Goodbye Bombay, Hello KL, and Good Morning Vietnaaam!

My dad told some lady that he was going to Ho Chi Minh City to meet his daughter. She replied, "Wow, when did you find out you had a daughter?"

It's been amazing having my dad on the trip with me. But allow me to backtrack for a bit...

After leaving the little village of Pushkar we headed back to Bombay. It was great to be able to give the answer "no, second" when the children on the street asked "first time Bombay?" Bombay Round Two was not quite the shock it was when I had arrived to India back on January 3rd - a month traveling the country made me a little immune to certain sights and smells, and I was able to take in the city without those distractions. However I didn't have much time because midnight of our second day we flew to Kuala Lumpur, capitol of Malaysia.

KL was the perfect meat to my India Vietnam sandwich - the city is a true melting pot of Southeast Asia and India, the food, the people, the culture. It turns out that Malaysians are, and I quote from Let's Go, "obsessed with inter-racial marriage." This obviously lends itself to great fusion cuisine, and you only have to go to the hawker on the corner to get some of it. The city itself reminded me of a rundown Singapore - KL didn't have that squeaky clean, new car feeling, but like Singapore there was no sense of a single native culture. Plus, I think the level of obsession with inter-racial marriages could only be matched by the obsession with malls - very much like Singapore. So shop we did. I shopped and ate my way through Kuala Lumpur, pausing just for a moment to take the local bus out of the city to the Batu Caves.

The Caves are at the top of a mountain, 272 steps up, and are home to various Hindu temples and shrines. I climbed the steps with barefooted Hindus who had shaved and covered their heads in white powder for the festival that falls in January and February. Offerings of flowers and oranges are laid in front of the statues of the gods, incense is lit, and men pierce their bodies and connect themselves with chains to the walls of the caves. I didn't understand a thing.

On my last day in KL I had time for a quick breakfast of rice noodles in a peanut chili sauce, and then we were off to Vietnam...

I leaped out of my seat at the hotel bar when I saw my dad walk into the lobby, it's really nice having a piece of home with me for a week. And it's especially nice to have my dad with me in Vietnam, a place of so much importance and impact on his life; my visit to the War Remnants Museum - originally named the American War Crimes Museum - would not have been the same without him. I mean I was looking at these photographs of American GIs, men - and boys barely men - that could have been my dad or his brother. I'm looking at these photos, and watching my dad look at these photos - recognizing some from the pages of Life - and it was just something I can't put into words.

So my dad's been teaching me a few things about the Vietnam War and I've been teaching him a thing or two about bargaining. Like when you offer 100,000 dong for a set of salad forks and the man says no and types 60,000 on the calculator, you don't argue with him.

In between the museums and markets I've been eating well. Obviously. However maybe I should rephrase that: In between meals we've seen a few museums and markets. Yep that's more like it... Anyway, we've been slurping up bowls of pho and bon tham bi and cannot help but compare them to the pho and bon tham bi back in Philly - Little Saigon of Upper Darby still reigns supreme. And speaking of noodles, it's time to go get some ...

Tomorrow we fly to Hanoi.