MRISA Basketball Tournament, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

November 15-18, 2007

I got to travel with the ISE High School Girls Basketball Team to the MRISA (Mekong River International Schools Association) Basketball/Volleyball Tournament.  We left school at 5:00 AM Thursday 15th November for the Bangkok Airport.  Our flight to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon)  was fairly uneventful, and only about 65 minutes.

Once we arrived, I could tell I wasn't in Thailand anymore.  I'm not sure why...maybe it was the loooooooooong wait at Immigration Services.  Maybe it was the blank stares I got from folks when I used Thai.  Funny thing about the Vietnamese...they prefer to speak Vietnamese rather than Thai.  But my "foreign" brain kept thinking I needed to speak Thai.  Oh well.  Then outside, I heard something I rarely hear in Thailand.  Horns honking.  Incessantly.  We hopped a bus and made the hour-long (but only 15 km or so) trip to a local mall for lunch and some free time.  Being as I was in a new country, I figured I better sample the local food.  So some of the coaches and I headed to the top floor to Pizza Hut!  I know, I know.  I should try new things.  Well, for some reason, I just wasn't in the mood to try new food.  But the Pizza Hut was still a bit different, all while being the same.  Same pizza.  Different rice and noodle dishes that don't show up on the Pizza Hut menus in the U.S.

After lunch we headed to South Saigon International School (SSIS) where the MRISA Tournament was being held.  We had to get an orientation and some practice time on the basketball court.  While driving there, I also noticed that the motorbikes in Ho Chi Minh City were far crazier than in Thailand.  People driving down the wrong side of the road, running red lights, and general chaos.  Yet somehow it works, as I didn't see a single accident.  One crazy story for you.  While sitting at a red light in a taxi, watching the traffic go in both lanes in front of us, I saw the following:  An older gentleman on a bicycle peddling beside us into the intersection, running a red light, not stopping for anything, looking straight ahead.  The sea of motorbikes parted around him.  Cars honked their horns but stopped for him.  And amazingly enough, he ended up on the other side, completely unfazed by what he just accomplished.  It was as if this was normal for him.  Wow.

After the short practice, the players were dismissed to go home with their host families.  (At MRISA Tournaments, the players stay with families of the local schools as part of the "Exchange" that is the MRISA Tournament.)  But us coaches had to wait three more hours to attend a riveting coaches meeting.  So we grabbed a taxi to check in at our hotel.  On the way to the hotel we witnessed something else I've yet to see in Thailand.  A fight.  Two guys were going at it by the side of the road.  It appeared to be a dispute related to work, but we weren't stopping to find out.  After finding the hotel and getting settled, the drive back to SSIS for the coaches meeting was a bit...um...eventful.  First, it was raining.  Second, evening traffic seemed to have kicked in causing the 20-minute drive to take about 35 minutes.  After watching the usual chaos, we got to an intersection very near our destination.  Traffic was at a stand-still.  So the taxi driver decided to pull out into the opposite lane to see if he could get through.  No go.  So he flipped a u-turn and turned into a one-way street.  The wrong way.  While honking at the traffic going in the correct direction.  While going around a barrier.  But after cars moved out of our way, we made it into the far right lane, still going the wrong way on a one-way street.  Honking the entire way, keeping cars and motorbikes out of our lane.  Finally, the driver turned right to connect with the street we needed to be on.  It was a nice plan, until he saw there were concrete barriers and a metal fence in the way preventing us from turning left where we needed to go.  Visualize here folks:  Pouring rain.  Driver looks left.  Nothing.  Driver looks right.  Nothing.  Driver looks at the barriers again.  Nothing.  Driver looks left...right.  Finally, I try my best "pantomime" to show him that I'll get out and move the barrier for him.  (I tried Vietnamese, but didn't get past the first syllable.)  So I hop out of the car in the pouring rain and pick up the metal fence and move it out of the way for him.  Luckily, we hadn't paid him yet, and I had two other coaches in the taxi.  So I figured I had at least a 50-percent chance of getting back into the car.  Barrier out of the way, taxi through to the correct road, all is well.  New problem:  More cars want to follow us!  One motorbike got through, but I figured I better put the barrier back in place, so I did, with cars honking at me.  I ran back to the taxi.  He wasn't stopping.  (But truthfully, he wasn't going fast either.)  Finally, he stopped and I hopped back in and off we went.  Whew.  What a hoot that was. 

After a boring coaches meeting, we went back to the hotel to hit the sack after a 17-hour day.  Our girls team was playing in the first game of the day at 8:00 AM the next morning.  My only hope was that all of my players would make it back to SSIS for the tournament.  And they did.  And we proceeded to play rather poorly in our first game.  For the second game, we were playing another tough opponent that had three really tall players.  Which was three more than we had.  But the girls really hung in there, leading 5-2 at one point, and only trailing 6-5 at half.  We played our hearts out but couldn't come up with enough baskets to keep pace.  By the third game, the starters were all tired, so we tried subbing a bit more.  But they would have none of that.  Even though we were getting pounded by the eventual champions (they with their own three really tall players), having a full-court press until we were behind 18-0, the girls kept playing hard and didn't want me to sub them out.  At half-time, Kris Fering and I gave the best "score six points for pizza" speech we could come up with.  So  we scored two baskets with about three minutes to play, and kept shooting and kept shooting.  All to no avail, as the "last basket to get to six points and a pizza party hosted by the coaches" just wasn't in the script that day.  But I'm proud of the effort of my players.  Our point guard was named an All-Star for the tournament.  Quite impressive, given that we went 0-3.  Tired and dejected, but still holding our heads high from our effort, we all went home to get much needed rest after a 16-hour day.  Volleyball tomorrow!

My coaching duties were finished, but I still had chaperone responsibilities at the tournament.  Besides, I wanted to watch the boys and girls play volleyball.  The girls hung in there, almost winning a few games but came up short.  The boys team won their first match, but couldn't stay with the bigger teams in the second and third matches.  So our tournament was officially over.  (Well, except for the awards dinner and dance in the evening.)  So Steve, the volleyball coach, and I decided to go for a walk and leave the chaperone duties with Diego, our athletic director.  We found a "golf pub" across the street from the school with an indoor video-golf game.  Quite fun, really.  You hit the ball into a screen and a computer tracks the trajectory, showing your "real" shot on the video screen.  Steve got an eagle on one of the holes and won a free golf glove.  But I outscored him on the front-nine and got the KPs to win 40,000 dong.  Yep, you read it right.  The Vietnamese currency is the dong.  Enough said.  But the golf was lots of fun after a stressful and lengthy two-day tournament.

The awards banquet was typical "we're proud of all of you" stuff.  but the food was great!  BBQ ribs, satay, Ceasar salad, drinks.  Just what I needed. 

The flight home was just as uneventful as the trip to Vietnam.  All in all, I didn't get to see very much.  But I can't wait to go back on a family trip some day when I can spend more time seeing a country filled with secret spots just waiting to be discovered by this intrepid traveler.
 

Some pictures are below.  Click on the image to see a larger version.