We've settled into Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), and it's not half as hectic as we were expecting. Everyone we talked to said it was worse than Hanoi, but it seems everyone we talked to was smoking something. There are wide sidewalks here, and traffic lights, and a lot less honking of horns. And, we found a supermarket! It was very exciting, after seeing nothing of the sort for weeks. We loaded up on goodies.

I was reading a book I bought in Hoi An called "In Siberia" by Colin Thubron, but I left it in the taxi when we got dropped at our hotel here. The blurb on the jacket reads that this guy was one of our greatest travel writers, which is a load of hooey. But I think I can do a pretty good imitation now of his style of writing, so I will describe our final day in Hoi An as he would:

We slept in on our final day, then camped out under beach umbrella to soak in a last lingering look at the majesty of the wind-swept ocean. The weather began to turn, and Marjorie internalized it; her illness an unhealthy portent for the trip ahead.

The car arrived to take us to the airport. He drove us down a street in the proximity of the hotel that had lurked nearby, invisible to our concious minds, perhaps visible only to those who sprung from the native soil. The road was an artery for the local village; each motorbike a corpuscle, carrying life-giving sustenance to those who dwelled there. Nearly half the houses were painted sky-blue, in defiance of the weather, as if to say to the Fates, do your worst. We will subsume you and rise above.

ESSCH! We're in Ho Chi Minh city. This is supposed to be the tough city, but so far Mark and I find it much more modern, clean, and manageable then Hanoi. Just goes to show......
Went to the War Remnants Museum today. Pretty disturbing stuff. Got stopped by a guy outside one of the halls, who was missing both arms and an eye. He was very pleasant and spoke English very well. He seemed to just want to make conversation and sell some books or postcards, but given the situation and my nationality (which he immediately inquired about) I felt very depressed and manipulated. Mark showed up shortly after I encountered the guy and gave me a graceful exit. The man did nothing wrong, but I still feel so horrible about the encounter. Guilty, is really how I felt. The museum really pushes the crimes the "Americans perputrated against the Vietnamese". Funny there's no mention of the re-education camps and the way south Vietnamese (ARVN) veterans are still being oppressed here today.
I'm sick again. I've been fighting headaches and the worst reflux of my life the last few days. Not sure what's going on, but I'm ready to be home. Too bad we don't really have one. Priority number one when we get back to S'pore is finding some kind of semi-permanent residence. We had thought about living in some kind of home-share with another expat couple, but I think that idea's been trashed. We need privacy, something I'd love to take for granted after over a month of traveling and living in other people's houses. I'm definitely starting to feel travel fatigue.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!! Marjorie and I are sitting together at the Hoi An Beach Resort, and would like to send our warmest holiday greetings out to all, especially to our families who have been so wonderful for us this year.

Our Christmas wish came true for today; all we did was hang out at the beach, and the pool, and had wonderful weather the whole day. Other highlights of the day:

The next resort down has an elephant named "Darling" that we saw walking up and down the beach all day. We went down and had pina coladas at their bar.

Our hotel has an area of the beach that is free of people harassing you to buy things. It was fabulous.

Marjorie came out of the restroom after dinner tonight with a baby gecko on her shirt.

The weather looked threatening as recently as an hour ago, but now we see a multitude of stars.

Merry Christmas! Our xmas will be rather anticlimatic if the weather here doesn't clear up. We've no presents for each other and no special plans, but we have moved to the Hoi An Beach Resort. Unfortunately it rained all day today, hopefully we'll have better luck tomorrow.
Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday! I miss being a part of it all, but I'm sure this will be a memorable xmas in it's own right.
Very sorry to hear about Joe Strummer's passing. Sucks for us all, but especially for his family this time of year. Mark, I'm sure, is even more depressed than I, as he was a fan of Strummer's recent solo work as well as the Clash.
We are very out of touch with any global news or news of celebrities so we appreciate the updates (thanks Jenn!) about anything that might be important. The English newspaper here is rather bizarre, with an interesting twist on reality, tries to neatly summerize whole societies and such... you know, I'm sure our own papers do that but I don't pick up on it because the generalizations probably fit into my schema. Who knows.
We're here (in Hoi An) until the 26th, then we are off to Ho Chi Minh city/Saigon.

I'm so bummed! One of my musical heroes has died. Joe Strummer -- whose two recent solo albums are two of my favorite albums of the last few years -- has, like phony Beatlemania, bitten the dust. What a Christmas eve downer. Before even hearing the news, I was planning on coming in here and quoting this bit from "Straight To Hell", just because it's relevant to our current time and place. I guess it's now a tribute.

When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh City
Kiddie say "Papapapapapasan, take me home.
See me got photo- photo- photograph of you and mamamamamamasan,
of you and mamamamamamasan."
"Let me tell you 'bout your blood, bamboo kid:
It ain't Coca Cola, it's rice."

Three Shirts, Two Pairs of Shoes, One Skirt, One pair of Cari Pants, and a Nightgown later.... I'm finished shopping. It's nice to have new things, but the custom-made experience is not without risk. The skirt I had made yesterday is already sort of falling apart as a result of wearing it out into torrential rain last night with another new shirt which leaked black dye all over the skirt. I frantically washed away at the dye on the skirt when we got back to the hotel and now the material is fraying(and the dye's still on it). Oh well. Also the shoes I had made look pretty cheap, but what do you expect for $20.00. I had Manola Blahnik dreams only to settle for something that looks like it's from Payless.
The weather has been very rainy for the last 24hours. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow will be nicer as we'll be moving to the beach resort then. It doesn't feel at all like Xmas here. Part of me really misses all the shopping and stress and Holiday specials on TV. I'm a bit homesick still, but things have definitely been easier for us here in Hoi An the last couple of days.
We've made our reservations to leave for Ho Chi Minh City/Siagon on the evening of the 26th from Danang. Hopefully we'll have time for a boat tour of the Mekong Delta.

We happened into the same restaurant last night as Helen, our fellow traveler from Australia who we saw several times in Hanoi. So we dined and chatted into the night; she's a hoot. Hi Helen!

The long walk back at night, in the rain, was creepy; there was not a cyclo driver to be found, so we had to hoof it. Besides the "suburban" location, we realized our current hotel has these disadvantages:

1. The air conditioning doesn't work (despite our insistence on a room with AC).

2. Roosters. I've come to hate the filthy buggers. The myth that they crow at dawn is purely anecdotal; they crow all night. The fact that I had pho ga (chicken soup) for lunch today is just a coincidence, I assure you.

We've switched to a cheaper hotel to save some dong; the Phu Thinh II is almost as nice (pool, AC, cable TV, nice bed, but no bathtub) and is about a third the cost of the Hoi An Hotel. It's a bit of a walk out of town though.

I've left Marjorie to her shopping; custom-made clothing is addictive. She already has a blouse, a skirt, and two pairs of shoes, with eyes on at least two more blouses and a purse. We both kind of wish that we had come here first, with empty suitcases.

Another very Communist-seeming thing here -- there's a green army truck that rides around making stern-sounding announcements out of a large loudspeaker mounted to the cab. I have no idea what they're saying, but it sounds very Big Brother-y.

We're going to go lounge by the pool later; the weather here is fabulous, and our pool looks out over acres and acres of rice paddies.