Before coming to Saigon, one of Florence’s non-Evan cousins told me that I’d be living near the Diamond Plaza, an upscale department store with a gym, movie theater, and pool hall. It’s a fun place to walk around, but with most items selling for 150% of their American value, I’m mostly confined to window-shopping, although I have bought a box of custard-filled Little Debbie cakes.
As I was trying to piece together the artistry that is Vietnamese during my two-hour one-on-one language lesson this morning, I saw my teacher staring into the cascading skyline of Ho Chi Minh City. Nearly every day brings its share of lousy weather, and today brought more than most – overcast, damp, and altogether dreary. It still wasn’t enough, however, to stop my favorite motorbike driver from smiling and waving as I left the compound.
Anyway, while I was struggling to construct the most basic sentences in the Vietnamese language, I spotted Co Tra gazing into what looked like a typical Saigon afternoon; I started to think there was more to it than that. As she surveyed the bustling city before us, I wondered if she was window-shopping for something beyond her reach. Her face betrayed a strange confluence of fascination and despair; it’s an image I won’t soon forget.
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