Babies in paradise

Today was a big day. Mimi no longer has to shoulder the burden of melting hearts alone.

Since we first mentioned that we were planning a trip to Viet Nam, our friends Nona and Grael were right there with us. They were game for the 20 hour plane ride, the 14 hour time zone change, the increased gut bacteria population. And best of all, they were also up for all of that with a small child. Their boy, Conrad, is 16 months old, and like Mimi, well traveled for his age.

Conveniently, my boss had some meetings out of town, so our office was closed for the day. That allowed me to join Aimee and Mimi for the trip to Da Nang airport to pick them up. As excited as we were, I had to keep reminding myself what I felt like after flying for 20 hours with a baby. We were going to be impressed if they even had enough energy for a hug. And we were impressed. They were in remarkably good shape after their journey through Los Angeles and Hong Kong, and even little Conrad was wide awake and taking it all in.

After swapping stories about diaper cream, blowouts, and well-timed luck, we met up with our pre-arranged car and driver. But this was next-level car planning. We now had a fixer. Every good adventure story always has the same key character, the local fixer who knows the lay of the land, and can prevent problems before they happen. And now we had our own fixer in Long, the owner of the nail salon on our street.

Like most people we have met in this country, Long is genuinely nice. The dozens of times she said hello to us as we walked past her shop were not entirely just to get us to stop in. So with each trip down the street, our conversations got longer and longer. Between her broken English and our extremely broken Vietnamese, we got to know each other a bit better, and she wanted to help make our trip smoother. After just a few days in Hoi An, we were going to Long for everything from dining advice to how to find a crib. She came through on everything, including leaving a solid wood crib at our front door when we were out at dinner one night.

So now whenever we need to solve a problem, we go to Long first. And that's not as crazy as it sounds. In Viet Nam, particularly rural Viet Nam, everyone does everything, and everyone has a cousin that does the few things they don't. Most every restaurant in Hoi An doubles as a travel agent, and will also do your laundry for $1 a pound.

Our favorite bakery will also arrange ground and air transportation. 

Long is no different, she's resourceful and a problem solver. When we needed a big van at the airport for four adults, two babies, and all the associated gear, we couldn't just go to the taxi stand. We went to Long.

A few minutes after Nona and Grael's arrival, we heard a familiar mispronunciation of my name. "Meo! Meo!" Long was running over to us with two people by her side. One helped load their luggage onto a cart, and the other one introduced herself with flawless English. She was an off-duty tour guide from the same small village as Long. Long had asked her to come along on the 30 minute drive from Da Nang to Hoi An to tell us the history of the region. It was a fascinating conversation, and a nice addition to the already luxurious ride home. And all this for less than I usually pay for a taxi to my office in Da Nang. It's good to know people.

Back at the house, we quickly realized that babyproofing for a nine month old is not the same thing a babyproofing for a sixteen month old. But after a few necessary modifications, both babies were able to run free.

Conrad, it's up and over when you want to sneak out.

Look out, Viet Nam.

The rest of the day was spent like our first day in the country, with lots of coffee and walking for no other reason than to not fall asleep. Dinner was at one of the reliably delicious restaurants in our neighborhood. The owners had already fallen head over heels for Mimi, and they positively lost their mind when we told them that we'd be bringing two babies to their restaurant for the next couple of weeks.

The adult son of the owners walked over to me as his parents played with our kids. He said that his parents tell him daily how much they want him to get married and have kids, and he appreciated us taking the heat off him for a bit.

Nona and Grael did great a great job shaking off the jet lag, but it was an early bedtime for everyone.

The next morning, I rode my bike to the market to buy the day's eggs. Breakfast was an omelette with nothing in it from further than a few miles from our house. Most of the day was spent walking around Hoi An looking for a bike seat for Conrad and a few other essentials. Aimee and I got a bit of satisfaction finding a store that we had been searching for during much of the last week. We got a lead that it may have a can opener for us. It didn't, but at least we could cross one more shop off our list.

