It’s 8 o’clock on Friday night. It’s raining and blowing so hard I can barely see across the street and there’s no interval between the lightning flashes and the earth shaking thunder. I’m safe inside my apartment but trying to imagine what it might have been like for a 19 year old grunt 50 miles south of Danang in 1968?

This isn’t a creative writing exercise – I met that 19 year old boy today. He dropped out of school at 16 and his father put him right to work on the family farm, but he saw the writing on the wall and volunteered for the draft. Less than a year later he was on the ground near My Tam with an M-16 in his hands. That was 41 years ago. read more

Walking into the Saigon Maternity Hospital, or any other hospital in Saigon, is not like entering any hospital I’ve ever been to. There is no clear signage leading to the admissions or entry area. There are hundreds of people milling about and the doorways and stairways leading in and out are crowded with people standing, sitting, or drifting around. Enter anywhere and you’ll find the corridors lined with people sitting where they can, on chairs or on the floor. Families come to the hospital to be with their sick or injured family members. They come and they stay. read more

It’s Sunday morning and I’m hanging out, sipping my latte, and reading the International Herald Tribune at one of the Gloria Jean’s Coffee outlets in Saigon. The scene is familiar if you’re a coffee buff. There are some small tables and there are groupings of other more comfortable chairs in the corners of this fresh, modern space. There is floor to ceiling glass on two sides of the place so customers can watch the traffic outside, and there are three welcoming baristas behind the counter. read more

If there was any doubt in my mind that we live in an interconnected global society, today would have expelled it. I woke up at 6am and turned on KPLU-FM, my local NPR station at home in Seattle. Here, it is streamed live and I get it via the website. At 6am here it is 4pm in Seattle, so I get All Things Considered in the morning and Morning Edition at night. Upside down but I’m a day ahead of Seattle time wise.

At 8 o’clock I walked to my favorite neighborhood bakery, Tous Les Jours. They make great baguettes and croissants. It’s hard to tell you’re not in France as you tear the croissant apart and the buttery flakes stick to your fingers. But, it’s not France. There are many things French in Saigon. After all, the French were here for 100+ years. But the kicker is that Tous Les Jours is owned by Koreans and many of the staff are Korean-Vietnamese. I got my croissant and a very good latte and went upstairs to a pleasant open space where the other patrons were enjoying their pastries and working on their laptops. Most places in Saigon have free wi-fi, so every place is a work place. read more

The expatriate community is pretty tight all over the world. We are the foreigners, usually westerners, who work in countries other than our own. You can be an Expat in the Europe but it’s really in Third World countries that the name sticks and has meaning.

When your skin color or size makes you an object of curiosity you know you’re not in Kansas. What seems to happen then is that you bond with the other Expats because you’re all in the same boat. Last night we were literally in the same boat – a 3 hour cruise on the Saigon River hosted by EuroCham, the European Chamber of Commerce. read more