There is a beauty that aches. This kind of beauty fuels the connections between people that Don has written so eloquently about and for that reason, is worthy of our attention. Angkor Wat, and the surrounding 12^th-16^th century temples just outside of Siem Reap, overwhelm the mind, with much to admire: the astonishing amount of human drive and effort it must have taken to complete the temple in 37 years; the craftsmanship and artistry, including the “apsara” carvings (women who only dance for gods or kings), each one unique in facial expression, dress, and gesture; the lofty ceilings and huge, vaulted doors (a vault is built opposite the way an arch is); the dialogue between interior and exterior space. It is the kind of place I would give anything to wander through several days in a row, away from the crowds and able to enjoy it from different angles, under the sheltering shade of the “spung” (silk cotton) and strangler fig trees that stand sentinel. This is not the kind of beauty I have been thinking about, though.

Close by Angkor Wat is the temple the King built for his mother (it also happens to be the temple that Angelina Jolie “rented” for one day for $10,000 to make Lara Croft: Tomb Raider). At the center of that temple is an ancient tree that has spread its roots in all directions and riven parts of the temple in two, splitting walls and insinuating itself into every nook and corner. It curves and wraps itself around the temple in impossibly graceful shapes. Experts have debated what to do with the tree: because it is still growing, it will ultimately destroy the temple, yet it is too far grown at this point to remove without destroying the temple. Somehow, over time, the tree and temple have formed a symbiotic relationship; one cannot live without the other. The tree, no longer antagonist, is actually supporting the temple, extending its life, imbuing the temple with a pulse and almost human vulnerability, hence the aching beauty.

No thing is immortal, though a 900-year old temple that has withstood the ravages of warring Hindus and Buddhists gives a proximate sense of the eternal. What is immortal is the flickering spirit that can alight and move within us in times of vulnerability. The guides who shepherd us around know how precarious life is. The stories of each, to an extraordinary degree, are marked by violence and poverty – whether it is Juanach, who is happier now bringing tourists to the waterfalls at his village than making his living as a poacher, or Mr. T, who lost his father at age 10 and his mother five years later, after she stepped on a bear-trap (please see Don’s entry for Mr. T’s story). These young adults relate their past in a matter-of-fact way and often speak about the person or persons who helped them along the way. Mr. T sports a tattoo on his arm that translates, “Benefactor,” and refers to the monk who taught him English.

In the last couple of days, I have been blessed with visitations of the spirit. And I believe these are likely to continue, because when you can’t speak the language, you tend towards deeper listening. I get a lot more information observing how someone is saying something, the expressiveness of their face, their body language, than I do attending to content. It’s kind of like taking the static out of your life, to arrive at the simple essence.

Yesterday at the temple, I decided to pay my couple of dollars and receive the Buddhist monk’s blessing. After his chant, he looked at me and said, “You did good. Good luck.” He knew that I had made myself available to receive his blessing. Later that day, I took a nasty spill on the bike and wondered whether his had been a good luck blessing. Then two things happened. First, after waiting for 20 minutes or so in the park for our tuk-tuk, Mr. T, without telling us, called his best friend to see if he could come pick us up. We still needed a tuk-tuk to get us out to the car, but then we met the friend in his air-conditioned car, which conveyed us in about 10 minutes, rather than 30, and smoothly, to the international hospital. When Mr. T told me that his friend was coming, I burst into tears. His gesture was so kind, so good. Later that night, Mr. T came to the hotel to drop off a traditional Cambodian cake (coconut rice and jackfruit wrapped in banana leaves) that his landlord had given him. The good luck continues. Lying on the gurney at the hospital, waiting for the X ray results, I was in a lot of pain and really thought I had fractured my left arm just above the wrist. They had put it in a splint, which helped a little, but the pain was coming in waves and making me squirm. Remarkably, the results came back and there was nothing broken, not even a hair-line fracture. I owe that monk more than the $2 I dropped in his bucket.

Our lives revolve around each other. My aim is to see the beauty rimming the clouds that cradle the setting sun. This is what I want to have on my mind.