Dinner was at another nice neighborhood restaurant. The food was as delicious as we've come to expect, but the conversation was on a different topic. An oversunned couple in their early twenties was sitting across the restaurant from us. We rolled our eyes when they audibly referenced their last trip to Ibiza, and we made fun of their cliche'd stuffed backpacks and near-comical thriftiness after spending at least $1,000 on airfare to get here. But really, we were making fun of earlier versions of ourselves. As we bounced our babies on our laps, we recalled previous trips to Argentina, Nicaragua, and Paris, and imagined the judgement that we'd be getting from young Myles, Aimee, Nona, and Grael. "Arranging a car from the airport? I could get there on the back of a motorcycle for a dollar. And your house has its own toilet? What a waste of money."

I imagined telling earlier me that the real adventure isn't making your way through a developing country on a dollar a day. It's making your way through at any price with 20 pounds of human strapped to your chest. We'll just try to make sure that Mimi's not the one with diarrhea on this trip.

Donuts, gravestones, and a water buffalo

Donuts change everything. Now that we have a go-to location for baked goods, our breakfast routine just lengthened quite a bit.

Our American baby holding a Danish pastry from a French bakery in central Viet Nam.

We had a casual morning around town before I had to go off to work. It was such a treat to sip on a cup of coffee, grab a donut, and eat a bowl of bun all before I headed off to Da Nang. Aimee and I always appreciate the pace of a rural village.

Mimi was a little fussy, and the potential reasons why are a bit more diverse out here. Did she pick up an undiscovered virus from one of the four million people passing through the Tokyo airport? Did she get bit by some tropical insect? Is she struggling through food poisoning? Jet lag? Oh. Just teething. That's right, she's still doing that. We're comfortable with risk, but that doesn't mean we don't worry. But it's not like Mimi is the first baby to cross the street in Saigon or digest a bowl of pho.

This was actually a very liberating realization as we were deciding whether or not to go on this trip. There are millions of babies born in Viet Nam every year, and their health statistics aren't much different than ours. Being a baby is risky, being a baby in Viet Nam is not significantly more so.

On an entirely different note, I'm sure you've noticed how nice the photos have been on this trip. Aimee has become quite the amateur photographer, and she has been taking most of the photos for the blog (at least the good ones). And she couldn't have picked a better location to practice photography. She was actually scheduled to go out on a sunset photo tour led by a professional photographer today, but we had to reschedule.  I'm excited to see what comes out of it next week.

But since she couldn't go on the organized tour, we had a little sunset walk of our own. Without fail, going down any side street in this town reveals breathtaking views and ancient buildings. The historical density of Hoi An means that the vast majority of ancient buildings aren't even on the tourist maps. They're serving as homes, shops, or just empty buildings. It really is something else to see. On this particular street (again, chosen at random), we saw a hundred year old Chinese cemetery, a thatched roof home, and a water buffalo. None of this is in any guidebook.

Mimi enjoyed being out past her bed time.

Until she didn't.

Just another day in paradise.

Settling in

With our expat status now Facebook official, it was time to start our transition from travelers to temporary residents, starting with some groceries. As amazing as the food here has been, we can't eat out for every meal. Aimee had bought some eggs at a corner market when I was in Da Nang, and even a simple meal cooked at home was a nice treat.

Our landlord, Ha, brought some bikes over for us to use while we're here. And when I said that most of our checked luggage was diapers, that was a slight exaggeration. It was diapers and a bicycle seat.

You're welcome, internet.

Fittingly, our first bike trip in Viet Nam was to the market. Our first home-cooked breakfast inspired us to round out our pantry options. First necessity: coffee. Thankfully, our house was already stocked with the pour over devices everyone uses here. We just needed the beans, so we picked up a bag of Trung Nguyen! The No. 1 Coffee! (as per the cafe umbrellas on nearly every street corner in this country).

This is as good of a time as any to mention Viet Nam's food patriotism. We've seen one Starbucks in this country, two KFCs, and no McDonalds. It really is amazing, and it speaks volumes about how much pride the Vietnamese take in their national cuisine, as they should.

