Preface

Dragon Diaries was an idea that came to me during the pandemic. My wife, Diem, our daughters Jennie and Lisa, and I lived in Vietnam for most of its duration. At theconstantepicurean.com, my website devoted to travel, articles had come almost to a grinding halt as lockdowns shut down travel. To keep articles flowing on the site, I started a limited series discussing the challenges we were facing amidst the pandemic in Vietnam. Amidst the chaos brought on by the virus, we also suffered through one of the most intense typhoon seasons in modern history. Eventually, things spiraled almost into chaos, and a race began to evacuate the country for the U.S. The Dragon is the symbol of Da Nang, the city we lived in, so I coined it the Dragon Diaries. This book is the retelling of those articles.