As we travel up the coast it just gets colder and rainier. I’ll spare you repeat anecdotes. More enthusiastic locals, more grizzled southern fighters, more frustrated people with great English who can’t find good jobs. Hoi An is a nice old city filled with charming 200 year old French and Chinese houses. Orchids grow like [...]

After a few days in Chau Doc, our friends the Australians were called home for a medical problem in the family, so we made our way to Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) by ourselves. We were kinda fearing Saigon. We’d heard it was a nasty dirty place filled with swarming child pickpockets, deadly traffic,and sophisticated [...]

We came off the Mekong into the little fishing town of Chau Doc. The border to Cambodia has just opened up and foreigners are a new phenomenon. Walking down the street we were minor celebrities. Everyone who could shouted “hello!” at us. Mostly children, who run up just to touch us. I think if you [...]

Cambodia is pretty drab, so the first thing we noticed coming into Vietnam was all the colors. The women wear brightly printed pajamas that make crowds into bouquets. In the provinces, every other woman wears a conical hat and everywhere they religiously cover up their faces and arms to avoid tanning. They look like bandits [...]

Sita, a driver from our guest house, invited us to his English school one night. We were the first barang (foreigner) to visit their classroom. The students were all enchanted with Mandy, who’s friendly and knows how to teach. We liked it so much we began going every night. During class, people from the street [...]