“Cardamom” Tented Camp is tucked into a part of jungle that lies five hours west of Phnom Penh, close to the border with Thailand. The camp sits on the river towards the eastern side of Botum Sakor National Park; one more lodge, not so remote and built 12 years ago, occupies the western side. This project is being financed by the richest guy in Thailand, an American, who oddly (to me) has shown no interest in coming to visit. Whatever his motivation, his investment insures that the 20% of the park not owned and being razed by private companies, mostly Chinese, is protected. 100% of the money that will be made here (this year, Allan, our host, hopes just to break even) will be funneled back into preservation projects like the Ranger Station we kayaked to 3 miles upriver. These efforts are already bearing fruit, as we saw in the display of hand-made guns, snares, and nets the rangers have confiscated from poachers. Of interest in the area are rare green peacocks, a few remaining elephant, the world’s largest moth (the Atlas), pangolins, or termite-eaters, whose scales go into Chinese soup, and a whole slew of medicinal and/or spice trees (e.g., cinnamon).

One of the men on staff is especially funny, and we laughed a lot at how the Chinese want pretty much anything that lives or moves here for their “medicine.” Among the sustainable health aids are elephant poop and swallows’ nests. Dotting the countryside are 4 or 5-story concrete towers, nesting houses for the birds, with gentle music played throughout the day and pools of cool water. One villager, when asked what he would like to come back as in his next life, replied: “a swallow, they have it easy.” The Chinese eat these nests (primary ingredient: saliva), and some go for as much as $3,000/kilo.

The 78-hectare Cardamom property is managed by a loquacious 53-year-old Englishman (and his pretty Cambodian bride). Allan left banking 17 years ago to become a wildlife photographer and film-maker. He is not a hotelier, but like any one of us who would take on a project like this because we thought it was cool and worthwhile. In the 13 months since the camp opened, Allan has unexpectedly had to: replace the roof on the dining platform (the tree growing through it re-seeded the roof); put in new cables for the ones the rats ate through; figure out ways to keep monkeys out of the kitchen, where they eat the eggs and other treats.

Shortly after we arrived, Allan breezily informed us that he “and the Missus” were taking off early the next morning for three days. The unsettled look on our faces solicited his reassurances that a) a couple of the staff standing silently by could actually speak English, and b) if we looked at the very short wine list, we could see that not all the titles had been scratched off by Sharpie.* This helpful information was delivered just after he told us that pit vipers are a “real” problem, so much so that one of the workers building the camp had to be medevaced after getting bitten (good to know there’s a fast way to a hospital); another man, a villager, had to amputate his hand when he did not properly care for a spider bite. The next morning Don, a French guy, and I set off into the jungle in single file between one guy carrying a huge knife and another with a gun strapped to his belt.

*Allan also offered up his opinion (I don’t remember the context) that toilet paper is unsanitary. I was at a loss to respond. Of course used TP is unsanitary if you must place it in a bin next to the toilet. But no one has shown us how to use the “squirter” that resides next to the toilet. (Update: I have since tried it and found it delightful, if impossible to apply in a contained manner while standing over a porcelain hole in the ground with your underwear around your knees. The Cambodians seem just as flummoxed by our toilets, as “Don’t squat on the toilet” signs appear in every public place).

True to Allan’s word, we have been cared for beyond our needs, with three simple, but delicious meals a day (rice, carrots, cauliflower or eggplant and pork, with sweet-n-sour soup for lunch/dinner, rice or potatoes and one fried egg for breakfast). Dessert at lunch is a small plate of cut-up dragonfruit, watermelon, mango, or apple, but after dinner – Ah! – there are delicacies dreamed up long ago by Allan’s chocolatier grandfather that float incongruously out of the kitchen: chocolate lava cake with one small scoop of ice-cream, lime soufflé, chocolate mousse. The delightful ambiance of these meals has been supplemented by our lively conversations with the wonderful German and English tourists who have shared this place with us. Tonight, a well-fed East German woman waxed on poetically about the stunningly clear lake she spends hours swimming backstroke in near her home in what used to be East Germany. I thought she was going to cry. We are kindred souls.

Beyond the Facts: I am in a state of wonder at the changes that have come over Don and me during the last three days. Our first full day, we got up at 5:45 after a fitful night of hot, sticky sleep. After a single, insufficiently energizing cup of coffee, we paddled a double kayak up to the ranger station and then trekked back to the camp. At this point, I scanned my brain, trying to remember my conversation with the tour guide about why we would stay a full three nights at this minimally supplied outpost. Rather than taking the whole morning (as it was supposed to), this structured activity ended at 10 a.m., which left the rest of the day yawning wide open. Nothing else was planned. What would we do in the heat that had been so enervating the afternoon before?

