so much for keeping you posted...

greetings from santa monica, california! knox and i have made it home safely from our little jaunt in asia, in spite of typhoon nuri's rumblings through the region. her bark was a lot worse than her bite, in the end, and by the time we flew through hong kong, she'd long gone. the airport was still way out of whack from the day before (everything from schools to the stock exchange was closed in HK on friday), so we suffered some hefty delays. but i'll take 10 hours extra travel time over flying through 100mph winds any day!

last we left you, we'd just landed in ha noi after our trip to ha long bay. knox had just begun classifying all the bia hois in town (according to price, carbonation, and quality of available bar food) when he was struck down by what we've determined was either dengue fever, SARS, or a new and freakish combination of the two (okay, so really, it was just a simple respiratory funk). he had a couple of feverish days laying low but it didn't stop him from having che (and confirming it was AWESOME), or from hanging out in the circa-1970 cuban "victory" hotel pool, or from paying his respects to uncle ho. i fed him plenty of rice porridge (the vina-equivalent to chicken noodle soup) and left him to rest while i went out for fried tofu with shrimp paste and "young rice" ice cream popsicles.

it's just hit me that i will not be eating rice noodles or fish sauce or fried tofu or gloopy goodness for some time to come... i don't even think we'll make it to little sai gon before we leave los angeles - BUMMER.

wow, judging by how long it took me to compose that last sentence, i think i might need to sign off now. i'm pretty rocked by jetlag. and thanks to the fact that my flight bounced and rolled the whole way over the pacific, my body thinks it's on a boat... in an earthquake. i think that means it's time for bed... or a beer... but definitely not time to blog.

i'll be back soon to post some pics and give the scoop on da nang. then we have to get serious about packing up this apartment - we are out of here on august 31. yikes.