There are also no grocery stores in Hoi An, a city of 120,000. Let that sink in for a second. The city has nearly twice the population of Flagstaff, Arizona, and it doesn't have a single supermarket. Food starts out on the nearby farmland, gets tossed onto the back of a motor scooter, and is brought to one of the several community markets in town. Every. Single. Meal. Granted, the no-supermarket charm wore off a bit during hour two of our mid-day bike ride to find a goddamn can opener. But it's still a very good thing.

So we jumped in with both feet and went to the market. We traded smiles from our baby and small amounts of cash for all types of produce, recognizable and not.

We weren't brave enough to buy a still-clucking meat item at the market, but we vowed that we would before we left this town. Otherwise satisfied that we had enough food to cook a proper meal (at least in volume, if not taste), we headed back to cook our conquest. A nation of grandmothers serving up homecooked amazingness had set our taste bar impossibly high, but our meal was entirely edible.

The next day, we made our own coffee for the first time in two weeks. As idylic as our neighborhood cafe is, sipping a decent cup of coffee while your baby is still in her sleep sack is its own special kind of luxury.

Around 11am, we experienced our first Vietnamese power outage. I have no idea how freqently these occur, but I do know that not 24 hours prior, I had commented to Aimee about how nice it is that our little village seems to have a stable power grid. Why would I say that out loud?

By 11:15, we realized how different this trip would be if our house didn't have air conditioning. And how much shorter it would be.

As hot as it was outside, our de-airconditioned house wasn't much better. So we took out the bikes to complete the rest of our errands. Clothes hangers: check. Towels: sort of. Still no goddamn can opener.

But what we did find was donuts! Seriously! Baked goods are generally the first thing Aimee and I start missing when we leave the developed world. But if there is any good that came out of French occupation, it's pastries.

The power was still out when we got back, so we locked up the bikes and went around the corner for some more amazing food. Since most of the street vendors are self-contained with a cooler and a propane tank, the power outage didn't affect them. Not-suprise #1: The food was amazing. Not-surprise #2: They loved our baby.

The power came back on around 2. Thank God. Rounding out our transition to residents, we did our laundry in some type of high-tech super contraption that might make its way to the U.S. in another 10-15 years.

Not content to fully give up our tourist-ness, we biked down to the beach for dinner. It was exactly the type of family run, thatch-roofed seafood shack that we were hoping for. The food was amazing.

And they loved our baby.

Work

Yep. Just another day at the office.

White-clad nurses carrying vaccines into the Da Nang hospital.

Believe it or not, this really is a work trip. A large part of my medical training has revolved around caring for people with chronic diseases in rural areas. The University and my residency program are sponsoring me to put my training into practice, and they let me pick essentially any place in the world. Aimee and I knew we wanted to visit Southeast Asia, and we also wanted a place that we could bring a baby to (and not feel like terrible parents).

Central Viet Nam seemed like the perfect fit, so I emailed the US Embassy here several months ago to introduce myself and ask if they knew any doctors that I could work with. They replied with the contact information of nearly every licensed physician in the region. I pretty much went down the list and cold called places that looked like they might be a good fit. Everyone I got ahold of was very receptive, so I chose from the sites that I thought I might actually be able to help with.

Global health is a tricky beast. Well-intentioned physicians from economically advanced nations have been trying to improve the health of people overseas since at least the 1600s, likely earlier. Some projects lend themselves nicely to drop-in medicine (infectious disease outbreaks, hurricane relief), but most don't. The good news is that fewer people worldwide are succumbing to infectious disease, complications of childbirth, or injuries. But now they are increasingly suffering from complications of diabetes, or having strokes in their 40s or 50s. Health systems in the developing world aren't set up to handle this, and the World Health Organization has made improving their capacity to care for these Non-commuicable (non-infectious) diseases a major priority.

