At home

Tim: I don't think I'll be spoiling any surprises to tell you that we got home safely.

We got ourselves out to Charles de Gaulle airport about 4 hours before the flight, which meant a lot of waiting around there but no real queues to check in - a fair trade. It's a pretty good airport for it anyway, with lots of space and some decent food.

We stopped at Saigon on the way back, as planned. As on the way to Europe, the stopover hotel was paid for by the airline, and the custom formalities were greased by a man who met us there so we were at the hotel fairly quickly.

With a 12 hour stopover we thought that we'd get out to the markets, but this time was whittled down by airport transfers so in the end all we did was shower and sleep.

Vietnam intimidates me. There is so much life here, buzzing on the streets that it penetrates, like the heat, into your hotel room. Polly loves it, but I feel that I'm always being looked at, and that I'm different from the people that live here. For instance, when we arrived at the hotel there was a couple of guys out the front who would take you for rides on their motorcycles (for a fee of course). I got the impression that they were there, waiting for the two of us to emerge, for the whole 7 hours we were at the hotel. When we emerged to wait for our minibus to the airport, they seemed disappointed that weren't going to go with them. They tried to convince us, then, asked me to buy them beers, then, just to give them money. No, no, fuck no! Next to them I'm Daddy Warbucks, able to dole out money like tissues but I don't feel comfortable in the role. I'm a walking ATM and everyone wants to try their PIN on me. I'm a combination safe and everyone wants to have a twiddle with the dial.

Back at the airport - and it ain't no Charles de Gaulle - we cleared customs and waited for our flight. All the food was crap and at vast cost (and in $US). We saw some dumb-arse Australian tourists - absolute shockers - and avoided, nodding to ourselves. The airport sure lacked a certain something.

On the plane, most passengers fell asleep but not I - at one point, looking over my shoulder, I felt like I was the only one awake, with rows and rows of closed eyes and slack jaws behind me. I also realised what the airport lacked - a bookshop or newsagent - when it seemed like I was the only one reading. Perhaps not part of the culture.

And so it came to pass that we arrived home in this wide brown land, and all was well.