Good Morning Vietnam

This morning I woke up in Nam. Yesterday we went to Saigon for the day during our lay over. It was a cool place. It felt kind of weird though to take pictures in front of tanks that probably killed American soldiers. We went to the reunification palace, the Notre Dame of Saigon (10% of Vietnam is catholic), a chinese pagoda, and a hindu temple. I figured we hit a site for Atheists, Christians, Buddhists and Hindu. We only missed a mosque.It was quite strange as we were in the airport we watched a Vietnamese live version of the smurfs. It was quite funny even though we couldn't understand anything. Another funny thing is that waiting in line is not part of the Vietnamese culture. It was kind of funny and frustrating trying to get on the airplane:people in a huge group funneling through one by one as they took our tickets. People elbowing and "butting" in front of us (they didn't mean to be rude but it was hard for us.)We went to Danang last night and stayed in a hotel along the river. We took a taxi to the marbel mountain and saw these cool shrines that they had in the caves. In one cave, the incents would not float out and it looked ghost like.We then got to Hoi An where we are now. We ate lunch at this restaurant where this woman kept showing us how to eat our food, say thank you, feed us, and then washed our faces. She treated us like babies but it was very amusing. The food is amazing and it was all you could eat for $3. I of course over ate. We are going to the ruins of My Son tomorrow and to the beach. I also splurged and got custom made shoes for $15. I felt kind of weird as they measured my feet. I pick them up tomorrow. So we'll see if it was a good investment or not.Vietnam is a very interesting place. I feel guilty being an American even though they have no hard feelings on the outside towards us. But it is interesting to see men Dad's age and think that they were probably Viet Cong soldiers. This is my first time in a communist countries, but it seems like Vietnam is doing pretty well. I guess after Cambodia that most countries would seem more developed. We were discussing that it is probably weird for Dad and his generation that I would be here on vacation. It would be as if my kids ever went to Iraq! Crazy