Trent and Julie's tour up

After two years at post, Trent and Julie headed back to Washington for a DC tour. It was great having them out here as we knew each other back in the U.S., so when we arrived within weeks of each other we already had ready-made friends. They spent their last couple nights at our place after packing up all their belongings and shipping them off last week. The last night? Where else but La Piola, the best Italian place in the neighborhood and the site of many feasts. It's a set dinner, you eat what Mama made that night and lots of it. Great way to end a tour.

Ana Mandara

We stayed in a little French villa in Dalat out among the trees but close into town, too. It was a cute villa and one of the best hotel rooms we've had. Big soft bed with a big soft down comforter, lots of pillows. When it rained in the evening we hung out in bed and watched Grey's Anatomy on DVD, all bundled up in our pajamas.

Endless veggies

We went up to Dalat for two nights, up in the mountains north of Saigon. It's nice and cool and the air is clean and fresh, which was refreshing after Bangkok. Dalat's a honeymoon spot for Vietnamese, they think the mountains are special the way we think the beach is special. You always want what you don't have. We rented a motorbike for a couple days and drove around in and around the town. It seemed like the foundation of the town's economy is vegetables, everywhere we went there were endless fields of fresh veggies, creeping up the terraced hillsides. Love it.

The Saigon VW Club

Last year when we went to Saigon we saw a big bunch of tricked out Vespas outside a restaurant downtown. They belonged to the local Vespa club, a bunch of enthusiasts getting together every weekend and driving their scooters around together. This time, same place, a bunch of fixed up VW bugs. Sign of the times? Scooters to cars.

The Brink

The Park Hyatt in Saigon might be the only five-star hotel with a memorial in honor of a successful car bombing. On Christmas Eve 1964 a couple of VC agents drove a car bomb into the Brink Hotel, then housing US army officers, and set it off. Two officers died. The memorial stood outside the old Brink until the late 1990s when the Hyatt tore it down and started building a hotel on the site. The Asian financial crisis halted construction and the shell of the new hotel stood for years before things recovered and work was finally finished. And the memorial still stands, honoring the car bomb.