Coming Home

Indochina is clearly different than most places we’ve visited in the world. We’ve been to relatively few places with so much French influence, which lasted here for decades. Frequently English is the third language here, and there are far more French tourists than from any other nation, though that will surely change.

Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia are all Communist countries today, though that certainly worked out differently than Nixon and Kissinger feared. In Vietnam, especially, capitalism is rampant. There remain huge differences between the North and the South (as in America?), but everyone wants to work in the private sector, and the focus is constantly on money. In Vietnam, the guide in the North believed the government is afraid of the people; in the south, our guide believed the people are afraid of the government. (Who do you believe is afraid of whom in the U.S.?)

All these countries have low GDP, low incomes, low education rates, and low standards of living. All are characteristics of Communist / one-party regimes. Yet, in Laos and Cambodia, especially, the people would reelect the current government tomorrow, if they needed to. The devil they know seems less dangerous than the devil they don’t. Besides, the people are far too busy working hard to make money during the day.

These are lands where teachers and physicians each make less than $65 per month, yet breakfast for two in our hotel costs $61. (A restaurant employee had never tasted the food on their fabulous buffet. And at night they give the extra bread (23 different breads on yesterday's breakfast buffet) to the orphanage, but throw away everything else. It doesn't go to the orphanage or the children's hospital or anywhere.) A nominal tip for our driver, for a few hours of work spread over several days, is more money than his father makes in two weeks. (I read that policemen make far less, perhaps $20 per month - plus all they can steal. And were told that we were safe walking at night virtually everywhere. What kind of political system results in an honest population and dishonest policemen?!)

There is also still astounding interest in the United States. In Cambodia, the ATM machine gave me U.S. dollars (!) instead of Cambodian Riels. Dollars are still accepted almost everywhere. And they know our elections - everywhere, in every city and small village, they talked about Obama. Fran tried to buy an Obama T-shirt in a bar in Siem Reap, but the one on exhibit was small and dirty, and all the others were long sold out.

This amazing odyssey is almost at an end. It’s 86 degrees here today, doesn’t seem remotely like December, even though our grand hotel in a very Buddhist country is all decorated for Christmas. Even in this part of the world we can’t avoid politics. We were scheduled to fly home through Bangkok. The Thai government has fallen in the past three days, and the protestors have now left the international airport, but we have already changed our reservations. The good news is that we now go through Singapore – one of my “100 Things To Do” was to fly Business Class on Singapore Airlines, rated the #1 airline in the world every year, which I will now check off my list. And we’ll go into the city, so I can add another country to my life list – I think that makes 54 countries. Still a long ways behind my mother, but impressive, nonetheless!

23 hours of flying time plus 12 time zones tomorrow – 35 hours of travel! All in the same day! We’ll sleep well when we get home!