Final adventures and the trip home

To see pictures from this trip, click here.

This is being written from the living room of Joelle's parents' house in Sumas, Washington on a cool, May evening. Getting here from Quy Nhon was a bit of a process, which began with an overnight train ride to Saigon, a short flight to Hong Kong, and then a long hop across the Pacific to Vancouver, BC where we were picked up and whisked back to the States by Joelle's family. Still a little hard to believe that, for the next two and a half months, America is home for us again.

The week before we left was filled with goodbyes, packing, organizing, and at least one fairly sweet adventure. Phuong, a 4th year student who's been a good friend all year, invited Jason and Steven to visit his hometown in a remote part of Dak Lak province. This was not your typical tourist town visit by any stretch of the imagination; Phuong told us that--apart from his foreign English teacher who visited the year previous--we were the first foreigners to set foot in that part of the country in a long, long time.

Our journey started with a bus ride south along the coast from Quy Nhon. We hopped off the bus at a crossroads about 20 miles shy of the tourist hub of Nha Trang and flagged down an overcrowded van on its way up into the highlands. Wedging ourselves into the backseat as best we could, we survived a hair raising trip on windy mountain roads ("some of the most dangerous roads in Vietnam," Phuong assured us) to the sleepy mountain town of M'Drak.

From M'Drak we were picked up on motorbikes by Phuong's brother, brother-in-law and uncle and carried even further into the countryside. After a lengthy check-in procedure by the authorities at a small local police station we were allowed to go all the way to Phuong's commune, a group of about 70 houses in the midst of coffee fields, surrounded by jungle-covered mountains.
The residents of the commune are, by-and-large, transplants from a single town in northern Vietnam. Phuong's family lived in a poor, overpopulated region near Hanoi and moved to Dak Lak when he was a child, drawn by a promsie of free land from the government. The village that we saw--small, simple houses dotting hillsides covered with coffee trees--had been hacked out of the wilderness by the hands of those first settlers. Electricity arrived in the village just five years ago. Trips into town used to take a full day on a muddy trail (rather than 15 minutes on a dirt road).

We were warmly welcomed by Phuong's family and fed all the best meals they could provide (boiled chicken for breakfast, fresh fish hotpot and dog for dinner). Since most of the village was curious about the foreigners, large crowds were common at mealtimes as people tried to figure out what we were up to.

One of the things that most impressed me about the visit--in addition to the sheer remoteness of it all--was just how self-sufficient Phuong's family was. Rather than heading to the market every day, they grew their own vegetables, raised their own chickens and cows, kept enormous fish in a pond next to their house, grew a variety of delicious fruit in abundance, and bought home-grown rice from their neighbors. Were the global food supply to collapse tomorrow, Phuong's family would do just fine.

A highlight of the trip was the hike Phuong took us on through the rolling hills near the village, down a valley to a meandering stream and finally down to the base of a huge waterfall, roaring in wild splendor, surrounded by nothing but mountains and virgin rainforest. We took turns jumping off of rocks into the pool below the falls, shouting for sheer delight.

Among other things, the trip convinced me (Steven) that I really need to study more Vietnamese if I want to communicate with people outside of a university setting. It was also a good glimpse into the lives that many of my students have lived, as the majority of them come from the countryside rather than the city. Overall, though, it was simply a blessing--a fitting finale to 15 months of work and adventure in Vietnam.

May Holiday

On April 30th, 1975 the course of history changed dramatically for Vietnam. Officially called "National Unity Day" here, it's better known in the West as the Fall of Saigon. Without getting too political, it's the day that North and South Vietnam ceased to exist as separate entities and became, instead, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

April 30th is now celebrated in Vietnam as a national holiday which--to no one's surprise--is followed by May 1st (another national holiday--known in much of the world as International Workers' Day--which has little or nothing to do with giving bouquets of flowers to people.) This year, these back-to-back holidays fell quite conveniently on a Thursday and Friday, which led to a four day weekend which was further stretched to a five day weekend for us by the fact that Steven doesn't normally teach on Wednesdays anyway. All that to say: We've had some time on our hands this past week.

So, with bus tickets in hand, we left Quy Nhon on Wednesday morning for a 5 hour trip up the coast. Our destination was Hoi An, an ancient Vietnamese port town that's now a major stop on the north-south tourist route. We first visited Hoi An in December with Will and Carissa and, while it doesn't rank as the most "authentic" Vietnamese experience available (tourists outnumber locals about 3 to 1, I think), it's easy to get to and is a good spot to buy reasonably priced souvenirs. Since we'll soon be seeing our families, friends and supporters for the first time in 15 months, we figured we had some shopping to do.

Hoi An was much the same as we remembered it--pretty, rainy, and crawling with foreigners. We did our shopping, had our fill of Western food and were ready to return to Quy Nhon with our loot. As it turned out, our last day held something far different and more authentic in store for us.

Mo, one of Steven's first-year students, happened to be home visiting her parents over the long weekend in a village just a few miles outside Hoi An. Joelle has been getting to know Mo (pronounced like the first syllable of 'mother') over the last few months and she had previously invited us to come visit her hometown. So we took her up on her offer and, around 10:30 in the morning, found ourselves in the quiet village of Dien Ban, walking up to the front door of a small house and being greeted by Mo, her family and several curious neighbor kids.

Mo told us that she's the only person in her village who speaks English, and we believe her. She said that several years ago a couple of foreigners rode their bicycles through town but we were first ones to visit since then. We strolled with her along the narrow streets of the village, past a house with red chili peppers drying on the porch and roof, stepping off the road when cows came trundling along the opposite direction. We visited her uncle's house where the family's most recent rice harvest was spread out evenly all over their living room floor as it dried (they would normally dry it outside, but the weather hadn't been cooperating).

Back at Mo's family's house we sat down to a tasty lunch of duck and taro soup with her parents, her older sister and her sister's boyfriend. We weren't able to communicate a whole lot with the family (we asked some basic family information in Vietnamese, and her father asked how long we'd been married and if we had flies in America like they do in Vietnam). Still, we felt welcomed and honored just to be there. We've been off the beaten track plenty of times before, but never had the chance to sit down to a meal with a family in the countryside.

The family has a total of seven people, with three beds to share among them all. Mo pointed to a pair of queen-bed sized lofts about 10 feet off the concrete floor of the main room and explained that that's where they went when it flooded. One of the bunks was for all of their furniture and possessions, the other was for the people. The floodwaters reach about four or five feet deep inside their house every couple of years. "We used to be very poor," Mo explained, "But we're doing better now." Mo--the youngest of five--is the first in the family to go to university.

The bus trip back to Quy Nhon later that afternoon took us through rice fields and small towns, over swollen rivers under a threatening gray sky. As we went, it was nice to feel like we understood the things we were seeing just a little bit more than we had before.

To see pictures from our trip, click here.