Three flight to get from Torremolinos, Spain to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Stops in Madrid and Dubai.

We spent a few days in Saigon before heading to visit friends along the Mekong River. This is the plaza in a shopping center near our hotel.

The biggest celebration of the year is Tet. The Vietnamese New Year. The celebration goes on for nearly two weeks. This year it is the year of the snake. This is a large snake display in the front beach park in Vung Tau.

Here we are in My Tau along the Mekong River where Tu (on the left) grew up. Her sister and her sisters daughter are with her.

HEALTH UPDATES

Charlotte. In Spain, Charlotte developed a pain in her right knee that prevented her from enjoying walking. We took her to a specialty clinic there where they determined her meniscus – that cartilage device that keeps the two major bones in the leg from scraping against each other – was worn and torn. Rather than a metal knee replacement, we opted for the placement of a synthetic gel to support the meniscus. It was injected into her knee and has allowed her to walk normally. It will need to be replaced about once a year.

Luke. After arriving in Vietnam, Luke developed a severe case of bronchitis. It involved difficulty breathing, an almost constant hacking cough, inability to lie down or sleep and it lasted 4 days. In My Tau Luke was taken to the regional hospital and there, in treating the bronchitis, heart egurgitation was discovered. Luke had been getting unusually tired after exercise for a few months. The bronchitis gradually got better and Luke was able to get some sleep. After another four or five days, Luke was taken to a specialty heart hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. There, a full checkup including at CT scan, found that the heart egurgitation was not the most serious issue. There was myocardial arrythmia. Eight drugs were assigned and now nearly two weeks later, Luke has regained much of his former strength for exercise and is going for a follow up checkup in two days.

Here we are with our friends Tim and Tu at our hotel in My Tho along the Mekong River. We met Tim and Tu while in Panama as they had the duplex below us in Alto Boquete.

From our back window we can see the large Buddha statue on a nearby mountain. There is a monastery there. This is where Thich Nhat Hanh grew up and started his training as a monk.

Looking the other direction there is another mountain with a large statue of Christ.

This is a scene from back beach, the newer, more touristy beach along the South China Sea. That line of people in the distance are pigrims heading out to a small island with a temple on it. You can only make this trek during low tide. A large container ship is moving in the background.

There is a fair amount of trash that floats up on the beach. Part of the millions of tons of plastic in the worlds oceans. We decided to do our part to clean it up.

In all I think we got 16 bags of trash off the beach. The worst part is when we accidentally try to put an oily tar ball into our bag. It makes an oily black mess of everything.

A lot of small fishing boats parked near front beach, the older part of town facing the Saigon River bay.

Fresh fish being sold on the front beach.

Part of the decorations in Vung Tau for the Tet holidays.

More Tet decorations in the park at front beach.

Near Front Beach we often see groups of meditators.

We read a book recently, called Health Revelations from Heaven and Earth, in it we learned it was advisable to regularly get our bare feet on the ground and reestablish our vibrational connection with the earth.

Grounding with salt water.

Grounding extremists.

When she wears shades, she is the embodiment of cool.

The owner of our apartment building, as a gift for Tet, gave us a night stay in a very high end hotel.

This is Ms. Cuc. She managest the apartment building we stay in. She is so nice. She has brought us fruit every week, boquets of flowers and helps us in so many other ways

The local Catholic church as some nice trees on their urban property and they decorated them nicely for the Tet holidays.