I was surprised by epiphanies in the wake this question left. Adrift and a little nervous, when I actually stopped ruminating and took a breath, I noticed that the two young men who tend the bar all day were just standing around, too. Sometimes they were on their phone, but mostly they were just there. When one caught my eye, the expression he levelled at me was perfectly calm and self-assured. He wasn’t bored, nor did he seem to mind that I had caught him doing nothing at that moment (at other times, he jumps at the slightest expression of a question or need). Observing this helped me realize that it’s really not hard to spend a day. Yes, the afternoon that followed was long, and I couldn’t tell you exactly how I passed it, but it made me wish that every day could be this…slow. After initially wanting to check out of this place early, I looked forward to sleeping so that I could wake up to a second whole, event-less day. I was not disappointed. Between my book, jumping in and out of the cool river, and sitting still watching a blessed rain shower, I have burrowed into the present moment.

Time passes, and as it does, it feels like a small miracle. I have felt this keenly at pre-dawn outings as we watch the darkness lighten and lift. Morning resolves into afternoon, into evening, and there has been time enough. Can you remember the last day you spent without feeling rushed at all? I remember Don telling me when he first retired that all he wanted was “to not be rushed.” This idea sounded stupidly impractical and it annoyed me to hear him state it. But now I get it, Don. We should aspire to measure time not by clocks, not by our frenzied means of consuming news and entertainment, but by finding a rhythm of life we like and matching our own rhythm to it. Here, before the sun dips behind the opposite bank and we begin to look forward to a late-afternoon beer, delights abound, in the whisper of a breeze, the full palate of jungle greens, the slowly sliding river.

This time has been blissful for us as a couple. We have heard and responded to the same music, realizing pretty much together that there is no end to this kind of happiness. We follow each other like minnows in a pond, playfully joking, lying down together in the middle of the day, heading out to the river for a swim, coming back to share the things we have thought and written down. The quiet of this place and our understanding that all we need is right here with us has fed a deep, affectionate, and abiding love.  

In a previous post, I quoted a line from one of the Lord of the Rings movies.  At the risk of sounding shallow or hopelessly geeky, another line (a scene really) from one of those movies struck me this morning as I sit sipping coffee in a tented camp in the middle of the Cambodian jungle.  Samwise Gamgee trailing behind Frodo on a small track through a field suddenly stops.  “This is it, Mr. Frodo,” he says.  “If I take one more step, it will be the farthest I’ve ever been from the Shire.” Geographically, I have probably been farther from Seattle than Cambodia, but mentally, this is it.  We’ve been gone since January 12.  I don’t think I have ever travelled for this long.  I feel the need to stop and observe the moment.

Melissa and I left Phnom Penh two days ago and drove four hours towards the Thai border and the ocean.  The weight of what we saw at the Killing Fields still pressed upon us.  We stopped at the base of a river near where it empties into the gulf.  Though it is called a river, it is more of an inlet.  The water is brackish in the dry season and fresh in the rainy season. 

As we sat with Sing, our guide, waiting on a boat to take us to the tented camp, once again, I found new shoots of hope and love and healing springing from that barren place laid waste by the previous day’s activities.  Sing drove us to a small, quiet spot along the river.  We walked out on a wooden dock over the emerald green waters with nothing but jungle on either bank and sat on the bare floor letting the breeze cool us in the ninety-degree heat.  Something was different about this particular rest stop.  It was not on the itinerary.  We thought it was simply a place to hang out until our boat arrived to take us up river.  Then Sing let us know that this was his place.  He had recently purchased it.  His face filled with a mixture of pride, love and joy at being able to share it with us. I would like to tell you that in that moment the heaviness of the Killing Fields lifted.  It did not.  But I felt lighter.  I sensed the beginning of recovery.

