5 Days ago

Early on day two in Vietnam, Erica and I were greeted at our apartment door by two employees of our school. They negotiated the price for our taxi and then sent us on our way for a forty minute drive across town to the school’s headquarters. When it was time to leave, I showed the taxi driver the address that I had copied off a bench outside of our apartment. Apparently the fact that it was engraved in concrete did not make it the actual address of our apartment, which became clear when our taxi driver dropped us off at a Toyota dealership in District 5 of Ho Chi Minh City (my mistake). However, being the optimists that we are, we were enthusiastic about this opportunity to explore a different part of town. We got out our map and walked for a while, accidently stumbling upon a great coffee shop with free internet.

That was a nice distraction and we spent a couple of hours emailing, talking, and drinking coffee and some watery tea drink that they kept refilling. I scanned the map, looking for any road or landmark that might help to determine what district we lived in, to no avail. At this point we know exactly where we are, but have no idea where we live. We discussed our options and decided to venture down the street some more. We called our administrator’s assistant who gave us again the address of the Toyota dealership. Next we called our administrator who said that he would text us our address and then never did. It soon occurred to us that Erica had blisters, I was sweating through my clothing, and we were hungry, cranky and slightly less enthusiastic about seeing new parts of Vietnam’s largest city, population 7, 123, 340.

We decided that we needed to say a few words to our Father and we stopped to do that. Our next course of action was to try to get a taxi to one of the addresses on the business cards we were given. We only saw motorbike taxis and the drivers were eager to take us anywhere. I showed them the address and we put on the helmets. We held hands and said another few quick words to Father and jumped on the back of the motorbikes and headed off into the unknown.

It took about fifteen feet of driving into incoming traffic and darting over into the other lane before Erica and I both decided that this was our new favorite thing to do. Our drivers drove next to each other for a while and then hers sped away. I recognized the bridge we rode over to get into our district and I felt such relief. Thankfulness. Joy.

It gave us such strength to face our first battle and to get through it together. The solution appeared only minutes after we called out for help. I wanted to write the story down so we can remember it later when we get lost or frustrated or scared.

Ps. the other day we were so excited about having fish for dinner. We got all the way home with it before we bit into it and realized that it was fried banana. We have learned how to ask, "What is this?" but it is a silly question when we can't actually understand any answers to that question.