last 2 days

Today and yesterday I had free days before my trip home. I decided to go to Marble mountain on thursday morning. Great decision, it was a very cool place to visit and very much my only tourist stop this entire trip. I got a car from the hotel and arrived about 20 minutes later.Marble mountain is actually about 5 mountains, I think. The main one is filled with caves and pagodas. I wandered around and took tons of photos. Ror some of the caves I entered and was completely alone until throngs from a tour entered the cave and then i felt like I was in a disco with all the camera flashes going off. The times I was alone was very special and felt spiritual. Again another killer hot day, by 9am both my pants and shirt were soaked through. I've gotten used to that and have come not to care. There's really nothing you can do, taking several showers a day doesn't help. So with the heat, buddahs and constant aroma of incense in the air, there was some energy that made me feel relaxed and fulfilled. I spent about 2 and a half hours there.

Had to return home, because I had a date with the lantern boys, Hai and Trung. They were right on time but needed to go buy some silk for our tie dye experiment. Once we got going, it was so much fun! The boys knotted their fabric pieces consistently and mine was helter skelter. They tried not to say anything, but at one point the younger, Hai, pointed at mine and said something to his brother. I was "what?" and Trung said I was doing it all wrong. "just wait" I said. We proceeded and I think I nearly killed them when I did 2 colors and made them tie more strings after the first dip. We also kept them in the dye for longer than they were used to. At one point they called me "quam" (sp?) which means crazy. (Little did they know, I learned this word on my second day at the workshop).

Finally it was time to unwrap the fabric - oh to see the looks on their faces! The colors were brilliant, they laughed and pointed and were clearly excited to make lanterns from this new "quam" fabric. I was happy with the results too. They wanted to do more, so we ended up dying over 6 meters of fabric, all came out great.

Karen was going to "streets" for dinner with Greg invited me to come along. Streets is a neat concept restaurant. Founded by Neil and Sondra, coincidentally they live on 68th st and Columbus Ave, the place takes street kids and teaches them to cook. They are given board and schooling for a year. Then they receive credentials from NY. All very exciting, in hope of working in a 5 star restaurant in Hoi An. The food was wonderful, crisp and clean. I had veg spring rolls and a veg panini. By the time I got to my room I was wiped out and fell fast to sleep, a good solid night's sleep.... but woke up around 2am with stomach problems revisited.... Not a great night sleeping night after all.