FRIGGIN' CHIGGINS (Into the Streets!)Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam

Must I be followed by killer viruses wherever I go? First SARS in China last year. Now that Chicken Virus. Right now the thing is confined to the northern parts of Vietnam and is not spreading from human to humans, but it's already killed fifteen people, or something like that. (The woman at the hotel wouldn't let me read the paper, so I had to sneak peaks). Ah well. For the time being, I just stay away from chickens and be ready to run if the virus mutates.

On a related note, I went to the Yersin Museum in Nha Trang the day before yesterday. Yersin was a Frenchman who was the first European to explore this area. He set up a hospital and vaccination clinic and lived in Nha Trang. He also discovered the mechanism with which that the last great plague spread. This helped lead to a cure. Where is he now? I just keep hearing a voice in my head say, We'll be safe, yes we will. We and the precious* we'll be safe, won't we precious?

*precious=life

Then, last night, in the bus, there was:
The Street, at Night

Everyone, always into the street. Old women squat and stare; children chase one another, and dogs; mothers emerge from caves of kitchens, dinner on hands and apron, telling strapping youth to fetch a needed green from market on motorbike. And for sale: shoes and services, lights blazing flourescent and neon behind pink and orange Buddhas, or forming halos behind Christs, while men have lined motorcycles next to coffee shop holes next to bamboo lumber yards next to sewage moats and makeshift general stores with merchandise stocked in front of shopkeeps peering over mountains of boxes and into the street. Always into the street, the dirty dirty street where the geography books point but never bring alive, what the history books replicate but never truly capture. Where we travel, where we go places. Where tires and animals go to die quick and local women wear scarves over faces to stay young against the sun and elements and doors open into houses and the sky opens to the stars.