Mekong Delta and Bac Lieu, Vietnam

I'm back home now. A bit jet lagged. As much as I love traveling, it feels really good to be sleeping in my own bed (without my snoring cousin). I have 1,000 pictures to review and will post my favorite ones soon.

My parents, three aunts, and two uncles met us in Saigon last Tuesday. We hired a driver to take us to visit families in Saigon and Bac Lieu, which is where my dad and his family grew up. Prior to going to Bac Lieu, a friend asked if I reconnected with my roots. At that time, I hadn't felt a connection with the people or the country, but after the trip, I felt differently.

We first stopped in Can Tho, a city in the Mekong Delta, and rode in a motor boat down the river to the floating market, where people sell fruits in their boats. Since we came in the afternoon, we missed the market. Instead we went to some cheesy vacation park to walk around the fruit trees, look at crocodiles, and eat lunch (I was never an escargot fan but now I am). On the way back on the boat, I watched the Mekong spring to life with people bathing, washing their dishes, peeing, and playing...all in the brown river. Most of the sheet metal and wooden houses along the river were wide open, so I could see people cooking outside on the floor and eating dinner. People never cease to amaze me with how simply they live.

On Friday we visited the tombs of all the Cao's (and one non-Cao). We trekked through the muddy rice and tall grass fields to find my great-great-great grandparents' tomb hiding behind thick grass that went up to my waist. (They were originally from China and moved to Vietnam in the 1800s.) The following sites were easier to reach and find because they were next to a road and because they were under elaborate roofs and pillars. We visited my great-great grandparents from my paternal grandma's and grandpa's side, my great-grandparents, and my great-grandpa's sister. I noticed that my great-grandma died only two days after my great-grandpa died. She died after she bowed to him...I thought it was romantic, in a sad way. (It is Vietnamese custom to bow three times to a dead person to pay your respects to them.)

After we paid our respects to the dead, we visited the living Cao's. It was pretty much a family reunion. A house was converted into an ancestral altar for the Cao family. The inside is made of dark wood and three altars take up the entire back wall with a huge bust of my great-great grandpa in the middle. The bust used to be made of bronze but people robbed the house during the war.

The house that my dad and his family grew up in was a couple houses away. My grandma's sister now lives at the property right in front of it and her backyard connects to my dad's old house. The house is falling apart, with holes and bricks exposed, shutters fallen off, mold growing from the water damage. I watched my dad walk into where he used to call home. I imagined him as a child running through that house, sleeping in that room. It must have hurt him and my grandparents to leave their home. But I'm glad they did. I looked at my grandma's sister and felt bad to see her confined to her wooden bed. Two of her children have psychological disabilities, two others are living in the US but don't send any money home, and two others are malnourished-looking. I couldn't help but think that that could have been my aunts and uncles. That could have been me.

I am thankful to have visisted my ancestors tombstones. I hope that they'll be there 100 years from now so that future generations will have something to remind them of where they came from.