This trip is an ad hoc collection of places reflecting who we’re planning to see and what we’d like to do together more than it is an organized tour. However, even in the planning stages it was clear we’d see the Taj Mahal, built by a Mughal emperor; and the Angkor Wat complex left by the Khmer Empire. Our starting 5 days in Provence (acquired by the Romans even before they were an Empire) emphasized that past.
Our friends Mark and Ellen live for 6 months of the year in Vaison la Romaine, a village complete with a 2000 year old Roman bridge over the river. That bridge survived a huge flood in 1992 that washed out a more recent bridge and killed some campers along the river bank. (I took my morning run by the memorial to the campers this morning. The memorial was constructed in part by the local Rotary Club.)
Sunday Mark and Ellen took us to several nearby towns; lunch time found us in one where the only restaurant apparently open was a Vietnamese restaurant. The French ruled Vietnam (along with Laos and Cambodia—called, together, Indochina) from the 1880s to 1954. As in the US, one result of foreign wars seems to be new cuisine. 
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