One of the major reasons that I chose the project in Hoi An is that it was conceived and is being managed by a local physician. It's far too common for, again, well-intentioned organizations to steamroll over the local health system to put something in place that they feel is better. These new, "better" systems tend to fall apart as soon as the outside money dries up. But this project is locally driven, with backing from a US Non-profit and technical support from the World Health Organization. I will be working to help quantify exactly how many people are affected by non-communicable diseases, and lead training sessions for local physicians. Our early goal is to perform the research that will show the severity of the problem, and start the discussion about what can be done to help mitigate it. After that is done, our local partners can apply to the Vietnamese Health Ministry for long term funding and support.

But that will happen over the next several weeks to months. First, I need to get to Da Nang. When I first approached the organization that I'll be working with, their office was in Hoi An. They moved to the regional capital of Da Nang a few months ago to better communicate with the local health officials. By then, I had already rented a house in Hoi An, which might have been a problem if Hoi An wasn't so unbelievable pretty or if this wasn't my commute.

So I hailed a cab and made my way to Da Nang. I met with Dr. Quang, my counterpart here, and we mapped out our goals for the next several weeks and beyond. He speaks beautiful English, but he appreciated that I had made an effort to learn some Vietnamese before I came here (thank you, Rosetta Stone). We were also joined by Matthias, our German college student intern. It was a great first meeting, and I'm excited about what we can accomplish.

After our meeting, I grabbed a cup of ca phe and some bun on the street corner, and started to feel a bit less like a tourist. I also felt like there's no way I'm ever wearing a long sleeve shirt and slacks again in this country.

When I arrived in Hoi An that afternoon, Aimee and I compared notes on how we spent our first day apart. Not surprisingly, Aimee's day was essentially a continuous stream of people falling in love with our baby.

All in all, not a bad first day of work.

Hoi An

Well rested and refreshed, we set off for a cup of ca phe sua da. And really, every cup of coffee is amazing in this country, so we didn't need to look very far. But there actually happens to be an unbelievable hidden gem not twenty feet from our house. Seriously, no sign, all locals, right on a riverbank. This place is one tripadvisor review away from being in the next Anthony Bourdain special.

After a delightful cup of coffee in an unfathomably beautiful surrounding, we headed out for breakfast. It's as absolute of a rule as any that you don't eat breakfast and drink coffee at the same place anywhere in Vietnam. The coffee shops make coffee, the food carts serve food. Seems reasonable enough.

As is the norm around here, most streets are dotted with women selling bun, pho, and banh mi from their small carts. So we picked one at random, sat down in a tiny plastic chair, and hoped for the best. And like every single meal we've had in this country, it was outstanding. It didn't hurt that a customer had fallen in love with our baby, and took it upon herself to translate and order on our behalf. Whatever she asked for was amazing.

As an aside, in the US, I rarely taste my food before adding copious amounts of hot sauce. Not so in Vietnam. Here, I taste the food three or four times, think very carefully about what I'm about to do, and taste it again. Then, if I'm feeling particularly adventurous, maybe I'll fan a little bit of the vapors coming off the hot sauce bowl in the general direction of my food. Spice is on a different scale here.

We didn't have much of an agenda that day, but we wanted to explore the city. Hoi An has three distinct regions: the historic old town, the farmland, and the beach. By no coincidence, we're renting a house between old town and the beach. Today we'd explore old town.

The calm residential streets of our neighborhood gave way to a bit more bustling as we got closer to old town. We navigated through dozens of tailor shops (more on that later), and found ourselves in the middle of another massive market to rival Saigon's Ben Tanh. It was nuts. Nearly without warning, we were surrounded by headless fish, live prawns, exotic fruits, and bushels of rice and noodles. Absolutely amazing.

But we weren't there for groceries, so we moseyed on through to a corner cafe. Not surprisingly, fresh fruit juices are big here. If the watermelon and mango juice that we ordered was the only thing we could drink for the rest of our lives, we'd be ok with that.

Dinner was at a small neighborhood restaurant, one of many near us that the owners live above. It's not at all uncommon to see grandma eating at a back table or a young child playing in the corner. We picked one of them at random, and again had one of the best meals of our lives. It was based around cao lao, Hoi An's take on the ubiquitous rice noodle soups of Viet Nam. Cao lao is a bit more savory than traditional pho, and reflects the Chinese influence on the region.

