Welcome to Vietnam, may I take your money?

We just finished our first day in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC - formerly Saigon). It's a nice enough city, fairly typical of other large cities in developing countries. A few interesting facts about HCMC:

• It's hot! Let me repeat that. HCMC is HOT! We went through our water very quickly. We each drank a coconut and probably a few liters of water each throughout the day. We sweat most of that out. By 2:00, we were exhausted and overheated, so we came back to the hotel for a shower and nap.
• Moving from one place to another can be hazardous to your health. Take, for example, walking around the city. Sidewalks are for pedestrians. They are also for street-restaurants with plastic chairs and tables. Also for various street vendors. They are also a great place to park your motorcycle. Turns out, they are also a great place to drive your motorcycle, especially when you want to go the wrong way on a one-way street. Trying to cross the street is even worse. There are crosswalks and stoplights, but we haven't figured out what they're for yet. The only way to cross the street is to just go for it, and hope the motorcycles avoid you. If you're lucky, they'll honk before they cut you off.
• People want your money. That's true everywhere in the world, but here, they are not afraid to ask for it. I suspect it's a factor of being in tourist areas and being obviously a tourist. We received several offers to polish our tennis shoes. We were offered lots of cheap trinkets and maps. We could have ridden in any number of cycle-rickshaws or on the back of motorcycles. We did not choose any of these.
• The people want to keep the city clean. Despite what you might expect from a large city like this, the streets were actually relatively clean. There were workers cleaning up in lots of places. There were gardeners in all the parks. Some of these were sweeping the lawn with long brushes of some sort. Never figured out why they were sweeping the lawn.
• The food is delicious, but often intimidating. It can be hard to find a place to eat, because many of the restaurants are a bit intimidating. Either they don't do menus or the building doesn't look like a place you want to eat. The smells make you hungry, and eventually you cave. We had a really good bowl of pho today. The fruits are exotic and delicious as well.

Pho. yum!

Today, we went to independence palace. It was  built in the 60s as the presidential residence for the recently formed Republic of Vietnam (south Vietnam). After the war, it was basically turned into a museum, and is occasionally used for state functions still. Much of it is still decorated in the original 60's modern style. There's a bomb shelter in the basement with a lot of the old equipment that was there during the war.

The cabinet room

Not sure what the official purpose of this room was. The guide called it "the most beautiful room." 

Gambling room. Pretty sure there isn't one of these in the White House.

Radio room.

Well, time to go to sleep now. 

We're in Vietnam!

We arrived in Vietnam safely last night after about 27 hours of travel time, 20 hours on airplanes. We got to our hotel at 11:30 pm local time, but I have no idea what time it is body time. We woke up before 5 am today. Hope we adjust soon.

More from Ho Chi Minh City later, after we've had some time to explore.

And we're off!

We're in the airport, waiting for our slightly delayed flight to Chicago. The lady at the counter told us it was delayed an hour, but the board at the gate says half an hour. Either way, we're prepping for a run across the airport at O'Hare.

We both packed light. Adam's suitcase weighed in at 33 lbs, and Emily's was 27. Lots of room for souvenirs. Our flights in the middle have a 44 lb limit, so that was our target. Thankfully, our destination is 90 degrees currently. There was still room for a repackaged Carcassonne in a tennis ball can.

It's a niece!

My brother Adam and his wife Courtney had a gender reveal party on Saturday. They gave the sealed ultrasound results to the baker who baked the gender color into the cake. My parents, her parents, and her grandparents were there to watch them cut the cake. It was pink!

Here's my cute little brother.

Pears and Butterflies

Well, summer is coming to a close. That means that we start to harvest and put away our produce for the year. This year we had the first fruit from our urban orchard. That's right, we got a pear!

Ok, it's not the prettiest pear you'll ever see. But it's the only pear we got this year. One pear tree blossomed, and the other did not. Somehow, one blossom got pollinated. Despite a very rough year with early thaw, late frost, a hot, dry summer and a brutal attack from pearleaf blister mites, our solitary pear survived! What you see in the photo above is the good side. The other side had some mite damage. The good news is, the mites don't really hurt the fruit other than cosmetic blemishes. After the requisite ripening period, we cut the pear in half and shared it. We both agreed that it was, hands down, the best pear we have eaten. It was pretty amazing.  Here's hoping next year is more productive.

This summer saw the planting of some new things in the yard, including our apricot tree. With that, our urban orchard now contains: pears, plums, cherries, apricots, blueberries, kiwi fruit, grapes, cranberries and raspberries. Throw in the garden produce, a patch of rhubarb and the odd morel or two, and we've got a pretty productive little quarter acre.

After UGM, Emily was ready for some time off, so we had a long weekend this past weekend. We went up to Wisconsin Dells to play mini golf at Pirate's Cove (we tied). After that, we had lunch at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty, followed by a trip on the Upper Dells boat tour. It was a good day.

On Saturday, Adam rode his bike to Devil's Lake with some friends. We took the long way to get there, hoping to stretch it to a metric century (100 km). Unfortunately, there were 20+ mph winds, complicating matters significantly, and slowing our pace to a crawl. We cut off the last 10 miles, making it to the park in 50 miles (80k) instead. Oh well. It was a nice ride with some good friends.

On Monday, we went to Olbrich Botanical Gardens. It was a great time of year to be there. There were a lot of late-summer plants blooming, and we caught a flock of cedar waxwings eating crabapples. We also saw a lot of butterflies. Some pictures of the butterflies are below:

It was a good weekend. It won't be long now before it's time to cover the hoophouse, plant the garlic, and pull the last of the green tomatoes off the vines. It's a sad time of year for a gardener, but it's just part of life. 

Crazy Tomato!

I've been negligent in documenting my garden this year. Needless to say, it has been a year of great learning for me. I'm just about finished with my Master Gardener certification and have been reading a wide variety of gardening books. I also drool over my Flower Factory catalogue on a regular basis. I already have my list started for next spring!

Our vegetable garden has been doing well this year, despite the drought. That's in great part to Adam's attentions to watering. Here's our biggest tomato for the year. The measurement (1.642) is in pounds. We ate this beautiful brandywine in bruschetta with fresh sourdough bread from Clausen's and garlic and basil from our garden.

Front yard: before and after

I never did post pictures of how the front yard turned out. It really took all summer to kill everything, dig up the sod, till it, level it, put in the edging bricks, plant perennials, put in mulch, and plant grass. I can't wait for spring to see if everything comes back and how much it will grow.

Here's the front yard when we bought the house in 2008. Note the size of the baby cedar tree we are standing in front of. The landscaping consisted entirely of yew and juniper bushes.

 Here's what it looked like in October 2011 complete with sitting area (yes, I painted the chairs myself) and new, soft grass. The tree is now taller than the roof line. That's one of our 2 pear trees in the foreground. We're really hoping for pears in 2012.

 Here's the half of the yard that we don't have to mow anymore. Everything looks small now, but give it a few years and it should fill in nicely.