The Roving Roberts'

We awoke Sunday morning, 7am, to a funeral procession outside of our apartment building. The melancholy sounds from the band spilled out onto the roadway and it made me think of my Gigi (Grandfather) whose time on earth came to a close yesterday. All of our love from Saigon. 

When Indie was about 18 months old we took her to her first display of fireworks. She stared up at the sky riveted and motionless the entire time chanting, “wow, wow, wow …” That’s how I feel here. It has shocked me like an electric eel with its pulsating energy and exaggerated features. Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh) population of roughly 20 million, is a rupture of all senses at once. Its movement is constant, its noises strident, its smells robust. Every square inch of space is inhabited, although sometimes it seems more like a mash-up of structures colliding into one another, some dilapidated, others space-age like. Classic French Colonial designs contrasting against ancient ornate temples and infilled by narrow rectangular apartment buildings. Imagine this all in a Tetris like formation and you’ve got an accurate mental image. Interestingly enough, it is here where we have acclimatized to our new existence. No longer does the blare of horns make our bodies tense, our eyes breeze over th...

Surrender them, or at the very least, soften them and happiness ye shall find. Every day we have been delighted by things we would never have been able to anticipate before we came. Yesterday, it was the experience of participating in the traditional preparation and consumption of bánh xèo (Vietnamese sizzling pancakes). This morning it was taking a tour down the Mekong delta which transitioned from a wide shipping canal into a narrow, integrated network of mangroves, fruit trees and rural homesteads. In this moment, it is sitting on our coconut timber balcony listening to roosters crow and banana leaves rustle while conjuring up the words for this blog. Adapting expectations has been easier for some members of our travel party than others, but we’ve all experienced feelings of bitter disappointment, be it a last-minute flight cancellation or an exasperated “lost in translation” moment. It’s in our ability to shift, soften and contextualize where we come to terms with surrendering....