Also, not surprisingly, we had free babysitting service during the meal.

That's the owner's four year old daughter showing Mimi one of her videos. Seriously, Vietnam, too much.

As we were wrapping up our meal, we met a family from New Zealand with a couple of young kids of their own. We made the international traveling-with-baby head nod and introduced ourselves. They were going to be living in Hoi An for nine months. The mom worked for an online company, and could work remotely from anywhere. They chose well.

There are actually quite a few Expats in the region doing the same thing. Despite having a Unesco World Heritage declaration and one of the planet's nicest beaches nearby, Hoi An has a very livable feel to it. We picked this city after about ten minutes of online research, but couldn't have found a better place to live for the next seven weeks.

As we were walking out, the NZ family invited us to join the Hoi An Expat facebook group. We had arrived.

Home

Da Nang is the major capital city in the region, but we'll be living in Hoi An, a small historic town about 30 minutes outside of it. As is our habit lately, we prearranged a car and driver to get us there. We exchanged a few pleasantries in broken Vietnamese and English, but it was otherwise a quiet drive.

Our driver took us through bustling Da Nang, into rice paddies and farmland, and then through the historic and beautiful streets of Hoi An. The car stopped suddenly, and the driver said, "ok." Ok. Seems like we should get out. The neighborhood seemed about right, and I recognized the address from the online reservation.

So we got out of the car and gathered our luggage. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to pay the driver or my landlord for arranging the ride. So I took out the Vietnamese equivalent of $20 to pay for the ride, and he just sort of looked at me awkwardly. He reached into his pockets and pulled out a wad of bills. Ok, we're getting somewhere. But then he placed an equivalent amount of money in smaller bills in my hand. Ah, he thinks I want change. We stumbled through a few awkward phrases, and I gathered that the cab was already paid for by my landlord. So Aimee hoisted up Mimi and I grabbed our suitcases. We turned around as we walked away to see if he looked like he was waiting for payment, and he was already gone.

Alright, so we were on the side of the street in a small Vietnamese village with a scribbled down address and no cell phone service. My baby was tired, my wife was hungry, and I was lost. What could go wrong? A couple on a motorbike saw us standing there cluelessly, and pointed down a side street. I wrote them off, thinking that there was some other hotel that they thought we were looking for. Our house number was 144/2, and the building we were in front of was 144. I knew we were close, but I couldn't find the back house. I circled around 144 about five times, hoping that a new door would appear like some sort of Harry Potter house. No dice. I rang the bell in front of 144 and said Xin Chao (Hello)? Ha (the name of our landlord)? The old lady who answered gave me a kind smile and just shook her head.

Ok, maybe the motorbike couple knew what they were talking about. We walked down the side street, and not three steps in was a house that looked familiar from the online listing and an open door welcoming us in.  Xin Chao? Ha?

Myles?

Oh thank God.

We were home! After five days of travel, including two in the air and one on the rails, we had finally made it to the house we'd be living in for the next six weeks. And it was lovely. Spacious, inviting, and reasonably cool. What more could we ask for?

Ha showed us around the house, and we melted into the couch. We checked out our neighborhood and grabbed a lovely dinner from a small restaurant set up in the owner's side yard. We unpacked a bit of our luggage, put our daughter to sleep, and crashed into bed. It was good to be home.

War, trains, no ticks

Well, I woke up at 3am today. At least that's a little better.

Our breakfast today was yet more unbelievably tasty bun and ca phe in a coffee shop picked at random. This country can't help but knock it out of the park every time.

It was our last day in Ho Chi Minh City, and we went back to the hotel room to pack up. No small accomplishment, since Mimi was pulling out all the stops to keep us from leaving.

By the way, I was going to promise not to fill this trip's blog with baby photos, but there's no way I could keep up my end of the bargain.

