Mark, Ash, Amelia & Syd: Vietnam!

Here in Korea we recently celebrated children’s day and Buddha’s birthday, which meant VACATION!! When Mark decided to take off work and create a 5 day weekend, we stared at each other for awhile and decided we should go somewhere warm and more importantly somewhere with 100% humidity since Seoul weather has left our lips chapped since December (yes I have even used diaper cream in desperation). The other factor in our decision to take a trip was the ticking clock of Amelia’s second birthday. The “under two flies free” rule on airlines has taken Amelia to far off places like Aruba, Guatemala, Australia, New Zealand (Ethiopia prenatally?) and Sheboygan, Wisconsin. In our quest for cheapness, Mark and I decided to go to Vietnam as a last hurrah for Amelia’s lap child status. In hindsight this may not have been the best way to start or end a trip. Amelia is small for an almost 2 year old but she packs quite a punch with vocal shrillness and raw determination. I also don’t know where Korea was when countries met together to bid on the best flight schedules. Apparently Korea was thrown all the red eye scraps, which when combined with a strange rule to turn on all the lights and wake everyone up 2 hours before landing results in a demented form of torture (who wants peanuts and a coke at 4 am?). Once off the jet way we felt the rush of heat that made us immediately relaxed and move 36 times slower, so slow that Mark’s voice dropped a few octaves. We spent 2 days in Ho Chi Min city/Saigon (Istanbul or Constantinople?) wandering the streets and eating as many mangos as possible before vitamin c intoxication. We went to the reunification palace, learned a lot of history not often mentioned in the US, took a river cruise on the Saigon river and sat on bikes pedaled by other people. Besides the swarms of scooters in the streets (all drivers wearing helmets-public health success!) the one main difference I noticed in Vietnam was the way the people approached Amelia and Sydney. In Korea many people come up to the kids touch their faces, take pictures, give them candy and parental advice but in Vietnam they would actually come and pick them up. You can imagine Amelia’s face when a group of extremely smiley people surrounded her on the street and picked her up in an attempt to squeeze her and pass her around………With Sydney they would grab her leg and smell her baby skin. We took a 40 minute flight up to the beach in Nha Trang to lay around, swim in the pool, get stung by a jellyfish, eat more mango, celebrate mother’s day, sweat and soak up the incredible beauty of Vietnam and our kids laughing a lot. We flew to Korea on a red eye and Mark went right into work with sand still in his hair.