My first plane ride, at the age of 13, was from Chicago to Daytona Beach for a trip I won as a big-time, hotshot paperboy. Before that, all my major travelling had been done while wedged between my sisters in the back of the old brown station wagon on the way to Mama Rae’s in Savannah, complete with epic games of I Spy, one of us occasionally throwing up out the rear window, and yes, that all-time car-trip classic, peeing in a bottle; my dad did not like to stop. But that was all in another world when Clark Bars cost a dime and flying was for the birds. One of the main reasons that Allison and I wanted to come to China was the opportunity for international travel with the boys. It’s true that Kai and Keegan have passports that look like stamp collections, but we haven’t yet arrived at the stage where we can take them on cultural tours to the temples of Cambodia or the baseball stadiums of Japan. At this point their favorite vacations involve a lot of sand, whether it’s in New Jersey, Hawaii, Hong Kong or Phuket. So when we chose to take our National Day Holiday (A week off for the whole country of China! And so, a terrible time to travel in China!) on the island of Phu Quoc in Viet Nam, it had everything to do with nothing – there’s not much to do beyond goofing around in the room and going between the beach (photos), the pool (photos), the beach (video, and it only sounds like a hurricane), the pool (video, including a live performance of the days-of-the-week song), the restaurant, the beach, the night market, and the pool. OK, we did fit in a hike to a waterfall in a rainstorm. And since we were staying on the East side of the island, we made the epic journey to the West side, including some kayak action and some fishing. But this was not quite adventure travel. Instead, it was awesome family bonding time. The boys thrive on having all four of us together 24/7 for a week or more, and for that matter so do Allison and I.
We were fortunate to have our friends from Shanghai, Patricia and Richard, and their kids Raphael and Isaac, also make the trip, so their boys and our boys could have regular playdates at the pool to mix it up a bit (you’ll see them in the photos, and here we are at the airport on our bleary-eyed way). We had plenty of companionable neighbors at our little resort too, but really, nobody in our family has any trouble being stuck together on an island for long periods of time, so we’re lucky that way.
Viet Nam, when not participating in a major war against an imperial power (France, say, or China, or, um, the United States), is a lovely country, well worth visiting, and Allison and I have had terrific trips in the past to Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, and to Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. Phu Quoc, which is just off the Cambodian coast, closer to Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat than it is to Ho Chi Minh, is a potential Phuket in the making, with an International Airport due to open in 2014 and change everything. For now, it’s still pretty sleepy, the majority of its roads unpaved, though there have been sporadic, sometimes bizarre attempts to lure tourists, as my visit to 1000 Stars Resort bears out. I talked with one American guy, a hotelier who’s lived on Phu Quoc nearly 20 years and is married to a Vietnamese woman, who said that even ten years ago we couldn’t have brought our kids, given the sanitary conditions at the time. Phu Quoc now has Western style restaurants and resorts alongside the squid-on-a-stick roadside stands, and the mix is a fun one. Our favorite restaurant at the night market was a place called “Cat Food.” I don’t think they were being ironic, but I’m still not sure. The waitresses here loved Kai and Keegan so much that they brought them free sea urchin, and the boys actually tried it. They didn’t swallow it, mind you, but points for trying, boys.
Pho Quoc also makes a great place to celebrate your 2nd birthday, if you’re lookin’. Keegan’s party lasted a little over two weeks, stretching from Thomas the Train Cupcake Making on September 29th, so he could share them at his kindy, to present-opening and a rollicking party in Viet Nam on the actual day, October 5th, to a full-on birthday bash on October 15th, once we (and the rest of our neighborhood) were back in Shanghai. I’ll say this about Keegan; he knows how to party. Kids love cupcakes. Kids love trains. To put them together is pure genius. It’s science.
A note on piñata-related violence, however: if your child has little or no conception of the difference between animate and inanimate objects, seeing his usually sweet and loving mother bash the tar out of a train can be disconcerting. This is especially true if the train is a popular anthropomorphized Tank Engine the child has been encouraged to think fondly of. In the SH party video you can see Keegan plaintively asking, “Why did you hit the train, Mommy?”
We’re back home in the ’Hai now, where our current big adventure is potty training. Kai is thrilled to be wearing big-boy pants, and has been making terrific progress with the numbers ranging from 1 to 2, but we still have many rivers to cross, as the legendary Jamaican potty-trainer Jimmy Cliff said. I don’t think many of you have the stomach for more detail than that, so I will show mercy. I will tell you that Keegan, who often tries to do whatever his big brother is doing, has also been sitting on the potty and giving it the ol’ preschool try. In little glimmers, we have started to dream a world beyond diapers (cue J. Lennon singing “Imagine”). But all great human accomplishments – air flight, indoor plumbing, peace with Viet Nam, Elmo underpants – were just dreams once, before we made them real.
This is your Shanghai correspondent, livin’ the dream, signing off.
