The sights and sounds of the market will stay with me for many years.  You would never find this in the frozen fish section of Safeway.  Our culture is missing so much...
	We soon leave our discovery and are back to the land of the tourism of Hoi An.  The three of us walk down to our local hangout and get some dinner and ice cream.  It has been raining pretty much all day.  We watch the local boats carry way too many people with their motor bikes stacked on the cabins roof.  We wonder where they are all off to.  We wonder which way is north and south as every time we come into this city, it seems like it's from a different location.  The three of us agree that north is in three different locations.
	We head back to the Vocational Center to participate in Karen's coffee social.  She has put up flyers at the school to invite students to come and just sit around a table and to talk and practice their English.  About 20 children from the ages of 5 to 18 stop by and share candy, coffee and water with us around the table.  Linda and Terry enjoy talking with the kids.  After Lee encourages three of them to discuss with me, we head off to the computers and I show them my family on the web site.  The social lasted about 90 minutes and it seems like all the children enjoyed their time.  Karen is good at talking with the kids and she asks them questions such as where they would like to go visit if they could.  Most of the children mention places nearby such as Na Trang, Hanoi, Singapore, and Australia.  One kid mentions the statue of liberty, another mentions Hawaii.  They all look so polite, young, happy and innocent.  On the surface in which we can see, they seem like awesome kids.  Karen is a saint to organize this with children of a different culture, giving up her time, money, resources...I wonder about all of us in the US that would love to do this, but we never do, instead only drop $20 in the coffer each Sunday, yet this teacher from Hawaii does each year.  She is definitely a role model for all of us!
	After a long day, we head out back to our hotel.  It is 9PM and we have to be back by 9AM for our trip to My Son World Heritage Site.  It has been a blast to spend time with my friends that want me to struggle up +20,000 feet! It has been a good day with them.
	Day 1-2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, Back Home