Vietnam – our kids don’t know how good they have it.

...cross posted from our sister site, New York City Moms Blog.

We just got back from a whirlwind trip to Asia. Why does it seem whenever you leave a place it ends up all over the news? Unfortunately with the Earthquake in China and the Cyclone in Myanmar (Burma) it’s all very sad news. Vietnam was rough travel, sleeping on planes, trains and boats. And even though it wasn’t a “comfortable” vacation, the big takeaway is how comfortably WE live.

It was the children that got me.

As a mom I guess this isn’t surprising. The babies carrying babies on their backs. The kid’s in rural villages without shoes or even pants. And the kids that beg for food are heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine what its like now after all the recent disaster. My heart goes out to them. The kids in the big modern cities like Hong Kong aren’t spared either since they have to inhale constant smog. Someone told me that breathing the air in Beijing is like smoking 27 cigarettes a day. This is of course why everyone looks like a bandit on a moped. Next time I think we’ll try taking the kids. Though the jet lag is brutal. It’s hard to explain to my girls that they wouldn’t be allowed to go to school in certain Vietnamese tribes. Only the boys are allowed to leave the house. The girls are considered manual labor, tending the fields, cooking and cleaning. And when they marry, our tour guide said in her tribe the average age is 16, they have to live with their husband’s family basically as a housekeeper and cook.

Our guide, A sweet girl named Mai Lyn, got to the ripe old age of 19 before she married. But she’s got the advantage of having a job and income, so if she donates to the in-law’s coffers she’s off the housekeeping hook. She never went to school but taught herself English via giving hiking tours. She has a slight Australian tweak, as that’s where most of her patrons come from… which makes her voice so sweet.

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