Thursday 6 March 2014

Happy Buddha

Each day on the walk home from the hospital I have been passing a wood carving shop. The men are working at the front and it is often a different piece each day.





Two days ago one of them was working on a small Buddha and I thought I would like to buy it, but as I spoke no Vietnamese, I could not find out if it was for sale. The next day I asked one of our translators to help me and we negotiated a price. It was finished and ready for me today.





It is about 8 inches high and the wood smells like root beer.


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Tuesday 4 March 2014

Pho and fruit

Tonight the group went for a typical Vietnamese dinner, which is noodle, meat, bean sprouts in a broth and called Pho.



This was followed by a visit to fresh fruit stand for fruit cocktail of local fruits.




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Fixing noses

I've shown lots of cute babies, so I think it is time to show a teenager. This 17 year old is ready to have his nose corrected. To do it, we take some cartiledge from his ear to replace the deformed on the side of the cleft.




Before



After




Before




After

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Sunday 2 March 2014

Temple visits

After kayaking in the river that back up to the hotel, we headed north toward Da Nang to visit some temples. The first is one recently constructed with a very large statue in front.










The roof lines provide some interesting images.

We then moved on to small chapels in the caves of some the hills.




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Saturday 1 March 2014

Weekend

For the weekend we are at the ancient city of Hoi An. It is about 2 hours north of where we are working. Excavations indicate that it has been a major trading center for at least 1200 years. It is now a major tourist area, but portions are a World Heritage Site.





The guardian dog on a bridge built by the Japanese.








One of the older buildings








The market




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Location:Hoi An