Bicycle Rickshaw

After dinner, I'm looking for an Internet cafe and a rickshaw driver offers to show me. I say I want a 30-minute drive after ward; how much will you charge? He says whatever I want to pay. I check email and he sits down next to me and checks his email on Yahoo. Gotta' love these folks.

For forty minutes I get an exciting ride through Danang, no lights on his bicycle and 20 percent of bikes and motor bikes heading toward us also unlighted. Left turns into oncoming traffic are the biggest rush. He, just like my car driver, goes into the left, oncoming, lane before the turn, makes the turn into more oncoming traffic and gradually moves into the new right lane. This would never, ever fly in America. I was imagining what a Vietnamese driver would say to an American policeman.

That's all I have to write from Vietnam. I'll talk next from India in about 8 days. I talked with a co-worker today who said this bunch of participants is kind of old and a little slow. I'll turn that around for them. Old dogs can learn new tricks, and new ways of being in a foreign country.

Xin xhou and tam biet. Hello and good-bye.

Marines, I'll write you some more separately back in the States.

Semper Fi,

Rick