Rotary Club 585 - Los Banos California

Tom and Sue Kaljian share their trip to Vietnam with Rotary
11/17/09

This week's Speakers were Tom & Sue Kaljian.
They showed slides and talked about their vacation in Vietnam & Cambodia.
* They visited Hanoi, where they saw:
HoChiMihn's house,
Museums,
Parks, a
Water Puppet Show,
enjoyed a private lecture by a local professor who thinks Vietnam is
changing & becoming Westernized or Modernized too fast and is losing its
culture.
Tom & Sue were impressed by the traffic, there were Vespas everywhere and you don't look before stepping into the street or you won't get anywhere. Tom just couldn't do this!, the outdoor/sidewalk markets, restaurants and every other kind of store you can think of.

They showed slides of a rent-a-tent wedding chapel, one and two men or
manpower pumps used to water the rice paddies. Vietnam is the world's
2nd largest exporter of rice.

The architecture was amazing, much of which is being restored. There
were faces carved everywhere.

The Post Office in Saigon was very beautiful and was designed by the
same architect that designed the Eiffel Tower.

They took a river trip on a Junk.
The inside of which was georgeous!
They visited caves, boats would float buy selling everything imagineable
They passed a town on the water - all of it. It's against the law for
them to build anything on the land.
They met up with and joined bicycling group as part of their tour. One
of the attractions they visited with the group was the Hanoi Hilton
prison camp.

Tom & Sue said that HoChiMihn City or Saigon as we now call it had many
more war museums and war memorials than anywhere else they visited.
They were also greatly impressed with the friendliness of the people
everywhere, especially the children.

Needless to say, they had a wonderful time and Tom said he'd be happy to
go back.

There was much more, but these were some of the highlights. I wish you
could have seen the slides. It's very interesting and beautiful country.

Meeting notes by S.P.