Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Now is as good a time as ever to get back to the basics. By now, as you may have heard, there's a global pandemic endangering the lives of people with compromised respiratory systems (like my 99.5 year old grandfather and our nearly-six year old nephew) and the economies of, well, basically everywhere. To date, our experience has been very different than most of our peers in America. When we arrived in Singapore in mid-February the country was already mobilized to contain the risks, mainly through personal hygiene but also social distancing. In Cambodia and Vietnam, where many people wear masks on a daily basis because of pollution, our guides told us that the biggest change was that tourism was way down, mostly because the Chinese were barred from traveling. So over the last two months, this has been an everyday concern for us as we have traveled between and within countries in Asia. Our kids have gotten used to washing their hands many, many times a day and occasionally ...

The influence of Chinese culture has grown as we've moved north through Vietnam, as we were told it would. Upon arrival, we were told it was an auspicious day: The eighth day of the lunar calendar, the first day of the month of March and a Sunday. As we drove in from the airport, we saw cars - even those traveling on the highway - festooned with flowers. And I mean hundreds of flowers in elaborate patterns! When we went for a walk around the nearby lake (a novelty in the middle of this crowded part of a crowded city), everywhere we saw people dressed as if for prom, or a wedding but really just for the eighth/first; I haven't yet found out why but the dressed up people were almost all wearing black and white. I'm sorry I took no pictures of this but here are some shots from our walk. We passed this about three-quarters of our way through the one mile loop around the lake. Henry was very eager to reach it. Lily's "12 on 6" face was inspired by ...

Saying goodbye to Hoi An and our guide, Luong The last post described the first half of our time in Hoi An. The two themes of the second half of the week are beach and clothes. Hoi An is famous for its custom clothing industry. We learned from our guide that many aspects of Hoi An's development are attributed to its role as a significant port for hundreds of years. Food and other aspects have been heavily influenced by the interactions that have stemmed from this. Today, many tourists come to Hoi An to have handmade clothes produced at a fraction of retail. Our guide told us about one of the stores ("the best one!") and we followed her instructions. Step 1 in the process is to have your measurements taken, to pick out fabric and to provide a picture or model of the garment you want. Roughly 24 hours (or more) later, you return for step 2. Here, you try on the first iteration of your clothes and identify any needed adjustments. Afterall, if you produce a full sui...