A day to travel

This morning I left Saigon.

Since I want to travel as near as possible like the Vietnamese people, I decided to take the bus to Can Tho.

First I had to take a City bus from the famous Ben-Thanh market to the western bus station. This bus station is really huge. More then a hundred buses are waiting to bring the people only to the western and southern areas from Saigon. There is another station to serve the north and eastern parts.

Ein Teil des riesigen Busbahnhofs

I was a bit early so I walked a bit around the station, had a drink at at small service point. The bus was wonderful, Air Conditioning !

Aha da kommt ja mein Bus schon.

It took nearly 3 1/2 hours to reach Can Tho. During the journey we had heavy rain and I was a bit worried about my situation in Can Tho.

Regenzeit im Mekong-Delta. Da bleibe ich lieber im Bus.

This time I even used the big new bridge crossing the river Mekong - the biggest bridge in South-East Asia.

At the bus station Julia Le waited for me - she is my supporter and interpreter here in Can Tho. She showed me the hotel and we had lunch together.

Later the evening we went on a boat trip on the Mekong with a big ship, full of hungry people. :-) We had live Music from a band and a magician showed his tricks.

It was wonderful, the weather was good, no rain in the evening.

From the mails that Juli and I exchanged I know that she is a fan of the German soccer team. So I brought her a jersey of the womens national Soccer team. I think she was very happy about it.

When the ship returned to the kay, Julia drove me back to the hotel.

Julia Le

Did I mention before, that she has a small motorbike (like most Vietnamese) and I had to sit on the passenger seat? The traffic is much easier here that it is in Saigon and Julia is a good and cautios driver. I felt very comfortable with her.

Tomorrow we will start early (8:00 am) our trip to Rach Goi. I hope really to find people, who remember anything about my father, his wife and daughter.

People who helped me ...

are everywhere in Vietnam. Today is a good example for that.
After a great breakfast at the Hotel (Vietnamese Soup, a rice dish and after that some fruits) I took a taxi to the office of the search Team and Mr. Vien.
The office is located in an unobstrusive Building in district 4.

The office building

I met Chau Thrinh, my interpreter, outside the building and we went up to the 5th floor. I was a bit nervous about the situation, I must admit. What could they tell me more in detail about their results?

Mr. Vien is a young man, he is with the search group for only six month, normally they do searches for soldiers from the Vietnam War and try to find out where they died and inform their families.

Mr. Vien in his office

I was so happy to have Chau Thrinh with me - the English of Mr. Vien is not the best, I couldn't understand a word. But Chau Thrinh speaks perfect German. No wonder: She studied German in Berlin and runs now a School to teach German language in Saigon.
We discussed a lot of facts and assumptions during the meeting. Vien gave me the exact adress of the farm in Nha Tran area. They believe it is the highest chance to find my sister in that area.
I am a bit disillusioned about that man who claims to remember my father from the farm. He is only in his fifties, so he was a child when my father lived there. Either he is lying or he can't remeber many things. But I will see when I go there in a few days.

After the meeting with the search team, I went with Chau Thrinh to see her school. There I met Tom, he gave me the advice to contact Chau Trin as an interpreter. We went out for lunch and they showed me a wonderful place you can't find in any tour guide. A Café or little restaurant, hidden in the backyard of a house, quiet, no noise from the streets. You feel like beeing in a wonderful garden. The food was wonderful too and we had two wonderful hours together.

Ein alter Brunnen im Eingangsbereich

Ein verträumter Buddha im Garten

Auf Steinwegen über den Fischteich geht es zu den Tischen

Auf der Terasse mit Chau Trinh und Tom

Chau Trinh and Tom

Unser wundervolles Essen

When going back to the Hotel I took a normal line bus back to the town center (cheap and easy).
Now it is raining outside, I am happy to sit inside and write my blog at the moment. Later I will go downtown again, this time to videotape some impressions from Saigon.

Thank you so much for helping me Mr. Vien, Chau Trinh and Tom. I wouldn't be that far without you!

Tomorrow I will leave Saigon and take the bus to Can Tho. There I will meet Julia Le and she will support me during my visit there. I will go to Rach Goi (The little hamlet where my father quoted to live there),I hope to see the Bishop of Can Tho and I will visit the orphanage Thien An of Sister Mary who helped me also.

On the first day ...

of my trip to Vietnam I started already the search for my unknown sister.

As many of you might have noticed: I also changed the main language in my blog from German to English.

This is caused by the many friends, supporter and readers I have from outside Germany. I try to make it a little bit easier for you to understand and follow me.

The journey itself was ok. I started at 9:00 am in the morning at our main station in Münster - as usual with a delay of the train so I had to change trains already to catch the flight at 2:00 pm in Frankfurt Airport.

The flight was fully booked and thanks to Deutsche Bahn I was among the last to check in and only catched a seat in a middle lane of the Boing 777-200.

Motorcyclist - The dominating species in Saigon

For a man of my size (or should I write "length"?) this was a horror trip and I could not sleep for a minute on the plane.

I took a taxi from the airport to the Au Lac II Hotel and I am sure the taxi driver was very happy to charge me 20 US$ for that trip.

My room - the chaos is already visible

The Hotel is absolutely wonderful and is located near the river and next to the famous market Ben Thann.

When I arrived in the Hotel I realised how stupid I can be: I forgot my wonderful Excel-Sheet with all the dedails of my trip including the list of contact data on my home PC. I hope that my wonderful wife will sent the list later today via mail to me.

