Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Okay. Take a deep breath. (Unless you assume the face mask on the person next to you is to protect you from them instead of them from you.) It's February 28th and the news of a flulike disease has been spreading faster than the disease itself for more than a month now. I want to write about this at length, in part to document my feelings at this particular moment in time but also to communicate those feelings to spectators who express their concern and curiosity to us on a regular basis. First, please understand that my viewpoint is cynical. Since the beginning of time, news media in any form has had a singular motive: sell. Journalist friends and friends of journalism: I do not speak ill of thee. But if you go to the New York Times website, there has been a flashing red box for weeks announcing breaking news on the subject. Sometimes there is something new to report but mostly there is just a new derivative of the same limited information. But sell, sell, sell means headlines ...

The sign says "Please do not leave your children unattended." We're smiling because, technically speaking, we complied with this rule. Read on for more. On Tuesday (2/25), we were on a bus at 6:30am to the Ho Chi Minh City airport for a short flight to Danang for the next segment of our itinerary. We were glad to be done walking on the semi-existent sidewalks of HCMC.  Without customs to navigate, our arrival in a second Vietnamese airport lacked all the drama of the first. We easily met our guide, boarded a bus and drove about 40 minutes to our hotel in the beach community of Hoi An. Along the way our guide offered interesting commentary on all sorts of tours and activities available to us during our stay. After checking into our hotel, we rode taxis to the old town. Most of old town Hoi An is closed to cars so we had a few blocks to walk from the taxi stand to a restaurant. After eating, which included some local specialities, we began a short walking t...