If I learn nothing else from our ramblings, I am content to know with greater conviction than ever that if there is something that created this universe, that something is most tangible and real in the connection between two people.  And if, as atheists maintain, there is no creator, then I am content to know that this connection between people, a connection that only blooms into existence if we reach for it, does not defy scientific explanation so much as resist it.  I am a believer in education, in science, in objective, empirical data and analysis. I reject the irrationality that warps and bends our public discourse today.  At the same time, I believe there are ways of knowing that exist beyond the domain of science.  One is not better than the other.  They are different ways of learning and must be harmonized.  

After a forty-five minute ride on a large wooden canoe-like boat fitted with a very loud outboard motor, we glided to a stop at a floating dock, the first human-made structure along the banks of the river we had seen since setting out.  During the ride, we chatted (yelled, actually, to be heard over the engine) with a British couple slightly older than us.  By the time they left the next day, we had exchanged emails and made promises to get together if they ever found themselves in Seattle or if we ever travelled to London.  In the span of less than twenty-four hours, we mutually discerned in each other a kindred spirit, a willingness to laugh and share and enjoy each other’s presence. Perhaps more than any other experience on this trip saturated with new experiences, this recurring ease at making connections reveals (in all its naked ugliness) the toxic, vapid, relentlessness of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the media’s incurable addiction to reporting it.

We noted in a previous post how nice it felt to catch a breather in Hoi An after starting our sabbatical with a full, nonstop schedule.  If Hoi An was a breather with its lights, energy and restaurants, the tented camp is a silent retreat.  The facility consists of 12 canvas tents, each fully plumbed and approximately 12 feet by 15 feet.  Think glamping.  The main building is an open-air pavilion with a wooden floor and a thatch roof.  Down a series of sand and wooden steps you reach the silent, virtually still river and a floating wooden dock. Our only planned activity for the three days was an early morning kayak/hike, which, true to form, we completed with our guide a good ninety minutes faster than he had ever done it.  Side note: we may experience many transformations on this trip.  Being able to amble leisurely through the jungle will not be one of them.  We are both starved for exercise and use every opportunity to pump our hearts.  Melissa did, however, learn how to identify the diarrhea tree, the bark of which makes a tea to calm the stomach.  Good to know.

A swim in the river is simply delightful, the only way to cool off during the day.  The first day, I kayaked up stream and then reclined fully on the kayak and let it drift slowly back to the dock.  The British couple we met saw my supine body sprawled on the brightly colored kayak floating aimlessly downstream and debated whether to call for help or laugh hysterically.  Between the heat of the day and the quiet of the jungle, this place lends itself to blessed inactivity.  The second day, after our record-setting kayak/hike, we read, dozed, laughed and eventually rallied to get some exercise.  Melissa kayaked while I swam upriver for 15 minutes.  Then we switched.  I kayaked while Melissa swam downstream back to the dock.  What took me 15 minutes took Melissa 8.  I tell myself she had the advantage of swimming with the current, and I would appreciate it if all of you would go with that theory as well.

Last night after dinner, we played two hands of gin, both of which Melissa won.  We returned to our tent around 7:15 with Melissa joking about what mini-series we should watch on Netflix.  I started a new novel on my kindle, but found my eyes drooping.  I think I fell asleep around 8 pm and did not wake up until 6:15 am.  I can’t remember the last time I slept that long or that soundly other than when I was down with the flu.  

This morning at breakfast I looked at Melissa whose face I could describe in detail and said, not at all trying to be romantic, just factual, “you get prettier everyday on this trip.”  I hope throughout this blog I can capture a sense of how restorative this trip has been.  That observation, however, probably comes as close to what I sense is happening as anything I could write.  Her face has not changed.  I see in it today all the beauty, laughter, worry, tenderness, and love I have seen over the course of our relationship.  What I saw this morning reflected back at me was that essential goodness, the part of both of us that came into this world trailing clouds of glory.  It sounds sentimental when I write it, but I refuse not to.  If we cannot find beauty in ourselves, we will never find it in the world.

In the fifth basketball game of my senior year, I dislocated my right ankle badly enough that it required surgery.  I remember people bent over me.  I remember pain reaching the point that I wondered what would happen if it continued. I remember telling myself to close my eyes and breathe.  To this day, I shut my eyes in movies if someone is about to break a bone.  Just writing that sentence creates a feeling like fingernails on a chalkboard.  Mentally, I close my eyes.

