I’m in all kinds of shock since I got back to Seattle a week ago. Weather shock – 50F instead of 90F. Clutter shock – aware of all the stuff that fills our condo as opposed to the spareness of our apartment in Saigon. Food shock – the amount of fat on or in everything and the portion sizes offered. Shopping shock – noticing the number of shiny new shopping bags people are carrying out of downtown stores. If consumer confidence is down in the US I can’t see it. Traffic shock – how aggressive and unforgiving drivers are and how fast they go compared to the slow zen-like movement on the streets of Saigon. And, culture shock – how few people make eye contact or say hello in contrast with the friendliness of the people on the streets of Saigon. read more

Ben Thanh Market, in the heart of the heart of downtown, is the best known of the public markets in Saigon. It is a must-have-total-immersion experience for everyone from the family shopper to the high end tour group. The market is enclosed in one gigantic structure and covers one square block. I’m not sure what the roof construction is, but the last time Marilynn and I were there it was raining so hard outside that there was a heavy mist inside.

The market catches your eye immediately as you approach. The outer stalls facing the street are the flower sellers – dozens of them. If you enter from the north you are immediately thrown back to the ageless, timeless, markets of the world and an dizzying array of sights, sounds, and smells. The ladies in their conical hats squat beside basins of live eels, octopus, crabs and flopping mackerel. Behind them are the fruit and vegetable vendors with their tables full of carefully arranged produce. Everyone walking through stops to take a picture of the art. The color, the geometry, the orderliness stop the eye and hold it. read more

In the 1960’s and ‘70s I spent some time in Beirut. It was the financial center of the Middle East. The French were there. The Brits were there. The Americans were there. And the sheiks of the Middle East used it as an escape from the rigid rules of their own kingdoms.

Beirut was mostly about oil. There was none there, but it was where it was traded and where the revenue was exchanged for goods and services. One company dominated the Middle East in those days – Aramco – the Arabian American Oil Company. It operated exclusively in Saudi Arabia, and Aramco compounds, the small cities where the employees lived, were modern, complete, walled, and self sustaining cities within the boundaries of Saudia. Nice houses and apartments, supermarkets, swimming pools, movie theaters, and clubs. You could live in an Aramco compound for years and never see how ordinary Saudi citizens lived. read more

I’ve spent a lot of my adult life traveling and more often than not it has been solo. Sometimes that was by choice and sometimes it came with the job. When I was 25 I spent 6 months wandering around Europe with my guitar and for 19 years, as a Pan Am pilot, I was on my own for dinner in strange locations at least half of every month. I learned how to do things on my own early and that probably made it seem normal even if it wasn’t.

Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to deal with so much solo time and how to think about eating out as a solitary traveler in a strange new place. Those questions seem a little odd to me, but that may be because I’ve done a lot of it. I learned to like the quiet time that lets me savor new places, new tastes and people watching without the distraction of other voices and other eyes. I do like traveling with Marilynn because her eyes are seeing foreign places for the first time, and it adds a layer of newness to places I’ve already seen. But I still like going it alone too. read more