Fore-Tracks

Not really a lot to talk about today.  We stayed at the beach resort in Hoi An until noon.  Walked along the beach, bought some polo shirt knock offs, cooled off in the pool for a while.  I guess you could say I got lucky at lunch.  I sat at a table of 4 where 2 people are scared to try anything other than white rice, and the 3rd doesn’t eat sea food.  So with our meals being mostly seafood I pretty much ate for 4 today.

We stopped at a museum but really the most interesting thing we did today was the 70km drive to Hue.  The first 21km was a drive up and down a steep winding mountain pass with some nice views.  The final 50km was mostly flat with local houses and rice fields the whole way.  It was interesting that even in this generally rural stretch of road there were always motor cycles and bicycles.  We were in a big bus generally driving down the middle of the road because the bikes don’t always just scoot over and let you by.  There were also at least two times where big trucks coming the other direction were passing slow trucks and coming head on towards us only to squeeze back into his own lane at the last second.  But I had never seen rice fields and this drive through rural Vietnam pretty much matched any preconceived images I had.  green fields of rice, small streams/rivers suppling them water, palm trees.

Still haven’t really adjusted to the time difference yet.  Going to bed at 9 every night and getting up somewhere between 4 and 6.  Tomorrow is Easter.  We are taking a boat up a river to the area to the palaces of the the old empires.  Then we have a 9:30pm flight to Hanoi.  Been in bed every night by 9, but now our flight is going to be later than that.

This morning we drove about 50 miles northwest to the area of Cu Chi, which is an area in which the Viet Cong lived in/hid in underground tunnels by day and came out by night.  They have widened a section so that us fat americans can fit through them.

On the way home we toured Reunification Palace, which was the presidential palace of South Vietnam before they recombined with North Vietnam after the war.  I couldn’t believe a former presidential palace didn’t have air conditioning.  It was a very hot and humid day, not very comfortable for a lot of walking.  The we went to the War Remnants Museum.  That was a disappointing because on the inside at least, it was just photographs, and I was pretty much walking around in a daze by then anyway.  After finally getting back and cooling off I went out and bought a 3 dollar Saigon t-shirt from the people that line the streets selliing stuff, and found a nice ice cream shop and had ice cream served in a coconut.  That was a really nice way to end a hot day.

The food has been  like a fairly bland version of Chinese so far, very heavy on seafood so far, nothing very spicy.  Seems they drink mostly hot tea.  Seems odd to me that it is so hot but they don’t seem to drink a lot of fluids, and what they do drink is generally coffee or hot tea.  I didn’t know this but Vietnam is apparently the worlds second  largest coffee exporter.

Saigon is a very interesting city, just for the whole experience, I could sit an eat ice cream and watch the motor cycles driving through each other at the intersection all night.  Tomorrow we have an 8 am flight to Hoi Ann where we will check in to a beach resort for one day.  But the afternoon will be mostly touring the old town there.

I haven’t really been paying close attention to the college basketball pages, so I didn’t get all the tournament games set to neutral.  I did get Sunday’s game set and now have made it so that all the games for the rest of the year are neutral.  I don’t know where the NIT stands so that could cause some problems in the other direction.

Tomorrow I leave to begin my next trip.  I’ll be spending most of the next two weeks traveling Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh city north to Hanoi, then over to Cambodia to spend the final two days at Angkor Wat.   It all starts with the long boring travel day.  It starts with a four and a half hour flight from Chicago to LA.  I have a 6 hour layover in LA before a 14 hour flight to Taipei Taiwan,  an hour and half layover there before a final three and half hour flight to Ho Chi Minh City.   That’s 22 hours sitting on a plane and another 7 to 8 hours sitting in airports.  I finally get there at 10am Wednesday morning, which is 10pm back home.  A 12 hour time difference is convenient, I don’t even have to change my watch.   But it will also means maximum jet lag.  The biggest worry right now is the weather, the forecast iin Vietnam is 90-95 degrees with 60% chance of rain for the first week.  Hopefully it won’t be too wet.

There have been a few playoff games that qualified as picks but I was just too lazy to post them.  Most involved the Jets.  The computers rank the Jets very high thanks to their #1 ranked defense. I will go ahead and make the Jets +8.5 an official pick.  The computers have Indy winning by only 3.5.

Here is an interesting paper on NFL coaches, their networks and their success.