Thoughts from Saigon

"Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion." Leigh Hunt, 1821


"No sweet without sweat." --Vietnamese proverb


"If you go out on the street, you will learn a lot." --Vietnamese saying roughly translated by us about travel




------------------------------------Today we drink instant cofee in Saigon, look out the window, and contemplate life out of Can Tho. It was quite an emotional farewell. Lots of people came to see us off, all of them crowding our little lane, waving, crying. We gave almost everything we had acquired to our cleaning lady--pots, pans, market basket, pillows, sheets, shoes, toys, books. One neighbor pressed four starfruit into our hands as our big white Land Cruiser headed down the tiny lane.

Today we relax, find a swimming pool, finalize airplane tickets. Last night Mark and I actually got to go out and celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. A Fulbright fellow who lives in Saigon watched the kids for us, and the coolest part was that as Mark and I sat having a drink at Go-2, an outside bar, we actually spotted the two kids out tooling around with Kelly, the babysitter. What a sight to see the two of them trucking around the Saigon streets without us, toting a bag of cotton candy. Turns out they had actually been out buying us an anniversary gift: matching pearl inlaid chopsticks with chopstick rests in a lovely woven special holder. We will always treasure them.

Anne