Solitude: The Unexpected Gift I Desperately Needed

The busy streets of Ho Chi Minh City bustle below me. Horns honk in a staccato suggestive of, “Excuse me, pardon me.” Tourists crane their necks backward to take in the Babel-esque height of the downtown towers, and one can hop country cuisine on a single street between French boulangeries, Argentinian steakhouses, Japanese mochi sweets, and, of course, Vietnamese pho. The hum and thrum of life in all its scurry happens just a few floors down.

But not in room 503.

Here the air condition...