The Departure

The whirlwind trip through Hanoi came to an end Sunday morning with a trip to the airport.  For us, it was great to host these guys and show them around to some of our favorite haunts and every day life.

As I said in an email to Pete after he got back, The New York Times had a recent travel essay which said in part,

Travel comes in many forms. 

• Some trips are a trek. You push yourself outside your comfort zone and come out of the adventure, one hopes, with greater fortitude and self-knowledge.  
• Some trips are like adult university. You peer into some distant period, study large historical figures and great masterpieces and come away with new wisdom.  
• Some trips are a form of cultural immersion. You enter deeply into another people and another mentality, and come out more knowledgeable about another way of seeing the world. 
• And some travel is simply sightseeing, looking at the sights quickly and then moving on.

I think the last week included a little bit of all the above.  We had a really fun week with those guys.