ABSTRACT
We arrived in Paris by train from Amsterdam the week before Christmas. It was cold and misty, but invigorating to us. For the last decade, my wife Joel-len Lambiotte and I had been living in the tropics—Nairobi, Hanoi, and now Bangkok. It seemed another life when we had left Arkansas and the States. Then, the kids had just started university, and now the oldest was thirty-one. Before, I had a career as a chief financial officer, but had left that security behind for the romantic adventure of living in Africa and now had written two travel books. My last two passports had enough visa stamps to qualify me for the Explorer’s Club, if not as a second for some touristing Forrest Gump. It was small wonder. Even before moving abroad, I’d traveled to seven continents, from Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego to Timbuktu and beyond.
