We’d been on an island off the coast of Cambodia for five days without an internet connection when we returned to the mainland to say good bye to Coco and to find a column in the New York Times by Joyce Walder titled “On the Road, With Mothers” in which she wrote: “I have been thinking of writing a book, “How to Travel With Your Mother,” but it would be a very short book. That is because my first tip is: Don’t. Do not ever travel with your mother. Unless maybe you are disposing of her ashes.”

As our faithful readers know, Coco joined us at the beginning of February in Hanoi and traveled with the team for a month through northern Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, departing Sihanoukville March 1st by cab on the way to a day and night and day of travel that would take her from Phnom Penh to Hanoi to Seoul to New York to Burlington across 12 time zones.  While I cannot speak for my wife or my children (who might write different blog entries, such as “how to keep your marriage together while traveling with your mother-in-law” or “how to manipulate two generations of parental authority figures to get what you want in Southeast Asia”), I would always welcome a good adventure with my mom.

For the Coco-philes, here is a photographic tribute to our month with Coco: