Language

To say that this is a difficult region linguistically, for Anglos who struggle with French and German, is an understatement - in fact, because of the tones, some guidebooks actually recommend that you don't bother to try. Canntonese is considered hard for Westerners with its four tones - Vietnamese has nine. The danger is that one incorrect tone turns "Three mangoes please" into "Your grandmother was a warthog."

As we move from Thai to Kmer to Lao, though, we have been determined to manage at least Hello and Thank you. (In Lao: "Sai-Wa-Dee" and "Kop Chai" - or "Kop Chai Lai Lai" is "Thank you very much.") And the response is always amazing - people seem uniformly delighted that you have bothered to make even that small effort, and are often enthusiastic about taking the time to correct, praise, and offer a bit more.

This was true, by the way, even in notorious Paris, where we received nothing but courtesy and good-humored help.