15-minute Clinic
Salta, Argentina
After six weeks in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the children caught up on schoolwork, we resumed a more nomadic existence. A series of overnight bus trips took us north from Buenos Aires to the stunning Iguacú Falls, then across Argentina to the northwestern provincial capital of Salta.
Nicknamed Salta La Linda (Salta the Fair), the town is known for its extraordinary colonial architecture and as the starting point for the Train to the Clouds, which climbs high into the Andes.
On our second morning in town, Caroline woke with several angry red bumps on the back of her hand and along her wrist. We assumed an insect—perhaps a spider—had bitten her during the night. At first we worried about the cleanliness of our $30-a-night room at the hostel. But as the day wore on, our focus shifted to the red welts as they began to itch terribly and multiply. Soon, red blotches and bumps appeared on Caroline’s arms, neck and back. 
The young man at the front desk of our hostel told us there was a medical clinic just two doors down, so off we went, concerned about Caroline and uncertain what to expect of Argentine medical care.
A dozen people turned to stare when we entered the clinic’s small reception area. The waiting room was full, and I mentally prepared myself to be there several hours. After a couple of attempts to communicate—pointing to the bumps and enlisting the children with their school Spanish—we were able to get the receptionist to understand our problem. She motioned for us to wait, then disappeared down a hallway. When she returned a few minutes later, she told us the doctor would see us, but first we had to pay $40 in Argentine pesos (the equivalent of $13 U.S.). Then she led us to an examination room.
Instantly, a doctor appeared. He was tall and handsome with the dark features of the local indigenas. He had an ice-blue glass eye. We explained that Dani and I did not speak Spanish, but that Caroline and Conor did. He said not to worry, he spoke some English and everything would be all right. He checked the bumps that had now become more of a rash. He listened to Caroline’s heart, checked her lymph nodes and asked her several questions in Spanish.
Then he turned to us and said in English, “She is having an allergic reaction to something. There could be many different causes—an insect bite, contact with a plant or something she ate—but fortunately there is one solution.”
He walked over to a shelf and removed a sample package of Allegra. “This medicine is made in the U.S.,” he said. “Regardless of what caused this reaction, it will help. Take one pill a day for five days and you will feel better.”
He shook my hand and Conor’s, and kissed Caroline and Dani on the cheek. He wished us safe travels and, with a small bow, left the room.
We walked back to the reception area to find out what we owed for the prescription. It took a moment for the receptionist to understand.
“No, you have already paid,” she said. “You can go.”
Less than 15 minutes after entering the clinic, we were on our way back to the hostel: no forms, no insurance questions, no big bill. Just $13 for a doctor’s visit and a prescription. Within a few hours, Caroline’s rash had begun to fade.
Far from Home
Alice Springs, Australia
After three months crisscrossing South America, we made our way across the Pacific, first to New Zealand, then to Australia in mid-December. At the top of our list of places to visit was Alice Springs, one of the most hard-to-get-to places on Earth. Dani’s childhood friend Kara lived in Alice now. Decades earlier, she had followed her father, a CIA employee, from Manassas, Va., to the central Australian desert, where the agency maintained an important “listening post” focused on Asia.
Kara and her husband, Rob, picked us up at the airport. We had arrived in time to attend Kara’s company Christmas party on a cattle station two hours from Alice, deep in the outback. We made our way through the rust-colored landscape dotted with giant termite mounds and eucalyptus trees, putting Rob’s new four-wheel-drive Toyota through its paces.
Shortly before dinner we arrived at Tilmouth Well roadhouse on the southern edge of the 2,200-square-mile Napperby cattle station. Roy and Janet, our hosts for the evening, welcomed us like family. Soon, station employees began to arrive: an Aussie couple who managed the bar and restaurant, a German backpacker doing temporary work as a nanny, a woman who coordinated lessons with the outback’s distance-learning program and a handsome cowboy who introduced himself as a drover.
As the party went on late into the night, it struck me how similar it was to Christmas parties we had attended on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The buffet dinner. The ’50s and ’60s music. The stories, and the characters telling them. We were halfway around the world, literally in the middle of nowhere, but we could easily have been in our hometown if not for the broad Aussie accents. We’d worried about missing familiar Christmas traditions, but we found them at Tilmouth Well.
That year, our carefully chosen gifts—one for each family member—held more meaning than the usual tall stack of presents under our holiday tree at home.
City of Contradictions
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Six weeks in Thailand helped ease our transition from New Zealand and Australia to Southeast Asia. The chaos of Bangkok was a revelation; the quiet of Chiang Mai, a balm. But it was hard to be prepared for Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a place where the top two tourist attractions are a torture museum and a genocide memorial.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Phnom Penh was one of Indochina’s most cosmopolitan cities. President Richard Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and Pol Pot’s reign of terror in the 1970s, changed all that.
Some influences from its days as a French colony remain: wide boulevards, lively restaurants, wrought-iron balconies and a buzzing nightlife. If you look closely, you can imagine the city it once was. But the most striking thing about Phnom Penh today is the resilience and optimism of its people—something we would witness firsthand during our five-day stay, as we waited for visas for China.
On the night we arrived, we checked into our hotel, then went in search of a place to eat. We had not yet oriented ourselves to the city and had only a vague idea where we were going. A tuk-tuk driver approached and offered to take us where we wanted to go, then bring us back. When I asked how much he’d charge, he said, “You decide.” 
He had a nice smile, a gentle manner and spoke pretty good English. He told us his name was Lau. We asked him to take us to Sisowath Quay, the epicenter of tourist nightlife in Phnom Penh. When he dropped us off at our hotel after dinner, he asked: “You need transport tomorrow?”
He became our driver that week, taking us on our errands to the U.S. and Chinese embassies. He took us to the sites in and around Phnom Penh: the National Museum, the Royal Palace, the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison. And each night he drove us to dinner and home again. He was a careful driver in a city of insane traffic, always on time, always smiling, always with a kind word.
After our third day together, Lau said: “I want you to meet my family. Will you come?” Dani said, “That is so nice,” which Lau took as a yes. “Good,” he said. “Tomorrow then? Two o’clock?” We nodded, not sure what we had just agreed to.
The next day, Lau picked us up at our hotel. We drove for about 35 minutes, farther and farther from the center of the city. Soon we were bumping along a narrow dirt lane through a shantytown. People looked at us with curiosity. Eventually Lau stopped the tuk-tuk in front of an opening in a corrugated metal fence. “This my house,” he said. “Come in.”
We walked through the opening in the fence to a brick and wood shack with a dirt floor. Lau’s wife, son, mother-in-law and a few curious neighbors greeted us. For the next two hours, Lau interpreted as we discussed our families and our lives. Lau’s wife served us a simple, delicious meal on Lau’s slatted wooden bed, which doubled as the family’s dining table.
A few neighbors shared stories of family members tortured in Tuol Sleng Prison and murdered in the Killing Fields. They were curious about America. “When you eat your dinner,” one man asked, “do you eat it with rice or bread?” Humbled, I answered, “Both,” and thought of the excesses of our life at home.
As Lau prepared to drive us back into town, I tried to memorize the scene. I watched his children playing with neighborhood kids and thought about the human lottery—how my children, by the simple fate of birth, would have opportunities denied millions of children around the world. Yet here was this Cambodian family, living near the edge of poverty, sharing with us what little they had.