Yesterday, Melissa and I visited the infamous Cambodian Killing Fields and the prison, S-21, at which the victims were mercilessly tortured before being driven in covered trucks in the middle of the night, blindfolded, shackled, and starved to be executed and dumped in mass graves.  I thought about what I saw all yesterday and last night.  I woke up thinking about it.  I tried to read, to distract myself, to mentally close my eyes.    

I’ve composed the beginning of this entry a dozen times in my head.  Nothing seems fitting.  I can no more capture the lingering, sickening horror of what I witnessed than I can figure out a respectful, dignified way to write about it.  

The first people Pol Pot systematically murdered were teachers.  His regime converted one of the schools, emptied of teachers, into S-21. The wooden desks were used to divide the classrooms into three by six foot cells.  The playground equipment was sadistically transformed into tools for torture.  Melissa and I walked through these former classrooms, stepped lightly into the prison cells, and read with disgust and horror the frank, unembellished, process used to exterminate human beings — men, women and children. 

On the ground floor of the two-story school, the classrooms were not divided into cells.  They were divided by rows of display panels each one exactly like the other, each one containing photographs, headshots, exactly the same size lined up in neat columns and rows.  Each photograph was a face, like looking at pictures in a yearbook, except no one was smiling, and draped around the neck of every face was a number.

Before they tortured the prisoners, the guards measured and recorded their height.  Then the guards forced each prisoner, even the children, to sit in a chair with a device that held their head upright for the photograph. It was these photographs that were arranged on the display panels, rows and rows of them, room after room.   

Ellie Weisel was asked what punishment he would impose on the prison guards who tortured him and others at Auschwitz and Dachau.  He said he would force the guards to sit in a room for eight hours and watch an endless stream of the faces of the people they murdered.  I understand, now.  The pain reaches a point that you wonder what happens next.

But unlike the pain I felt in high school, this pain comes from an unseen source.  It is the pain of despair, the loss of hope and meaning, the pain of touching evil itself and knowing deeply how real and present it is. Our tour guide, Sing, a gentle, funny soul who has guided countless tourist through this hell, a man, who like most Cambodians, lost five members of his family to the Pol Pot regime, told us, courageously, that his leaders are like the tigers and crocodiles that once lived in the jungles of Cambodia.  You can feed them.  They may even seem gentle, apologetic.  But at any moment they will eat you. 

Earlier that same morning, before visiting S-21, we went to the killing fields, the place where the prisoners were executed and buried in mass graves.  I cannot write in complete sentences when I think about that experience, what I saw.

I saw a tree in a field. Large, strong, old.  Hanging from the tree like braids or dreadlocks were multi-colored bracelets, the kind middle school children make and give to one another as a sign of friendship.  I saw this tree standing silently in this field, a field marked by depressions in the earth, sinkholes, but too perfectly geometric in shape to be natural.  I walked along ridges in the earth between these depressions in this quiet field.  I saw in these depressions, bits of clothing, the tattered remnants of some one’s pants, or skirt.  I saw white specks of bleached bones, and I felt tears press against the inside of my eyes.

I saw a tree in a field with braids hanging from the lowest branches, standing still beside a small depression. 

The guards took the babies from their mothers because they would cry.  Silence was needed to cloak their crimes in secrecy.  

I was told many things about the trees.  From one the guards hung a large speaker to play music to cover the sounds of murder, the moans and screams, the scrapping of shovels on dirt to cover the bodies.  

I was told many things about the trees, but I will never forget the tree with the pretty braids, the trunk of which was used by the guards to smash the heads of babies.  

I saw a tree in a lonely field.  I will never forget it.

Oh loving God, teach us peace.  

I pulled a full-on Melissa our second night in Saigon at a restaurant called Chopsticks, boldly going where no tourist should go.  We had spent the day in the countryside, the Mekong delta, a lush tropical forest interlaced with thousands of canals like capillaries pumped full of mud-brown water that ebbs and flows with the tides.  For details and pictures on all our stops, please see Melissa’s post, Thirty-Six Hours in Saigon. 

As we approached the hotel after a very long, very hot day, dreaming of a shower, air conditioning and sleep, Mr. Dat, our tour guide, informed us that the company had made reservations for us at Chopsticks and would be treating us to dinner to compensate, once again, for the mishap with the driver who nearly killed us.  We could not beg off.

