Thinking Allowed: Walking 8 kilometers for Sophia

I don't really like taxis. Somehow paying someone to chauffeur me around while I try really hard to prevent my kids from being too loud or destructive is not that appealing. I would much rather my journey be longer and even more difficult than hop in a cab. But I do like walking so given this preference and where we are staying this has meant about ten kilometers of walking a day with various permutations of children. Sometimes it is really hot while we walk and sometimes we get completely drenched, but, despite their complaining, I think the girls have mostly enjoyed it. Sometimes we get to skirt around motorbikes and pretend we are in a video game, sometimes we are dealing with a mix of motorbikes, cars, pedestrians, overenthusiastic shop owners, piles of rubbish and stray dogs all at once, and sometimes we are walking on small paths among rice fields where much to the children's amusement we get to look at the view or count the dead rats along the path. Aurora finds how many people are excited to see me and how many women desperately want to give me a massage very funny. At first this was mostly because I am prime target for their business but the more I walk the more we are recognized and folks along the path have started to wave for non monetary reasons. Little kids jump up from their meals to wave at the girls, the elderly women across the road escorted us across the street, and one old gentlemen swerved his motorbike our way to laugh and wave and smile. "Do you know him" Aurora asked surprised "No but he obviously knows us!" I feel good about this as it has only been a few days of walking everywhere. In Canberra after a year and half of walking the same half a kilometer route sometimes up to four times a day I rarely got a wave so thank you Hoi An.

Sophia was at first sad to celebrate her birthday in Vietnam but she had a great time. Aurora and I spend the morning before racing around town trying to find ingredients to make cake. We mostly succeeded but then our landlady came round with a cake more beautiful than any I have ever given my children. We went to a cat rescue cafe where there were over 80 cats being rescued from the streets or from dinner pots. The girls were thrilled and spent much of the rest of the day plotting how to convince me we needed a pet cat. My favorite part of the cat cafe was the veggie burger so they were unsuccessful and I am thinking I will likely never be a cat lady and also based on my enthusiasm for the cute puppy in a sweater we later met am a dog person. No actually my favorite part, and Sophia's, was that we sat down at a table with a mother and her daughter. They were also from Canada, the daughters birthday was also that day, they were also traveling for a year, and the daughter eerily was also in level 3 gymnastics and planned pretty much the same things as Sophia for her birthday. What are the chances! After an evening of fancy store bought cake and cupcakes and a movie and gifts Sophia went to bed quite happy. Now she is 8 and is taking the chance to let Tova know she is three years older as often as she can.