Our first meeting point was Las Vegas -
In Las Vegas, even though we did not stay at the same hotel, we tried to get together whenever we could. The first day was a lot of fun because we haven’t seen one another for many years (some 40 years even), we had a hard time recognizing friends and classmates.I,myself, had a chance to see two former co-workers from IBM.I had a blank in my head at first then a click suddenly brought back all the memories of my time at IBM-Vietnam. It was both a great surprise and a real pleasure to see them again.
Trach and I arrived quite late on the first day because of all the driving and stopping along the way. Our friends went to see a show at the Wynn – Le Reve advertized as an Aquatics Master piece. It is an acrobatic show and presents some similarities with other shows in Las Vegas (“O” and “Mystere”).
We stayed at the Flamingo and Trach managed to have a memorable picture taken.
The next day we strolled along the Strip waiting for our Canadian friends to come.
In the meantime, our leader decided that we tried the 24-hour buffet offered by the Harrah’s casino and its Satellites. I must confess that I have never had so much buffet eating in my life.
The second day, we went to see the newly built City Center next to the Wynn hotel because our friends heard a lot about its fancy architecture with leaning towers (Pisa style). Here is a description about that complex that I quote from the internet -
“CityCenter has a 1/4-mile Las Vegas Strip frontage. The project's center is the 61-story ARIA Resort & Casino with 4,000-rooms, designed by world renowned architect Cesar Pelli. There is plenty of glitz in the form of light shows projected against building facades.
Unlike its neighbors, the design for this project focuses less upon gambling related activities and more upon living spaces. The majority of the structure is devoted to MGM City Center condos, four looming, glossy towers of inclining glass featuring enormous rooms and lavish penthouses. There is also a convention center, a gigantic movie theater featuring an Elvis show produced by Cirque du Soleil, a parking garage the size of a small casino, and hundreds of other small wonders. The City Center Las Vegas shopping area and casino floor are the final additions to this monumental collection of buildings—the resort and hotel towers are the real draw here.
The MGM City Center condos are among the most exclusive living spaces in Las Vegas, and few will be able to afford the penthouse suites, or even the larger properties. The smallest living spaces are priced upwards of $600,000. The company behind the construction of the MGM Project City Center already has a variety of high-class buildings to its name—the most famous being the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong (one of the towers where MGM City Center condos are to be found will share its name).
With its focus on art, the complex becomes host to some of the world’s most renowned sculpture artists, including Maya Lin, Jenny Holzer, Claes Oldenburg, Coosje Van Bruggen, Nancy Rubins, Frank Stella, Henry Moore, and Richard Long.”
Too much walking!!! My two former IBM co-workers – anh Long and chi Kim My
Kim My was the organizer of all the activities for the group.
In the evening, we decided to visit the downtown Fremont area where Viva Vision show times are every hour on the hour from 8:30 p.m. – midnight. This is a kind of “Son and Lumiere” – the Fremont Street Experience..
Samples of Fremont Street Experience Photos : http://www.vegas.com/slideshows/attractions/fremontstreetexperience/slideshow.html Samples of Fremont Street Experience Videos:
http://www.vegas.com/video/attractions/fremontstreet/full_index.html
The show we had a chance to see at the Fremont Las Vegas Street Experience was a tribute to “Queen”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDpLMzBxCU4&feature=related.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHnK43LFUA8&feature=related
The music,the giant screen were awesome and completely blew you away. Freedie Mercury was fantastic. I have seen many of those shows but every time, I always got carried away.
On Sept 7, we started to head towards Zion Canyon. There were three cars and thanks to the cell phones and the GPS, we did not get lost too often even though the landscape around us is a typical "nowhere land".
And away, we go! On the road to Bryce Canyon.
Anh Long chi My - Trach Lien 
And who is this lovely Parisian lady?Our trips to Zion and Bryce were really fast because we ran out of time. So we did not go down to the canyon.
Our next target was Salt Lake City, Utah, our home university. Our schedule was tight so we decided to visit the Capitol and the Temple Square, and the Salt Lake the next day on the way to Jackson, Montana.
Trach and I decided to stop here in Salt Lake City in order to give us a chance to visit our home university. There are two points that we would like to visit but we were a little disappointed because the “gravity hill” is no longer available for a visit. The street is made one way and above all, the wrong way so any chance of experiencing the effects of the gravity optical illusion is gone. I also asked about the Kissing Hill but the young guy at the city hall never heard about it. May be he is too young to know or may be the hill no longer exists.
We decided to book a room at the University Guest House in order to be on campus and to be closer to the buildings that we plan to visit. We were surprised that the room was very comfortable and we were provided with all the free of charge facilities that we could not find in a hotel: breakfast, laundry, free internet access, cookies, fruits, a microwave and a refrigerator in the room etc… We did not cook anything but we appreciate their availability. We met alumni families who came back with their children and grand children to visit the areas.
After forty years, the university has totally changed: sometimes we felt like back “from” the future but other times, it is like “lost in space”. School was still in session so we saw a lot of students and teaching was going on.
Students dormitories have also changed. We haven't seen any that we could recognize. Some of the buildings like Milton Benion, Engineering , Spencer hall and Student Union still look familiar.
The cafeteria turns into a food court where we can even eat Vietnamese food such as Pho, Goi Cuon etc…
The student Union buildings offer many entertaining and relaxing facilities for students such as pool tables, tennis tables, bowling etc… Near the food court, rows of computer are made available for students to do their home works.
Trach tried to run downtown desperately hoping to find Ding Ho, a chinese restaurant that we used to go even though our GPS could not find any restaurant of that name.
Our visit to Salt Lake City was a deception for us because we found very little resemblance from our souvenirs, but in a way, we are glad that things have progressed that way. Technologies have changed to give students more facilities and means to allow them to get a better education.
Reported by Lien Le Quang
Many thanks to anh Tri for forwarding your pictures through email. I have used some of your pictures in this article.
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