Home Sweet Home

We arrived home safely on Friday and have been catching up on our sleep since then, trying to readjust our body clocks to the 11 hour time zone difference. It also looks like we brought home some of the heat from SE Asia........the forecast for the next two days is 25C so that transition won't be too hard to make.
It was another great trip for us, full of wonderful memories to carry forward. We found the people to be very friendly in all 7 of the countries we visited. They were happy, helpful and always smiling, making us feel very safe and relaxed during our travels. The air quality in the big cities wasn't that good, with many of the locals wearing breathing masks when they were on the streets, but the time we spent there was less than 10%, so it was manageable (other than the slight case of bronchitis that Rhonda developed along the way). The many temples we saw gave us a glimpse into the past of some mighty ancient civilizations. Unlike South America, where our Spanish became passable, we didn't get very far beyond 'hello' and 'thank you' in the 7 different languages we encountered. Fortunately the locals had a better handle on English than we did of their languages which used an unfamiliar alphabet making even signs difficult to read.
Vietnam turned out to be our favourite country on this adventure. While the average income is less than $100 a month, the people are hard-working and happy in their beautiful country, and their economy is growing as fast as China's, so even better times await them. Our trips to Dalat and Sapa in the highlands, our cruise of Halong Bay and the time we spent in Hoi An were all highlights. Koh Samui in Southern Thailand was our favourite island stop and the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia will also be remembered fondly.
Our challenge now will be to re-insert ourselves back into the western world's lifestyle following 4 months of laid-back, one day at a time planning. Hopefully, we can do this slowly and our friends and golf club will forgive us if our scheduled appointments are treated as approximate times like they do in SE Asia. And perhaps our neighbours won't mind if they see us washing our clothes and bathing in the Sheep River. And retail vendors will just have to get used to us pulling out a calculator and displaying the price we think is fair.....the starting point to negotiating a reasonable price.
Our ultimate goal though is to maintain the happy life exhibited in the land of the smiles.