Lest you feel sorry for us, the restaurant was magical, complete with hanging multi-colored lanterns and a five course pre-fixe menu.  True to form, we ordered a drink and felt the effects of the last 8 hours slide off us.  Somewhere after finishing my gin and tonic and before desert, I let my guard down.  Using my chopsticks, I picked up a small red oval shaped thing, popped it into my mouth and said, as an afterthought, I hope this is a radish.

First my eyes watered uncontrollably, then my tongue began to burn, and finally my throat began to spasm. Perhaps it was the beers from the night before.  Perhaps it was the gin and tonic, or perhaps I am, as they often say happens to couples who have been married a long time, beginning to look and act like my wife, the one who has never seen anything on a buffet she would not try.  On the positive side, my sinuses have never felt clearer.     

Thirty-year-old Na is a tomboy in a culture that has never had tomboys.  She sports several tattoos on her left arm, all of which she designed.  One is an ode to her mother, another to her father, and one can best be described as a still life of a typical Vietnamese dinner.  She graduated with a degree in graphic design, but like most of the young, educated people in Saigon (and elsewhere in the country) she cannot find a good paying job.  Unemployment among the young is caused by several challenges: lack of high-paying jobs, inferior education, and the prohibitively high cost of obtaining a work visa to travel to another country.  The Vietnam government requires a balance of $50,000 U.S. dollars in a bank account (subject to forfeiture for failure to return timely) before granting a visa.  As noted in my post, Choreographed Chaos, and in Melissa’s most recent post, Na works about 20 hours a day at three jobs: tour guide, bartender assistant, and freelance graphic designer.  She sleeps about 3 hours a day.

Na grew up in the rural area outside Da Nang.  Her father was an alcoholic who suffered a nearly fatal stroke.  Her mother, despite years of abuse from her husband, decided to sell the family farm and home in order to get medical treatment for her comatose husband.  Miraculously, he survived and turned over a new leaf.  The house, farm and any savings for the children, however, were lost. Undaunted, Na got herself through school, moved to Saigon, negotiated a divorce in a country not known for being particularly gracious to young women who divorce, and has thrived.  She earned a scholarship of sorts to study in Thailand next year and hopes to use that degree to immigrate to Australia. Through it all, she has a healthy, humble confidence, a lively sense of humor, and an endearing love and affection for her parents, especially her father despite his mishaps.  Apparently, one night before his stroke, Na’s father and Na got somewhat intoxicated together.  Na’s mother locked both of them out of the house for the night.  Na and her dad slept in hammocks in what I think would be the stable for the water buffalo.  It was, Na said, a bit stinky and the mosquitoes were annoying.  

I am not sure how typical this is, but Na is the second young, smart, entrepreneurial woman we met who is divorced.  At least one other woman we met, the wonderful thirty year old woman in Ha Noi who made Melissa’s dress, although not divorced, shared with us her marital troubles mostly stemming from a traditional husband who has no sympathy or respect for how hard she works.  He demands that she wait on him despite her incredible long hours running her successful business.  Add in childcare duties, cooking and cleaning and you have a recipe for a very loveless marriage.  The conversation (actually more like her monologue) began with her noting that she admired how affectionate we were with each other.  We hurt for her. 

I sense in many of the stories we have heard a country, especially the young people in this country, moving incredibly rapidly through difficult and convulsive growing pains. Women are asserting their right to economic and personal freedom.  Technology is forcing open an even wider chasm between young and old.  Traditional customs like multi-generational living arrangements are under constant pressure.  The restrictions imposed by the communist government, though significantly moderated in recent years, are chafing the younger generation.  It feels like a dam about to burst unless a way can be found to ease the pressure.   

Post Script: We realize there is considerable overlap between some of our posts. Yet, we both feel the need to record our observations and reactions. We have been married thirty years, but trying to coordinate each post would be more than we could conquer. Hope you don’t mind.

