FAQ: Travels in Cambodia and Vietnam

Q: How was the food? A: It was great, mostly. We had one weird meal in a rather nice place in Saigon – the food was gummy, fishy, meaty, slimy, all the things we did not want it to be. I don’t think this was bad food, I think the mistake we made was that …


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Chau Doc: Vats of Goo and A Bad Hotel

Chau Doc is a busy border town with dusty streets and tin roof buildings and TV antennas. Our hotel sat on the edge of the river. Behind us, the motorcycles buzzed around offering rides, on the other side, river traffic floated back and forth, rowing or spewing fumes behind noisy diesel engines. It’s impossible to …


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Wanderlust: Sickness and Sin

Note: While some things about this post are as true today as when I wrote it, close to exactly one year after I published it, I was eating dinner at the night market in Saigon.

I was in the airport last week and after I dropped off the husband, I walked past the Hawaiian Air counter. There was no line. “What if…” I thought, feeling in my jacket for my wallet. It happens in the movies all the time. Some disenchanted broken hearted misdirected soul wanders up to the counter and asks for the next flight to the tropics. They hand over a credit card and the camera cuts to a montage of – hey, there I am, shopping for a swimsuit, a towel, some flipflops, and a sarong! Moments later, to the sound of cheesy 70s pop, I’m frolicking in the surf, cut, drinking a cocktail with an umbrella in it, cut, walking in to the sunset, a silhouette against an orange sky. Believe it or not, I’m walking on air, never thought I could feel so free eee eee!

Sigh. As if.


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