With our bags packed up and stored at the hotel, we made our way over to the War Remnants Museum. As an American visitor, it's impossible to separate Vietnam the country from Vietnam the war. Whether we like it or not, our understanding of the war frames every experience we have in the country. But Vietnam is so much more than the war. And even as far as wars go, ours was just one of many. Before the 17 year American war was the 25 year French war for independence. And even before that was 200 years of cold and hot wars with China.

Vietnam's fortune has also been its peril. The country is located in a critical access point along both sea and land routes between China, Russia, Europe, and the Americas. It has been, and continues to be, the critical access point for nearly every type of international exchange. Because of that, it has been the lust object of foreign powers for centuries. But as nearly a millennia of conflict has proven, Vietnam is as unconquerable as it is desirable. Vietnam has always be an amorphous region that only in the last century could be described as a nation-state with a defined boundary. Before that, it was more of a loose collection of ruling families on the outskirts of China's southern border. In fact, the name Vietnam (or more accurately Viet Nam) loosely descends from the Chinese words meaning The Southern Others. It's essentially the Wild West of Asia, and very little has changed.

I'm (admittedly slowly) working my way through a semi-academic book about the history of Vietnam, and it is beyond fascinating. Here's a relevant paragraph.

Today, geopolitical tensions are again on the rise in the waters off Vietnam's coast. For the first time since the Ming recalled their armada from the Indian Ocean in 1433, the Chinese are actively seeking to expand their naval presence in the Pacific. The United States is in conversations with its former enemies in Vietnam with how best to respond. The Russians have taken a renewed interest in Vietnam and Cam Ranh Bay since the end of the Cold War, and, worried by growing Chinese naval power, the Japanese are also improving their ties with the Vietnamese. Vietnam remains to this day at the center of intense global rivalries, and it's tempting to view the country and its history in terms of the conflicts of the 'great powers'.

In other words, as much as we view our war with Vietnam as a transformative event for both countries (and it was), it was just the most recent in a long line of conflicts that has come to define the region.

I'm realizing how little I knew about the buildup to the Vietnam war (and the region in general). I have to remind myself that a single Chinese dynasty (Han) saw the Greeks, Romans, and Jesus all come and go. We're talking some serious history here, and I think we covered it in a day and a half in high school.

So, with that historical context in mind, we went to what is now called the War Remnants Museum. It's housed in a former CIA facility, and was once called the Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression. And even that was a toned down version of the original name: Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes. Even by its own admission, the exhibits are quite one sided, but it does unarguably show the horrors that one side was capable of.

It was heavy, to put it mildly. And the images were made even more painful by the obvious parallels to current events.

Woah. I started this post with my baby dancing in the living room. Things got heavy fast.

There. That's better. We headed back to the hotel for one last dip in the pool before heading out to the train station. We had tickets for an overnight train to Da Nang.

There is something Romantic about all train stations, and especially so in developing countries. The babies running around, the phone card stalls, and the apathetic information desk staffers all come together in a charming cocktail that gets me every time.

And that was before we even saw the train. Once we walked out to the platform, I fell even more in love with this country. The 1960s train cars were straight out of a Wes Anderson film, and the night sky melted away all time and responsibilities.

But I snapped back to reality when I realized that I had intentionally locked Aimee and myself in an 8'x8' cell with a nine month old child.

I've made a terrible mistake.

But thankfully Mimi went to sleep after just a few minutes of rumbling down the track. So Aimee and I spent the evening looking out the window of our car, first at the lights of old Saigon, and then into the houses of people living right along the tracks. We saw people watching TV, sitting around with their family, and eating on the floor. It was a surprisingly intimate look into the lives of Saigon's working class. And just like it did with Mimi, the rumbling train lulled Aimee and I to sleep shortly after.

Until midnight. Aimee and I both woke up absolutely freezing. As in literally 32 degrees. We couldn't tell if this was some type of equipment failure or the reward for renting out a "luxury coach," but Aimee and I were freezing our asses off. We picked up our daughter out of her portable crib and alternated who took turns keeping her warm (although she seemed to care far less than we did). Aimee commented that she went from "I wonder if they wash these blankets" to "At least I don't see any ticks" to "Good God, I need another one." Seriously, for a country that averages 88 degrees at 98 percent humidity, I'm pretty sure our train car used up the entire cooling capacity in the country that night. It was nuts.

