June 8-10. Calm days in a vibrant city.

We will be back! Mrs. Chinh has given us the address of a school that we visit today.

We take a taxi there, and as the driver was a little challenged by the address on the paper we handed to him, we could enjoy a fair bit of the backstreets of district four, HCMC.

The school is small and underfunded. We shake hands with the headmistress, introduce ourselves and ask what we can do. She has thought of something and explains us: they want to reuse the schoolbooks (they are allowed too by the ministry) and have to clean them up. We agree to work on this and we carry stacks of stained secondary grade English textbooks into the classroom in order to go through them with a strong eraser and ink killing pen. It is a lenghty job, but we enjoy it, chatting with the director meanwhile and suggesting to expand the little school library. This will be my alibi to sneak out with her and get one million worth of books. Yeon agrees to stay at the school and erase the drawings, exclamations, and ticked boxes from a few dozen more textbooks.
The director takes me on her motorbike to the area where all the bookshops are. We visit three of them, and get a pile of bilingual storybooks,, five dictionaries, several smaller textbooks, a copy of an Austen novel, and more. The books are presented to the other staff and they seem happy with them. Even though it is just a donation, I feel like we have really done something here.

We are hosted by a wonderful German lady, Marianne, who is teaching German to expatriate children here in HCMC. On the first night, she takes us to a very nice restaurant and we have a good time. Her hospitality has no limits: we feel at home as soon as we get there because she is so kind.

We visit a dance show the next day, in the city's main concert hall, that resembles a similar venue in Berlin or Paris to such an extend that really amazes me. The dance itself, a modern piece about attachment and detachment, isn't that inspiring but that doesn't matter.

Three muslim girls from Indonesia arrive at Marianne's place. It is their first time to travel abroad, and they look very excited. We get along well the house is a merry place now what do we do on the tenth? I don't know and owe you this one. Maybe it is the tenth that we eat out at a nightmarket, ordering some simple streetfood, or maybe it is today that we hang out in a coffee place working on our corner of the internet, or it is the day when I venture out to get a takeaway coffee and a loaf of bread, returning with only the former in ridiculous quantities to compensate for the absence of the latter, or maybe the tenth is when we decide not to visit the war musuem with the American tank and heavy artillery in the garden, or it is when I read a bit in a praised German novel about Alexander von Humboldt, or ...

June 7. SSC Scholarship programme.

At the Saigon Children's Charity Kimberly takes time for us and we have an interesting meeting discussing spontaneous volunteering. I am proud that they have arranged to meet in the conference room with us! Feeling some bit important - we are all human.

They have a scholarship program supporting children of poor families with basic need packages and school supplies. The program is well thought trough. For example, they don't give money to the families because it would often fflow into the alcohol budget of the father. I like the program and suggest we support three secondary grade children through this program. Charity Travel made easy! This way we don't have to contribute our experience, the program is almost as good as it can be and all we have to do is donate to it. The person in charge of the scholarship program gives us fact sheets about three secondary grade children. Our participation would ensure to stay in school this year, and hopefully get a better chance than their parents have had.
I mention them to Jean-Michel, who is coming to Cambodia for possible cooperation and feel a networker. That is very addictive, mind you. Before you know you want to connect everybody with everybody, exponentally many links buzzing in my head feeling their potential second-grade connections going out like hundreds of invisible threads and they all have connections too. Danger is that the feeling is mere hyperness and the temperament isn't controlled by concrete, reflected upon thick real-life experience but by abstract mental schemes taking us away from the source of compassion, understanding, love, humanity and towards the preposterous installation of the pure in heavens above, the freaking trinities and divinities and Gödelian metaspheres.

June 6. We didn't Miss Saigon.

Forget to tell you we took an overnight train last night. This time, we arrive in Ho Chi Minh city, formerly known as Saigon, and I insist on walking a bit first, before we realize that we are lost and take a taxi to the Gecko bar, a place in the center where there would be a couchsurfing event that night. Yeon recognizes where we are and after a short walk we start to connect  with this city. We land in The Coffee Bean where we pass the whole morning having breakfast and working on our computers. When I feel like my ears are steaming like my amygdala intended to make another Latte Macchiato, I know it's time to go. Fortunately, we have found our Cause on the map, and also have an idea where to look for accomodation.
And so we walk on to the office of Saigon Children's Charity, not realizing that it's a Sunday. We are surprised by heavy rain once again, but we make it. We can come back on Monday. Our sunday ends with a walk through HCMC, and we find a backstreet guesthouse with a very friendly owner. Clean sheets and a hot shower do good after so many overnight trains.