Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
Remember that Ramona book where she’s reading her mom’s childhood diary and can’t believe her mom wrote, “Nothing happened” on certain days? Ramona can’t imagine a day where nothing happens. I think I underlined that in my red and white Ramona diary. Anyway, that being said, not much has happened around here since we returned…
We were carted around all over Vietnam and Cambodia; meaning, we spent a lot of time looking out of car windows. Each city looked different, felt different, smelled different. Saigon was crowded crowded crowded. We saw two guys on a scooter balancing several full-sized glass doors. Everywhere we saw moms riding with their very small…
It’s not like this was our first rainy day in Vietnam, but it was certainly the rainy-est. We’d hoped to have one day to zen out on the beach—a beautiful, exotic beach—like we haven’t done since we moved to Asia. But it rained pretty much every day we were in Vietnam; Cambodia was our only…
Hoi An was interesting. Not for its ancient history, but rather for its glimpse into modern tourism destinations. Hoi An has effectively quarantined tourists into the charming Old Quarter, where delicious western-style Vietnamese restaurants (meaning places where you eat at a table instead of crouched around a pot on the street corner), tailors and souvenir…
Rain splattered the car windows as the road climbed up into the mountains from water-logged rice paddies sprawling along the sea. A bonsai tree in a painted white and blue pot rested on a balcony above a vibrant rooster pecking the cement porch of a house painted chartreuse. A herd of cattle temporarily blocked the…
Upon meeting our final tour guide at the Hue airport, it became immediately clear that at no point would we understand each other. He began by introducing our itinerary, saying we would first visit the toms, yes, toms, you know toms? Empara toms. Yes, toms? Then the Citadel, followed by lan. By lan. Lan? Ok…