Our shivering was mercifully broken up with a few minutes of sleep every hour or so, and we couldn't have been happier when the coffee cart came around the next morning.

The rest of the journey was calm and pleasant.

She will remember none of this.

Well at least we're prepared.

For a loose nail.

Hey, remember the time you suckers stayed up all night to keep me warm? That was hilarious!

Hey, Giraffe, I'm telling a story here.

Not funny?! Not funny?! I'll show you not funny.

Listen. I'm sorry, Giraffe. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night.

The train made a handful of stops at quaint rural stations. Not having any idea where we were, and not understanding the staticky Vietnamese coming out of the overhead speaker, we had to base our departure on time of day and level of activity.

We knew we were scheduled to arrive in Da Nang at 12:30, and that it was a relatively big city. So when we noticed a lot of commotion as we pulled into a station around 1:00, that felt like a good time to disembark.

Nailed it.

Keep walking

Well, the upshot to jet lag is that our days start early. I popped awake at 2am, followed soon after by Mimi and Aimee. And after several hours lounging around the hotel room, we were still on the streets of HCMC by 6am. We watched the city wake up over another amazing cup of coffee on the street corner.

Our destination that morning was Ben Tranh market. When you think of Asian markets, you think of Ben Tranh. Fish getting their heads cut off, clucking poultry running beneath your feet, exotic fruit, alluring and unidentifiable cooked foods. And that's just the first row of stalls. Getting there by 7, we were able to watch the vendors set up in a bit of relative calm before things really got going.

Inside the center of the market were a few food stalls with pho, bun, banh mi, and the other usual South Vietnamese staples. We sat down at one of them and ate an unbelievably tasty bowl of bun while the vendor predictably swooned over our baby. She kept handing us increasingly exotic food items for Mimi to try, and her obviously good intentions were hard to resist. At this point, it would be physiologically impossible for Mimi to have even a single food allergy.

We spent the next hour or two wandering the streets of old Saigon. Morning rush hour in that city is essentially one near death experience after another. Or at least it seems that way. In reality, there is an unwritten set of laws governing the traffic flow. Motorbikes weave through a sea of oncoming traffic, busses thread the needle between a few inch gap of taxis, and bicycles zig zag through it all. It really is amazing.

The advice we were given to cross the street was "keep walking, and don't change direction." And as crazy as the traffic flow is, that seems to work. Everyone is keenly paying attention to the road, and makes way for smaller traffic like a school of fish parting around some seaweed. Our mantra for walking the streets was "don't look, keep walking, keep walking, keep walking." If you do, you cross the street. If you don't, the traffic monster senses weakness and traps you in the middle of the street, or worse.

By this point, we had been up for 5 hours, and the city was starting to get quite warm.

We get it, man.

We needed a beer. It was 8am. But thankfully, Aimee had the courage to order us some. They were more than worth the funny looks.

We made a slight detour to visit the US Consulate. It had previously been the US Embassy in South Vietnam, and was the main evacuation site in the frantic final days of the war. Aimee and I had watched a couple of great documentaries before we left, and wanted to see the location in person. But it's still a working consulate with high fences and armed guards who don't take kindly to loitering or photography. So instead of me inserting a photo here, I'll make a film recommendation. Watch Last Days in Vietnam. It's on Netflix, and more than worth your time. The film is a relatively apolitical documentary that chronicles the chaos of the days leading up to the fall of Saigon. It's as thrilling as any fiction movie.

By 10am, we were exhausted and needed a nap. Like most of our naps these days, two hours felt like two days, and we again had to force ourselves to go outside. Our new mantra was "It's 1pm, it's 1pm, it's 1pm." to manually override our very confused circadian rhythms. We dragged ourselves to another coffee shop, and again hopped in the pool to keep ourselves awake. And just like the night before, I grabbed some $0.80 takeout that rivaled any five star restaurant in the States. I think we're going to make it.