My First Day of R&R...

I had arranged with a lady to meet her friend at the An Phu market in order to catch a ride to an orphanage. We’ll call that lady “S.” The plans then changed for me to find their driver at the market and head to S’ villa. But when Justin and I went to leave, we realized his motorbike had a flat tire. So, he called up a motor taxi, put me on the back of it, crossed his fingers and hoped I’d make it to my destination. I did make it to An Phu market and found the “cotton buds” that were requested. The driver found me and off we went. I arrived at S’ villa- a ginormous mansion just off of the jungles of Vietnam.

S is a very kind lady, but also quite the boss- when she says something, you do it. Her maid asked if I would like some breakfast. I told her I had already eaten and was fine. Her maid came in a bit later and said, “S says you will eat” and she put down a plate of little ham sandwiches. Now, this might sound good, however, two problems: mayonnaise and ham. I am a vegetarian and I do not like condiments. I contemplated my options… I had broken my cardinal rule of always carrying Ziploc bags with me (to stuff unwanted food in)… so, Option 1: pretend to have eaten the sandwiches, put them in the back pocket of my purse. Problem: it will be HOT in the car. Sweltering ham and mayo may draw some attention. Option 2: Pull off the ham, eat mini mayo sandwiches. Problem: yuck! And… just yuck! Option 3: Just eat the dang things, apologize to the nearest pig you find and try to pretend the mayo is… not mayo? Problem: goes against what I believe in, and what a waste of breaking vegetarianism- for little ham sandwiches. Final solution- This will be a choose your own adventure. You decide what you think I did.

Finally after the traumatic breakfast we set off. We picked up two English ladies. One we’ll call J and the other J’s mom. J’s mom was a jolly English lady who had a muttering speech and a bouncy laugh. Throughout the journey J’s mom kept looking out the window, sometimes in horror over the crazy traffic, and other times laughing her jello laugh at the miniature motor bikes carrying the ridiculously large loads of anything and everything.

We headed to the orphanage they’ve worked with. This was an orphanage for special needs children. What a delightful place it was. The kids were smiling and playing. They had great little mobile chairs to get around in. A guitarist had come to entertain the kids. There was laughter, singing and dancing. The poor orphanage cat got suckered into a few dances and then took refuge under my skirt. He followed me around the rest of the time we were there; probably just grateful I wasn’t swinging him by his tail. Then afterwards we fed the kids their lunch.

Some interesting things I learned:
It’s difficult to determine which orphanages to really focus on helping because the ones that look the most destitute often just pocket any donated money. They don’t want to improve the orphanage because they make a lot of money off of it looking horrible. The decent looking orphanages are the ones that actually use the money for the good of the kids, however they have a more difficult time getting funding because people want to help the more impoverished places.

Another thing, you can’t adopt from private orphanages, which means, the people that run those, set them up for the good of the kids. One reason some people set these ones up is because sometimes when kids get adopted out, they are abused and dumped. The government orphanages are often the worst kind, they can adopt out for the bargain price of a mere $40,000 U.S. plus bribe fees.