Remembering Ba Ria - Part One

I spent so much time in this small town when we were in Vietnam, but have posted very little about it.  This is the town where Molly lived for the first year of her life, and I wonder if she was also born here, or nearby.  Ba Ria is at the junction of two highways, Highway 51 that comes out of Ho Chi Minh City, and continues south to Vung Tau, and Highway 55 that turns north, running up the coast to all the beach resort towns.  The Province is called Ba Ria - Vung Tau, obviously named for the two largest towns in the region.  It is an affluent Province - there is offshore oil providing infrastructure.  Road improvements, schools, hospitals and government offices can be found everywhere.  There is even a university in Ba Ria.  The town is full of churches (Catholic) and pagodas (Buddhist).

Despite the fact that we lived there for almost 2 months, I saw very little of the town.  We drove from the hotel to the orphanage every day, and only had the odd weekend free to explore.  I walked around a few blocks from the hotel, but couldn't go far - it was too hot to stay outside for long.  There was a Co-op Mart (supermarket) two blocks away on one side of the hotel, and the town's market two blocks the other direction.  Very convenient!  So we didn't really need to go much further.  The freeway was right in front of us, and the few blocks behind consisted of the typical Vietnamese lifestyle.  Almost every home had a business at street level, and the family would live behind and/or above it. 

The freeway approaching Ba Ria from Ho Chi Minh City, about a 2 hour drive away.  It was a cloudy day, but no rain.  It rarely rained when we were there.  The monsoon should have started in April, but it was very late this year.  There wasn't much rain in May either.

This is a street scene just around the corner from my hotel.  Note the motorbikes and the pastel colored homes. 

A home/business a block away sold live chickens.  They would wander live on the sidewalk in front of the home.

The boulevard across the street from the hotel.  It separated the street from the freeway.  A very large and incredibly noisy truck would come by at about 4:30am every morning to water the foliage.  It would make a couple of passes back and forth, just to make sure it woke me up.  But the traffic noise from the freeway was much worse.  Horns blared all night and all day, too.  I'm surprised Molly slept through it.

This is the water feature at the An Nam Restaurant that we ate at often. Actually, Merel and Nathan ate there often, and they would bring a doggie bag back to the hotel for me. It was open-air, large, and very beautiful. The food was great too!

We watched the rice harvest happen here about a month later than when we were in the Mekong Delta.  This is the stalks of rice being transported from the fields to be processed.  The ox-drawn carts roll down the streets with all the rest of the traffic.

Another street scene.  Nha Nghi - lots of rooms for rent.

The street behind the block from the Hotel Thanh Sang

My hotel. Very new, very nice, and the family that owned it was very good to me. We were happy there, and I would recommend it to anyone else who wanted to stay in Ba Ria.  Our room was on the first floor on the right, blocked by the tree.

The front desk of the Hotel Thanh Sang.  Note - get a room on the first floor - there's no elevator.

Our room. They didn't have a crib for Molly, and she could have fallen out of the bed overnight, so they put a mattress on the floor between the two beds for us. This was the realm of Molly's existence there. I didn't allow her to wander off the mattress. On the desk across from it was the thermos of hot water, her bottles, cereal and formula, our medicines and vitamins, and fruit. There was a small fridge underneath. We had everything we needed.  Cost - 300,000 dong per night, about $15 - $18 Canadian equivalent, depending on the exchange rate.

The family that owns the hotel.  They took very good care of Molly and I.

The grandparents.  Grandfather was very sweet to Molly.

The town gate.  This picture was taken from inside a moving taxi, when Molly and I were going back to Ho Chi Minh City for our last 2 days before flying home to Canada.  We had just passed the hotel, and I started crying.  I had just told Molly to say goodbye to the place where she came from.