In Cambodia, I am constantly hitting the snooze button on my biological clock. 50% of the population is under 15, and at least half of those are the sweetest, most biteable babies and toddlers you ever saw. If you don’t believe me, ask Angelina Jolie.

The real proprietor of the sugar-cane juice stand I went to yesterday was a two-year-old girl with bangs, a wavy pony-tail, and a red gingham dress like a tiny, Khmer Brigitte Bardot. First she stared at the pale freak who sat down, until, bored, she trotted off and came back with a box of matches. After several tries she lit one, dropped it in fright and then burst out laughing. Her parents looked on adoringly. Then she climbed on Dad’s motorbike, standing up on the seat. (Child passengers always stand up on bikes and motorcycles in Phnom Penh, for some reason. It’s quite something to see tiny kids balancing on the frame of a pushbike while an older brother pedals and a sister sits on the carrier.) She put on Mum’s sunglasses and steered that bike like a Saigon taxi-driver, and I was glad it was still on the kickstand. ‘Vroom!’ she said, or something like it.

One child in five dies before the age of five here. Many are orphans; street kids with old faces are everywhere. But oh, the others, the lucky ones—they lead kid lives that are richer and just plain funner than the cocooned, scheduled, and sedentary western kids I know. It really does take a village.

Hand is still broken. Grr. My soap-opera French doctor patted my shoulder and handsomely bit his lip as the orthopedist set the bone, but it was no compensation for this sweaty cast.

Leaving Saigon for Cambodia tomorrow. We island-dwellers never get over the novelty of driving to a whole other country. I wish I could put Vietnam in my pocket and sneak it out with me.

I visited the War Remnants Museum in Saigon today (shortly after learning of Kissinger’s new gig). The broken hand curtails me writing about it, but I have a new appreciation for the life of antiwar protestor Phillip Berrigan, RIP. (Via wood s. lot.)

See also a New York Times piece on Berrigan.

My first view of Saigon was from the back of a speeding motorbike taxi, known as ‘hug taxis’ in my favorite piece of Vietnamese slang. I looked at the sky to avoid seeing the thousands of would-be killers who swerved way too late for comfort each time. My driver cornered like a lunatic and I clutched my left hand, which by now was livid and shiny as a corpse and a peculiar shape. I secretly hoped it was broken, so I’d get to be a cool kid with a cast. Then I remembered I haven’t needed to dodge Christmas exams in fifteen years.

    ‘Here is hospital.’
I struggled to get the fare out of my money belt. The driver wore sunglasses with pictures of iridescent eyeballs on the lenses.
    ‘What you do your hand?’
    ‘I learned how to ride a motorbike in Dalat yesterday. Then I fell off.’

It’s broken in three places. I have to wear an elbow-length cast for four weeks, and I’m already sick of it in the tropical heat. But at least it’s the left hand. I have enough trouble with chopsticks as is.