Return from the Third World
Dec. 28th, 2004 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringMy darling daughter is safely home. I checked my email about four this morning before we left, but no news. So we hopped into the car and set off up the freeway to Sydney. Normally I set the cruise control ten kays over the limit, but not now when the roads are howling with radarwolves and the penalties are doubled.
So it took us 2:43 to get to Sydney airport - thirteen minutes after the arrival time, but we figured it would take her that long to get through customs and besides, we were worried that she might have been bumped with all the extra demand from holidaymakers returning suddenly home. Not the Vietnam leg, but Singapore to Sydney would have been a very popular hop.
There were camera crews at the arrivals area waiting for survivors returning, fresh bandages, haggard expressions and hair mussed. One journalist asked if I was waiting for a survivor and I was sore tempted to spin her a yarn but she was just doing her job.
I released a book in the terminal, smooth as you like. Just put it down on a table and walked away.
As it happened, DD and friend J had arrived fifteen minutes earlier before the scheduled time, had breezed through a customs anxious to avoid long queues on a busy day and were waiting for us outside. I called her up - thank goodness for mobile phones - and while I looked in one direction, she looked in the other, and Kerri spotted that we were only ten metres apart.
J's father took a bit of finding. He'd parked in the limo rank and we eventually found where that was. More hugs, more partings and he took off down the freeway. We paid our parking ticket and took off after him.
I swear for the next three hours she barely paused to draw breath. I let Kerri drive back, DD beside her in the front, while I flaked out in the back. We got capsule descriptions of the others in the tour party, their personality flaws highlighted, a pocket description of the sights - My Lai with a guide who couldn't talk without emotion seemed particularly harrowing - and descriptions of meals, mountains, hotel rooms and language difficulties.
And everything else.
At home the animals emerged from their lairs to greet DD, distance having made the hearts grow fonder, DS untangled himself from his latest computer game, and we plowed through the goodies. A few souvenirs, but mostly clothes bought along the way - Kerri had sent some garments to be copied in silk, and DD had bought a few things for herself and the junior members of the family.
And then I uploaded the photographs from the camera and we looked at them on the laptop as a slideshow complete with commentary..
But most of all I'm glad to have my daughter back in one piece, a seasoned traveller. Mind you, she's not game to drive a car for a while until she feels confident about not displaying some of the rules-optional driving behaviour of the Vietnamese, as displayed at close quarters by the local driver.
So it took us 2:43 to get to Sydney airport - thirteen minutes after the arrival time, but we figured it would take her that long to get through customs and besides, we were worried that she might have been bumped with all the extra demand from holidaymakers returning suddenly home. Not the Vietnam leg, but Singapore to Sydney would have been a very popular hop.
There were camera crews at the arrivals area waiting for survivors returning, fresh bandages, haggard expressions and hair mussed. One journalist asked if I was waiting for a survivor and I was sore tempted to spin her a yarn but she was just doing her job.
I released a book in the terminal, smooth as you like. Just put it down on a table and walked away.
As it happened, DD and friend J had arrived fifteen minutes earlier before the scheduled time, had breezed through a customs anxious to avoid long queues on a busy day and were waiting for us outside. I called her up - thank goodness for mobile phones - and while I looked in one direction, she looked in the other, and Kerri spotted that we were only ten metres apart.
J's father took a bit of finding. He'd parked in the limo rank and we eventually found where that was. More hugs, more partings and he took off down the freeway. We paid our parking ticket and took off after him.
I swear for the next three hours she barely paused to draw breath. I let Kerri drive back, DD beside her in the front, while I flaked out in the back. We got capsule descriptions of the others in the tour party, their personality flaws highlighted, a pocket description of the sights - My Lai with a guide who couldn't talk without emotion seemed particularly harrowing - and descriptions of meals, mountains, hotel rooms and language difficulties.
And everything else.
At home the animals emerged from their lairs to greet DD, distance having made the hearts grow fonder, DS untangled himself from his latest computer game, and we plowed through the goodies. A few souvenirs, but mostly clothes bought along the way - Kerri had sent some garments to be copied in silk, and DD had bought a few things for herself and the junior members of the family.
And then I uploaded the photographs from the camera and we looked at them on the laptop as a slideshow complete with commentary..
But most of all I'm glad to have my daughter back in one piece, a seasoned traveller. Mind you, she's not game to drive a car for a while until she feels confident about not displaying some of the rules-optional driving behaviour of the Vietnamese, as displayed at close quarters by the local driver.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-28 06:01 am (UTC)Just kidding! (From someone who has actually worked in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, so I should know. I think ...)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-29 05:47 am (UTC)