Last full day in Vietnam. We leave for the States tomorrow morning.

We got up early for the three-hour drive from Hanoi to reach Vietnam's Northern-most province, which borders China and where we can see Ha Long Bay. It is a formation of tall rock islands, which runs along much of the Northern coast of the country. We took a little boat tour into the bay. It was really very beautiful. It is one of the natural wonders of the world.

After a long drive back to Hanoi, we packed and went down to the bar for a quick bite before turning in. We were lucky to run into Tom Corey, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). He and his colleagues were coming back from a get-together at the Ministry of defense and were on a mission to track down Tracy. Tom is a quadriplegic who lost most of the function in his limbs when he was shot through the neck during the war. One of his primary initiatives with the VVA is to locate the remains of MIA's.

John Kerry, Don Droz and a Vietnamese marine

When Tracy started this project nearly three years ago, she told me that she wanted to have the courage to face everything that her dad had been through. Of course, she didn't get to share this place with her dad but she did get to share some of the same experiences. He too must have wondered about the strange loud chirps coming out of his walls at night — and ultimately discovered the surprising range of the gecko. He too must have been shocked by the bath water temperature of the South China Sea at Cam Ranh Bay — where you can't even count on the ocean for relief from the heat. And more than once he must have sunk his boots deep into the spongy muddy banks of the Mekong Delta and worried whether he'd ever get all the mud out, and out of all the mud.