Booting Nam

Sewer foot upon arrival in Hanoi. Cankles from the Mekong Delta. Vietnam slowly and unexpectedly won me over despite being rough on my feet.

The natural beauty of Halong Bay and Sapa in the north, the warmth of (most) of the locals and the ever constant hilarity of fellow travelers.


(View from massive cave)


(View from top of hill climb)


(It's blurry because I'm kayaking so fast, not because the elder Israeli woman taking the photo is new to digital cameras)


(Sunset in the Bay)


(Sapa's rice terraces)

There were the gender-coordinated ponchoed family at the My Son ruins outside Hoi An.


(Blue is for boys and pink for girls)

The Norwegian couple who insisted on picking up my Tiger tab. And the trio of insanely gorgeous fellas at Chrissy whose passports spanned Japan, Israel and the U.K.

My favourite touching moment tragically wasn't with one of them - menstruation's a bitch - but when a nationality-undefined Asian who upon spotting my Mekong moz swollen foot dashed off and returned with a green mystery medicine to soothe the itch.



Tomorrow I'm flying out of Saigon to Phuket, Thailand to meet a teacher friend from Chetwynd. Wow, am I ready for a familiar face!

"I don't know where I'm going, but I know what I've lost" Joel Plasket

I'm developing an insecurity complex about my invented boyfriend. Invented to ward off advances from locals claiming to have a preference for big (read: tall) western women, they're perplexed why he isn't accompanying me.

"He has to work," I offer.

"Maybe he don't really love you," is a common response. "Maybe he think you too fat," one was bold enough to suggest.

When probed for further information about him, it's never the same man twice. There was Lorn, a 30-year-old organic farmer. Richard, a 40-year-old playing the markets with more money than he knew what to do with. A gracefully aging ski bum. A young snappy forester from down east. A workaholic geologist learning Portuguese.

I have borrowed snippets from my favourite former fellas to casually and temporarily construct an as-needed relationship. As I quickly smile and pay tribute to what and who was, it's a sobering reminder of one of the costs of snowbirding at 25.

Loss of romantic relationships is where the grieving only begins. Away for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving with a dynamic, extended-definition of family that swells and contracts holiday to holiday, I cheat myself out of deeper relationships on the genetic front.

What used to be hours and hours of gossip, concert going, hoe toes with my girlfriends and uni pub nights that seemingly never ended has now been reduced to an insufficient lunch, drink, coffee between my work and travel laps.

Maybe that comfortable ease of daily life can't be regained over the short course of a meal, or an evening of mindless TV watching, or even an all-night gab sesh with the girls over too many bottles of wine. But, I'll still continue to make the time and effort for these friends and family that make returning to where I started so easy.