As the EVA Air flight approached Saigon, we flew wide of the city, circling over the cast water labyrinth of the Mekong Delta. The landscape belie the wings was one of shimmering water. Crazed Oxbows of chocolate rivers, zig-zagged with straighter canals, broke the land into isolated crescents and arms. The immense flatness is completely dominated by water. Ruler straight irrigation ditches border the rice paddies stretching endlessly to the sea. You could see it all, a region dominated by water, not solid ground.
As we approaches the city, those strange Asian apartment buildings appeared, skinny little buildings composed of single apartments stacked vertically, looking for all the world like pastel Lego blocks built too high and too narrow.
And then I was here. Stepping out if the airport brought that familiar wave of heat and humidity fueled by tropical air, an embrace of sweaty welcome. It is the thickness and fecundity that I know as Southeast Asia.
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