I'm Back -- for Good This Time...

...that is until my next foreign adventure. I got home Monday afternoon, in the 38th hour of September 29th (thanks to the International Dateline), and I'm just now ready to rejoin the land of the living. I still have some jet lag and I'm sleeping some very odd hours, but I think I have recovered enough to act -- if not actually be -- cogent.

My trip was terrific, the chance of a lifetime, really. I traveled for three weeks in Vietnam with my friend Minh, who is a native Vietnamese and who, naturally, speaks the language fluently. And there's nothing like seeing a country with someone who is a native of that country. I learned 100 times more about Vietnam's history and culture in three weeks than I learned in the whole 10 months and 23 days (but who's counting) that I spent there in 1968.

We flew into Hanoi for Minh's brother's wedding, we spent two days at Ha Long Bay and finally took a series of three passenger trains south -- first to Hue, then to Nha Trang, and finally to Saigon. While we were in Saigon, we took overnight trips to the beach resort of Vung Tau and to the Mekong Delta, as well as a day trip to Tay Ninh with a stopover at the Tunnels of Cu Chi exhibit -- which I ended up calling "Cong World" (as in Disney World).

I have a lot of pictures and travel stories, which I will be posting on my Vietnam website. It'll take me a while to sort through them and pick out the best ones, but I'll let everyone know when it's available.

While the trip was terrific, it's great to be back. So much has happened in my absence, and I never saw a single news show or read a newspaper while I was gone, so now I'm trying to catch up.