After the check in at the Hotel I made a walk around the Hotel to get myself a first impression.

Saigon is as always: Loud with lots of motorcycles on the streets, a absoltely oversized offer of any kind of services (Hundreds of people asked me to drive me by car, on a mototbike or even a bycicle, I was offered to by anythng possilbe, get my shoes cleanded and many other things.) The people are really trying hard to make their living.

In the afternoon I went to the Cathedrial of Notre Dame to see Sister Theresa Hahn from the office of the cardinal. The offices are right next to the well known Church in the center of Saigon.

I asked a woman how to find Theresa Hahn in the big building, she could not understand my Englisch but organied a priest to come to the gate. Theresa Hahn moved some time ago to the US (a promotion I guess) and I now understand why she didn't answer my last two mails.

The priest was very friendly to me and succesed to try my best luck in meeting with the local Bishops in Can Tho and Nha Trang. Which I promised to do! :-)

So, witout any new informations I came back to the Hotel (totally tired) and wrote some mails and uploaded the first pictures to Facebook.

Tomorrow I will meet the people from the search team from the TV Station. I have many expectations about that meeting (At the end they found out where the farm was my father used to work on).

We have not fixed the exact hour which we will meet tomorow - but I thinks this is only strange to me cause I am a typical German. :-)

After I finished this post I desperedly need a nap, but I have to wait until my wife has sent the files with all the details. Otherwise I even would not now were exactly the meeting will happen tomorrow. And I would be really sorry not to attend on this assembly!

Please touch all wood for the meeting tomorrow!

Thanks.

Friedhelm

Here some other pictures I took today:

The Office building of the Catholic Churc next to Notre Dame

The well known Catholic Church "Notre Dame" in Saigon

The inside of Notre Dame in Saigon

 See all pictures at Piccasa Webalbums: 

Kein Einzelfall

In drei Wochen bin ich auf dem Weg nach Vietnam. Gestern erhielt ich eine neue Mail von einem Leser des Forum-Vietnam.de. Er hatte dort meinen ein Jahr alten Beitrag  über die Suche nach meiner Halbschwester gelesen und fragte, ob es noch aktuell sei.
Er hat eine Bekannte bei einer Sprachschule in Saigon. Ihre Eltern sind auch katholisch und kommen aus der Gegend südlich von Nha Trang wo auch mein Vater lebte.
Gerne habe ich deshalb Kontakt aufgenommen und heute schon Antwort erhalten.
Die freundliche Frau aus Saigon hat sich meinen Blog schon durchgelesen und mir u.a. von ihrem 61 jährigen Bekannten geschrieben: Auch er hat einen deutschen Vater, den er nie kennengelernt hat. Er war genau wie mein Vater Soldat der Fremdenlegion und hat das Land noch vor der Geburt des Sohnes verlassen. Seine Mutter hat alle Erinnerungen (Fotos) an ihn verbrannt. Für 60 Jahre wurde das Thema nicht angerührt und durch ihren Anruf wurde es wieder aktuell.
Wenn ich in Saigon bin, werde ich mich mit ihm treffen. Vielleicht können wir uns gegenseitig helfen. Er hilft mir in Vietnam und ich helfe ihm hier in Deutschland.
Je näher meine Abreise kommt um so näher geht mir auch die ganze Geschichte. Ich bin gespannt was ich in Vietnam erleben werde.

Haus Nr. 39

In den letzten Wochen hat sich klar gezeigt, dass ich mehr Zeit in Nha Trang verbringen muss.
Der TV Sender hat die Farm meines Vaters dort lokalisiert, die Schwiegertochter der Farmbesitzerin lebt noch dort und es soll sogar Menschen geben, die sich noch an meinen Vater erinnern.
Also habe ich ich in den letzten Tagen meine Reiseplanungen für Nha Trang konkretisiert.
Ich werde im Diva-Hotel wohnen, jenem Hotel das schon Leo P. Ard in seinem Buch "Mein Vater der Mörder" beschreibt.
Der Hotelbesitzer ist Deutscher. Das Hotel ist nur wenige Meter von der katholischen Kirche in Nha Trang entfernt. F. Tien von dieser Kirche hat mich in den letzten Monaten immer unterstützt.
Auch nur einige hundert Meter entfernt ist die Strasse an welche die Post an meinen Vater immer adressiert wurde. Damals: 11, Rue Prince Canh. Nach Recherchen der TV Station heute: 39, Hoang Van Thu.
Die Besitzerin dieser Wohnung ist Madame Doan Ti Duc gewesen. Sie war auch die Eigentümerin der Farm auf der mein Vater arbeitete. Ihre Schwiegertochter wohnt heute noch dort.
Heute habe ich ein Foto von diesem Haus erhalten.
Es ist wohl in den 70er Jahren umfangreich renoviert worden, auch auf dem hinteren Grundstück wird aktuell gebaut.
Heute ist ein Geschäft für Meeresfrüchte im Erdgeschoss und in den oberen Geschossen sind Wohnungen.

39, Hoang Van Thu Street, Nha Trang

Der Hotelbesitzer war so nett, dieses Foto zu machen und mir zu schicken. Wenn ich in Vietnam bin, werde ich auf jeden Fall dort vorbeigehen und mit der Schwiegertochter Kontakt aufnehmen. Vielleicht weiss sie ja mehr über die Geschichte meine Halbschwester und ihrer Mutter.