We arrived in Saigon, now officially known as Ho Chi Min City, in the afternoon with enough time to grab a quick gin and tonic beside the pool surrounded by more white faces than we had seen in the last two weeks.  The stereo pumped out loud music as we chose a table, not for the best view of the Mekong, but to catch every possible breeze.  It was ninety degrees.  If an infinity pool that gently pours over the side of the building from 25 floors above the sidewalk is meant to be soothing, the effect was lost on me. Perhaps it was the disconcerting sign stenciled into the three-foot high plexi-glass railing – the only barrier between one side of the pool and a rather nasty fall — that warned: do not lean on glass. Saigon is not Hanoi.  With all deference to the reunification of Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War, the north and south are still divided in subtle and not so subtle ways.  More on that later, or read Melissa’s latest post, Saigon In Thirty-Six Hours. 

Our evening plans, as described in our itinerary, included a “wonderful,” and “very safe” Vespa tour of Saigon.  I liked the “wonderful” part, but found the “very safe” part somewhat alarming.  If you invited someone on a tour of Seattle and casually said, “by the way, it is very safe,” the first thing the tourist thinks is why is this reassurance for my safety necessary.  I might have thought the same thing about the Vespa tour except after experiencing the drive from the airport to our hotel, I realized the “very safe” assurance was actually similar to someone telling you that cliff diving is “very safe.”  To describe the streets of Saigon as choked with traffic is like calling a volcanic eruption a gentle boil.

Nonetheless, we boarded our Vespas.  Melissa got the young cute guy.  He told her later that night as they were flying through the streets and Melissa was hugging his waist, that “driving you on my Vespa makes me very happy.”  I bet it does big guy.  I got the older (and totally kind) guy.  Every time I climbed on or off his bike he unbuckled my helmet as if I were ten.  I’d like to think I could have done it for myself, but after the gin and tonic and experiencing my first traffic circle (complete mayhem), I was grateful for the help. By the end of the night I just stood still with my chin out and eyes closed until he lifted the thing from my head. By the way, wearing a helmet on a Vespa in Saigon is about as comforting as wearing a seat belt on a plane.  Think about it. 

Our “very safe” tour included five stops with snacks and drinks – alcoholic or otherwise.  Take one guess which choice I made.  The food, like all the food on this trip is fresh, spicy in the most delightful, mouth-watering way and succulent.  Our official tour guide – a young 25-year-old woman with the first tattoos I have seen in Southeast Asia – met us at each stop to explain the meal.  Her name is “Na” as in Christina without the first two syllables.  She works at least three jobs: an English language tour guide from 5 or 6 until 9pm, a bartender from 10pm until almost 3am, and a freelance graphic designer (her official degree) in the mornings.  She gets up everyday at 6am.  She lives with her sister and boyfriend, and she was looking forward to a few days off for the lunar New Year to visit her parents in Hoi An, the same city Melissa and I had just visited.  She was going to ride her motorbike for two days to get home and two days to return to Saigon.  Over the course of the evening, Na told us her story.  I’ll save that for another post.

I’d like to take one moment here to describe for you the types of things you typically see on motorbikes.  You might think, like I did, that the bike would contain a driver and possibly one passenger sitting behind him or her.  You would only be partially right.  Most motorbikes have at least two people.  Many have entire families with the toddlers standing (on a box or on the scooter itself) in front of whomever is driving.  I saw mothers sitting sidesaddle behind their husbands carrying an infant in a sling.  I saw as many as four people on one bike.  I saw every conceivable package strapped in every conceivable way to the bike including live chickens in plastic bags and even a live goose, its neck protruding from its bag and flapping in the wind like a dog’s ears hanging out the window of a car.  It is simultaneously terrifying and magical, a type of choreographed chaos.  And here’s the thing: although everyone uses his or her horn, no one ever gets mad, ever.  It’s like a school of fish swarming through the streets being briefly divided by cars, buses and vans before rejoining as one synchronized unit. Like Saigon, it takes some getting used to before you see its elegance and grace. 

There is so much more to Saigon and Vietnam, but I am unable to capture it in one post.  I do not yet have the distance to process the relentlessness of it all.  Like the traffic, it just keeps coming at you.  

Don and I got up this morning, looked at each other, and knew, “It’s time to make our things smell better.” So we walked our laundry across the street, down an alley, and into the home of a woman who gave it back to us later that afternoon freshly pressed and smelling sweet (price: $4.00). We spent the rest of today meandering, swooning over lunch, and finding our way back to our dress shop, so that we could try on our new clothes and re-calibrate our custom order.