Dear All,
Jeff and I are having a good time and I think he is enjoying all the fun with the team. Binh seems relaxed and Raina is doing a great job with organization etc. As far as I know no one complained about the hotel in Viet Tri, which was a real test of the groups flexibility. The electric for the entire city went out for the whole day on Saturday (the day some of us went to the orphanage where Katie lived). The hotel food was OK, but not great. Mr P, the new director of the orphanage, took us all out to a nice place to eat on Saturday night. He has replaced Twit (the witch) and is a really great man. Interestingly enough, he is a Christian who was appointed by the comrades.
Yesterday morning, Sunday, we did a medical clinic at the Orphanage in Viet Tri. It was an easy one with only 110 kids and adults, but it was a great clinic for the team to start with. It went smooth and the team is working well together including the organization and repacking of the meds etc. Binh and Raina have worked out an organizational structure that has make it twice as fast and easy as before. We had all the medical bins organized in less than three hours.
After the clinic we loaded the bins (about 25) and our suit cases on a truck and "No Yo" and a driver left for Sapa. It is a long drive over some steep mountain roads, but it saved us the hassle of getting them on the train without any security to watch over them in transit. We left Viet Tri at 5:00 pm and arrived at the train station at about 7:00. We ate dinner in a fast food restaurant in the train station and then boarded the sleeper car after walking around other trains etc. Always an adventure! Our train was called the "Orient Express". It was a much improved ride from the last time I made the journey to Sapa. Even the rest room was clean and mostly odor free! What will they think of next! They must have greased the wheels etc. because it didn't even squeak around the turns like the one we had last time. All this to say that I slept most of the night. Binh and the girls had a great party laughing and carrying on wearing some comical animal masks that someone brought along to give to the kids. They even shared some of their wine with us.
We arrived in Sapa at 7 am and had two small buses waiting for us. We stopped to take pictures of each other on the border of China. Then the beautiful ride up into the mountains to Sapa. Everything is so green. The rice and garden terraces cascade down the mountain sides with the farm people working with their hoe and wearing their colorful ethnic clothing. We passed in and out of clouds as we climbed higher and higher. It is truly a beautiful place to visit. As always there are many tourists here.
Our hotel is nice. All our rooms have a balcony overlooking the mountains with the rice terraces and little farm homes. It reminds me of Switzerland. We enjoyed a great breakfast with dozens of things to choose from. The hotel staff would cook eggs, pancakes, omelets, Pho, etc. After breakfast we went for a walk around town. Of course we had plenty women in their colorful ethnic dress wanting to sell us their handicrafts. It is fun to watch our team members trying to be polite only to encourage more and more ladies saying, "you buy from me, I give you good price". The main market was complete with all the smells and interesting cuts of meat, fish, and other things I didn't recognize. Of course there are dozens and dozens of shops, restaurants, and beautiful small hotels with colorful French architecture. Many of them are quite new and others are wonderful older buildings with more ethnic style. Over all this area is much cleaner than Hanoi.
I am typing this from the hotel lobby where they furnish two nice computers for guests to use free of charge. In fact the hotel manager has offered to treat our whole team (28) to dinner tonight.
Tomorrow we have a clinic for the ethnic boarding school, and the next day to a mountain village new to us.
Some folks want to use the computer, so must close for now.
Jim
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