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.