Sai Gon. December 16, 2001
Have just spent lots of time over the weekend eating good French food with dear French friends and working on improving Chuong’s (my) new apartment. I carried a chair up to the third (Asian third is like European third which is American Fourth) floor even though the cab driver didn’t think I could do it. Hell, I used to lug the mountain bike all over New York up and down the subway stairs (why does one take subway when one has a bike? Ask a NYC biker in training). I can carry a chair up a few flights of stairs.

The ugliness in the apartment is slowly subsiding with small improvements. Hopefully by week’s end, I’ll be able to move in, although I still have much to do before I go to Australia.

Vietnam is funny right now because there are Christmas decorations everywhere. Although there are quite a lot of Catholics here, almost all Vietnamese celebrate Christmas for fun and they are sooo un-P.C. about it all – they don’t know about dreidels and Hanukkah here. But it’s odd to see Christmas trees and garlands while it’s still in the upper 80’s and we’re all in shorts.

Kim and I are getting the details ironed out for our trip to Australia. We’re going to try to drive up the coast, go to a rain forest, do anything cool that we encounter and head to New Zealand. I’m also going to squeeze in a trip to Bangkok in the beginning of my trip, and spend two days there. So cool. I can’t wait.