Wednesday

Sunshine spent Monday night on a business trip to Cần Thơ¹ (remember this: that's "th" as in Thailand, and the "ơ" from the national noodle soup dish phở, pronounced more like "uh" than "oh". So: "Can tuh"), the largest city in the Mekong Delta and considered Việt Nam's western capital. It's located on the southern bank of the Hau River, the largest branch of the Mekong, and is approximately one-sixth the size of the city we live in. There are plenty of reasons to visit the city:² floating river markets, excellent nước mắm, and a distinctly more village-like, agrarian feel than we can really perceive in downtown Saigon (or so I have been led to imagine from reading about it). I imagine that one can see wide open areas from Cần Thơ, can wander around in some rural humidity. It is possible to charter boats from there: up the river to Phnom Phen, or Vientiane. Possibly all the way into central China. Cần Thơ is about four hours southwest of Hồ Chí Minh City, and Sunshine was transported there by car Monday morning. She came back yesterday. I spent Monday evening alone, enduring an aberrant six hours of odd bachelorhood between the time she would normally return from work and when she most usually goes to sleep. My plan was to get a lot of work done posting photographs in that six hours--a period that seemed a lot longer anticipated than it does in retrospect--but as it often is with odd bachelorhood, I spend more time watching TV and reading H. Rider Haggard that putting nose to photo grindstone. So where I was planning to announce that I had new links to show you, all I can actually announce today is that I wasted some time. [Cavin]