Coming home is never easy. The prospect of your travels coming to an end always seems to cast a shadow over the final few days of a trip, as your thoughts slowly start to gravitate towards life’s mundane-ities. Things that hadn’t entered your head for the previous few weeks come edging back into your consciousness; the car needs a warrant, I never finished painting the windows, have the house sitters cut the grass etc etc etc. And try as you might to expel these inconvenient reminders of your real life, the inevitability of your return home has taken seed in your mind. Gradually it grows and grows until, before you know it, you’re on a plane wrestling with an overtired, over stimulated, just generally over it toddler – for 11 hours.
Our final few days in Vietnam were thus tainted, stained with the prospect of normality. We all had very mixed feelings about getting home. I suppose you could say that we were looking forward to the ease and comfort that it would bring but sorry to be leaving nonetheless. However after nearly 2 months on the road we were all pretty tired.
We had an emotional departure from Mui Ne as Mai the Pool Guy had taken quite a shine to young Harvey and seemed genuinely sorry that we were taking him away. I think Harvey too was sorry to be leaving him behind; but by the time we had got onto the train and there were an entire carriage full of potential playmates all around him, poor old Mai became a distant memory.
For our third and final visit to Saigon we had opted for some comfort and had splashed out for 3 days in the Grand Hotel. It pretty much lived up to it’s name too, and provided a perfect Colonial bookend to our time in Vietnam. There’s not much to report about this period of our trip. We shopped, ate and shopped again until it was time to pack and head to the airport. All the while reminiscing about the 7 or so weeks that had gone before and trying not to think of what awaited us at the other end.
And here we are. Safely back at home, lifes mundane necessities taken care of and all adjusted back to normality. Our time in Vietnam is quickly receding into the banks of far away memories as the practicalities of the everyday take hold. Sometimes it feels hard to imagine us there at all, sweating our way around Hoi An or Hue. Or downing cold beers by the pool at Villa Louise, or trying to decipher the unknown mysteries of the local cuisine. But we were there, we have the memories and we survived.
And coming home to New Zealand, I suppose, isn’t all that bad really.
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