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Walking straight into oncoming traffic, the world slows, and I feel my eyelids become heavier than before. As if, in keeping my eyes closed, I would suddenly find myself where I wanted to be. Breathing slow and steady, my feet move with purpose and my eyes close and slowly open again. "Thank God I bought travel insurance last night," I hear myself mutter, as I have successfully crossed another street. Only seven more intersections to go. Never, in a million lifetimes, could I have been prepared for what Ho Chi Minh City brought me. The streets do not have lanes, they only have zebra stripes--a mere tease for us pedestrians. The traffic runs through the city like ants captured in a time-lapsed nature documentary, fast and unrelenting. The first day I called bike drivers to carry me around the city like a moped'ed princess. During one of these rides, I watched an elderly man cross the street, his cane in front of him, his back nearly at a 45 degree angle. A bus zoomed past him and yet, he managed to cross the street without so much as a honk, and in that moment I knew that I would be following suit. However, I was also not prepared for the heat that beat down on me during the short destination walks. Carefully mapping my day in the shelter of air-conditioning, I walked from my hotel to the War Remnants Museum, a mere 15 minute walk that felt like a lifetime. Even under the shade I could feel the heat rising from my each of my limbs, my body becoming one large bead of sweat. The War Remnants Museum entry leads into an open courtyard, and the entire first floor is open...without any sign of air conditioning. There was plenty of shade, and many tourists milling about, however, the heat made me feel like my body was a pulse and I knew I needed to find an air-conditioned room fast. Running up to the second floor in a desperate panic, I ran into the first closed door room I could find. The heat was lightly fanned away by the soft notions of air conditioning, but my blood ran cold as this gallery held image after image of dead bodies. The room I ran into? War Crimes. Now I was going to faint not from the heat, but the sadness in my heart. How could one prepare to see the horrors their country has done to another? Even now, in thinking of this gallery, my eyes are full of tears. How does one prepare for the guilt they have knowing their country has done such documented horrors, and how we might still be doing such wrong in the name of peace? It was a part of me that I never felt, never touched, never had to know what this would feel like before. This experience gave my traveling a new set of eyes, a new lens to see through. The beauty of a people rebuilding as of several generations ago. Later that week, my tour guide was a Mekong Delta native and I asked him how his family was affected by Agent Orange, worried as I read it could affect up to four generations of children. We sat sweating in another open market as he told me how he was fortunate to live in an area that wasn't quite affected, but has grown up with the reality of those who have. He was a young college student with impeccable English whose travel never extended beyond the borders of his country, and told me how he would go to the park near the tourism agency to find foreigners to practice speaking English with. "See you later, alligator," he told me as I stepped off his bus for the final time that day. "In a while, crocodile," I chirped back without a second thought. Taking in another deep breath, my eyelids became heavy. Slow and steady, slow and steady, I held my breath, and marched into oncoming traffic, again.