He returns the courtesy and we perch together, looking out of our rattling cage at naked kids playing in the Mekong tributaries, the color of Dijon mustard. Since Saigon, the land has been a hundred and fifty miles of rustic farms and thatched huts. Brown mud and clayish red earth peek through like stitching in the mat of intense, lush green, almost violent, a hundred shades of green. In the distant rice paddies, plodding water buffalo are moving rocks; white ducks drift like patches of snow. But it is hot and humid and the smell of the land is thick in the air. From certain angles, it is a
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