I used to love travel but now I find myself nervous, unwilling to leave my home, worried that something terrible will happen. I wonder if I’m just getting too old, like my aunt who went to Hawaii in her late seventies and came back swearing she would never travel again. I don’t want to be like that. I’m afraid of being confined to my tiny corner of the world and yet reluctant to leave it. I’m only 60, surely I have some time before I confine myself to a garden in Woy Woy.

To avoid travel at commuter peak hour, I booked a hotel in Sydney and took the train down Sunday afternoon. The train was full of people who had the same idea, and their large suitcases. I sat on the steps between Woy Woy and Hornsby, then fought my way into a seat while my large suitcase remained in the corridor. People complained, I tried to ignore them. I just wanted to be at my destination. The taxi drivers were nice, the chatty one at Woy Woy who talked about same sex marriage and the sweet man from the airport to the hotel. I wished I could have taken a taxi all the way down, sitting like a queen in the front seat.

I worried a lot. I wondered if I’d brought enough, or more importantly, if I’d brought the things I would need.I only have one jumper and a shawl, is Vietnam as hot as they say? I worried myself to sleep and I worried myself awake again. Then I took another taxi and worried myself to the airport and onto the plane. Once I took my seat the fear of travel went and I thought about how small the seat was and wondered if I was too fat for the seat belt. I sat for eight hours on the plane tracking our journey on the map on the back of the seat in front of me. Occasionally I checked to see if it was correct, by looking out the window, but all I could see was ocean and islands.

We flew over East Timor, then Sulawesi and Borneo and I imagined the people who lived there, hot in the sunshine with the palm trees and the beach, catching crabs in the water. My lips were dry the whole time but my lip ease was in the backpack in the locker above my head. I didn’t want to hassle the good folks sitting next to me, so I drank a lot of water and decided that first thing we landed I would get it out of my bag. My lips, however, didn’t remind me till I was on the next plane and the lip ease was still in the backpack in the locker above my head.

In Ho Chi Minh City I, and some others in my group, exited the plane in 35 degree heat via stairs in the middle of the tarmac. We were packed into buses and were driven to the terminal building, said hello to our luggage, then walked across to another terminal where we stood in a long winding line to the security check. When we got to the check post, they discovered we were in the wrong line and we had to walk up a bit further and join another longer security line to get back into the area where the gates were. It was still hot and humid. I was glad I was carrying an extra sleeveless T-shirt along with the lip ease I still managed to forget.

We sat outside the gate we thought we should be at till a lovely lady told us which gate the plane was actually leaving from. It was buses and 35 degree heat again and this time, clambering up the stairs onto a plane with larger seats and smaller seat belts. The Vietnamese are small people and so am I but unfortunately I’m a great deal fatter. We took off above Ho Chi Minh City again and saw how enormous it was, full of little boxy buildings in odd shapes like strange jigsaw puzzle pieces. The land below got blacker as we flew.

Danang was just as hot, despite night having fallen in the meantime. I really do think they should go ahead and air condition the whole country. It would make the tourists feel at ease. Danang is new, with tall buildings, lighted archways above the roads and a dragon bridge that breathes fire at 9pm and 10pm on weekends. It was also full of tourist resorts. We went for a walk the next day but all we could see was half built tourist resorts and workmen. The workmen were sleeping by the roadside. I lead us to a minimart but it turned out to be accommodation for workmen. The doors were shut and there were clothes on hangers.

We went back to the hotel where there were two free beauty treatments in our package and I could meditate on the lounges out back facing the sea and swim in the public pool. The rooms were luxurious, the bathroom was bigger than most hotel rooms I have stayed at and there was a private pool where I could swim at night when I couldn’t sleep. Each room had its own private swimming pool which was at least as big as six big bathtubs and you could do five or six swim strokes each way. Each pool had two sunbathing chairs and a thatched fence so no one could look in. There were laneways separating each building of four guest rooms.

We got up at 4am one day to climb a mountain with a Buddhist temple on top. I thought the stairs would be fine because as I’ve said before, Vietnamese are small people, but these stairs were huge and I was hanging on to the stone banisters like my life depended on it. Little Vietnamese ladies ran up and down the stairs carrying bottles of soft drink and snacks in buckets on their shoulders but I wasn’t nearly so surefooted. Eventually Phú, the guide, gave me his hand and thereafter escorted me up and down stairs. I’m grateful even though my calves were shaky afterwards.

There was a pure white Buddha, much larger than me and carved so that when I sat under him he appeared to be looking at me. He made me feel like a naughty girl. I guess he’s probably right. Or my conscience is feeling raw and ascribing motive to a stone statue. There was a frieze of scenes on the wall around him, Phú explained them but I confess to not paying much attention. I like Buddhism, I like the gentleness of it and the people who practice it (except perhaps in Myanmar) but I’m not really ready to give up all my desires and attachments to this world.

When we’d climbed down from the mountain we were on the other side, surrounded by tourist shops like car dealerships with statues instead of cars. Phú set a good pace round the mountain to the coffee shop where they had Vietnamese coffee (normal black coffee in a glass with carnation milk). Everyone else hurried after him. I brought up the rear.

When I was younger I used to walk everywhere. There’s nothing like walking to get the feeling of what it’s like to be in a country. It’s the only way I know of to be more than a tourist but the pain in my legs meant I couldn’t see Vietnam that way. I regret not being able to walk.