Local adventures

For a more complete set of pictures relating to this story, check out our photo album.

So far this year our schedule hasn't allowed for any far-ranging trips into the hinterlands of Vietnam. (We'll save those for when we have visitors here with us), but we have been able to get to know the area around Quy Nhon a little better and that's been a very good thing.

A random encounter with a Dutch tourist looking to explore the surrounding area provided the motivation for Joelle to organize a trip with a couple of the girls she tutors. They headed about an hour out of town to a 'natural area' called Ham Ho--a river with some cool, sculpted rocks--and then hit up some Cham towers on the way back to town. The Cham people lived in this part of Vietnam long before there was a Vietnam--they were a Hindu culture from India that once ruled a good portion of Southeast Asia. The area encompassing Da Nang, Nha Trang and Quy Nhon was their main center of operations in Vietnam. There are still some hilltop towers left in the area to remind us of what once was. (Not quite Angkor Wat, but still pretty cool.)

The next day we hopped a bus with our friend, Phung, and headed out to her hometown in the same general vicinity as Ham Ho. Phung lives in the hometown of a guy named Quang Trung (or Nguyen Hue), best known for driving the Chinese out of northern Vietnam and uniting the country under one ruler back in the late 1700s. There's a museum in his honor, which Phung was proud to show us.

We also had a chance to visit with her great family. Phung's grandparents, who spent 14 years living in Louisiana, are now back in Vietnam living with her mother and younger brother (Phung's father passed away in a motorbike accident several years ago, prompting their move back to Vietnam). One of the first things her grandpa did when he saw us was to shuffle into the other room and return with his green card and Louisiana driver's license, which he was evidently very proud of.
Older Vietnamese people--with their pajama suits and comb-overs and beautiful smiles--have a way of just charming the heck out of you and these two were no exception. We loved them pretty much instantly. Now we've got a date to return and celebrate Tet (Vietnamese New Year) with them, which should be a hoot.

Oh yeah, and while visiting Phung's hometown, Steven had to ride around on a ridiculously small bike, much to the amusement of Joelle, Phung, and everyone else on the street who saw him.

Tropical Storm Mirinae

On Monday, November 2nd, Tropical Storm Mirinae lumbered ashore in central Vietnam, bringing a surprising amount of wind, rain and waves along with it.

Having recently survived Typhoon Ketsana (a Category 2 storm which hit about 200 miles north of us) we weren't really expecting too much from a puny tropical storm like Mirinae. The main difference, however, was that instead of hitting 200 miles away, Mirinae slammed into Phu Yen province, just a few miles south of Quy Nhon.
We weren't the only ones surprised, as this article makes clear. While the wind in Quy Nhon was definitely stronger than Ketsana due to the storm's proximity, it was the rain that we couldn't believe. 600 mm of rain fell in our province in a 24 hour period. That's 23 inches in 24 hours, the heaviest rain here in about 60 years and far above and beyond anything we ever saw in "rainy" Washington State. Since the bulk of the city is built on a fairly sheltered sand spit far from any large rivers, Quy Nhon itself was unaffected by floods but many of the low-lying areas in this part of the country were inundated. So far, 98 deaths have been blamed on the storm, with 20 people still unaccounted for.

Despite everything it threw at us, we stayed safe and dry in our on-campus apartment here (except for the occasional foray outside with ponchos and video camera). Through the entire storm the power never went off and we never ran out of water. The same can't be said for much of the rest of the city, which is currently going on 5 days with no running water. Everyone seems to be taking it in stride, though. Life is basically back to normal in the city, with students attending classes and people back at work.
A friend of ours who had returned to her hometown (about 40 miles from Quy Nhon) to weather out the storm with her family brought back this random and kind of sad story: An old man who lived down the road from her kept 100 pigs on his little farm. As the rains started to fall, he didn't pay much attention--this is Vietnam and it rains a lot here, after all. But by 9 PM the water had risen quickly and washed all of his pigs downriver. A single sow was saved by a man who somehow either hauled it into his boat or towed it to shore. He took it back to the old man and sold it to him for 200,000 VND, or about $12.

And now, if you're not tired of storm videos yet, here's what things looked like from our perspective...

Tropical Storm Mirinae - Quy Nhon, Vietnam from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.