Cúp điện, cúp điện. The two-syllable phrase is heard all over Quy Nhon these days, often accompanied by a sigh and roll of the eyes or a resigned half-smile. The power's out. Again.
In a country that is heavily dependent on hydroelectric dams to provide electricity to its citizens, water is power. Literally. Which means that, after what's been called the driest rainy season in 40 years, Vietnam has precious little energy to go around.
Rolling blackouts started in Quy Nhon a couple weeks ago. Not wanting to begin with half-measures, they started by shutting off power to whole swaths of the city for 15 hours at a time--a move which proved to be rather unpopular, disruptive to business and life in general and (it was later discovered) actually forbidden by law. Fine then. Fourteen hour blackouts became the norm. Twice a week, in most parts of the city.
Then someone came up with the bright idea to conserve by shutting down power to the entire city all night on Sundays. Now, when I was living in Washington the electricity would occasionally get knocked out at night during a storm and I wouldn't realize until I overslept my alarm the next morning and saw the clock blinking "12:00" at me when I woke up. But in Vietnam, nighttime power outages are pretty much impossible to sleep through.
With overnight temps in the mid-to-high 70s, humidity to match, and sun-baked brick buildings radiating off the heat of the day, our apartment quickly becomes stifling without fans or some sort of air movement. I would reckon that most folks in Quy Nhon (Joelle and I included) had about two hours of uncomfortable, much-interrupted sleep the night they shut the whole city down.
Realizing that they were well on their way to creating a city full of irritated, sleep-deprived zombies, the authorities most likely fired or exiled the yahoo had suggested the all-night outage, because it hasn't happened since (a very good thing). Instead, they've begun cutting power daily from 5:00 to 7:00 in the morning--all-in-all a much more bearable state of affairs.
Living on the university campus has had its advantages for us, as we've been spared from the long daytime cuts (though seemingly random cuts lasting from 10 minutes to 2 hours have been common enough).
During all of this, I've reflected on what would happen in a North American city, were the civic leaders suddenly to declare four or five months of regular blackouts in the middle of summer. I think "tea party" doesn't even begin to describe the sort of outrage that would be directed at the government. Lawsuits would be plentiful. Senate hearings would be convened. Militias would be organized. Eco warriors living off the grid would chuckle to themselves and pour another bowl of organic muesli. Most people, in other words, would basically freak out.
Not so in Vietnam. Though some might grumble, the attitude here seems to be one of "We've been through a lot worse than this. Just make the best of it." So people just take long naps, head out to the beach where the breeze is fresh, or cruise around the streets on their bikes and feel the wind. The guy who runs the photocopy shop I frequent has just lost about 30% of his business due to lack of power. Rather than spending his free time organizing riots and making molotov cocktails in the back room, he now spends two days a week kicking around a soccer ball in the park with his friends or visiting people in other parts of the city. It's just what you do.
So, next November and December, when the heavens open up and the rains pour down I promise I won't grumble about not being able to go out, or whine about the mold growing on our walls. Instead, I'll smile, flick on our electric tea kettle, and quietly say thank you.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Binh Dinh Exploratory Commission Inaugural Journey
Yesterday was an "I love Vietnam" day for me (Steven), and particularly an "I love Binh Dinh province" day. I'll tell you why.
As I'm sure I've explained before, Quy Nhon is far from the beaten tourist track (though it's grown noticeably more popular in the last year and a half since we arrived). But compared to the rest of Binh Dinh province, Quy Nhon is a veritable tourist magnet. Except for a couple of spots on the main bus routes, hardly anyone who's not Vietnamese ventures very far outside the city, including us.
This was going to have to change. And change it did. A couple weeks ago, a New Zealand volunteer living in Quy Nhon told us about an old Catholic seminary he had been to. He described for us the general part of the province it was in, but said it would be hard to find if you'd never been there before. Perfect. I did some digging online and Jason rounded up a few of our friends with motorbikes. We set out from Quy Nhon yesterday morning under delightfully cloudy skies with some vague directions clipped from a website (in Vietnamese) and a not-so-detailed map of the area.
As it was, we only had to backtrack once and we got far more than we were hoping for out of the whole deal. The seminary was great--quiet and peaceful, with stately old trees swaying in the breeze. It's been officially shut down by the powers-that-be since the early 1980s, but an elderly Vietnamese priest still lives there and cares for the place, and employs a husband and wife couple who help him out.
We've heard two different versions of the history of the place--one, that the seminary and church were built by the French in the early 1900s; another, that they were built by the Portuguese long before that. It's possible that both are true--the site could have been used by the Portuguese (perhaps even as early as the 1700s) and then re-built by the French later on. Either way, the grounds are well-kept and it's a wonderfully quiet place surrounded by rice fields and well-shaded by the trees. I asked the priest/caretaker if it was possible for people to come spend a night or two there (they certainly have enough rooms) and was told with a smile that sure it was possible so long as permission was granted by the authorities. Which, I'm guessing, means "No."
Either way, I'd like to go out again and spend the better part of a day with a Good Book and a journal. Seems to be a great spot for reflection and thinking.
Our journey wasn't over yet, though. As it turns out we were right out near the hometown of one of the friends who had come along with us. Following his lead we wound our way through more villages and rice paddies until we came to a Catholic cemetery that, according to our friend/guide, dates back four hundred years. The tombs were impressive and shaped like lotus flowers, turtle shells and other crazy, unidentifiable objects. One of the tombs even had stairs that descended underneath it--right down to the water table (which in that part of the country was only about five feet beneath us). We didn't venture down to see whether the tomb's occupant was hanging out down there or not.
From the cemetery it was just another couple of miles to an old Cham tower--the oldest of the 14 towers left standing in the province, apparently. The Cham were a people group from India who settled most of southern Vietnam a long, long time ago. They were eventually driven out by the Vietnamese coming down from the north, but not before they'd built themselves a bunch of brick towers all over the countryside. This tower dated from the 11th century, and was in quite good shape for being around 1000 years old. The Cham were remarkable for building things with bricks but no mortar. Somehow they fitted everything together so precisely that they didn't need the stuff.
From the tower we circled back around the lagoon behind Quy Nhon and hit the new highway which runs the length of the sandy, deserted "economic development zone" across the water from the city. We cruised along the wide, vacant stretch of asphalt and across the long bridge spanning the lagoon, back to the city and civilization. All told it was a tour I would have been happy to pay $30 or $40 for, which we got instead for the price of a couple liters of gasoline and lunch for our friends. Days like that make me happy to be here in Vietnam, happy to have friends willing to drag me around by motorbike for half a day, happy to be slowly unfolding the history and character of these people.
Rather than just posting a bunch of pictures, I thought a video would be in order to share a little more about this trip, so you can take a look at the link below. (Watch it in full screen for full effect, of course.)
As I'm sure I've explained before, Quy Nhon is far from the beaten tourist track (though it's grown noticeably more popular in the last year and a half since we arrived). But compared to the rest of Binh Dinh province, Quy Nhon is a veritable tourist magnet. Except for a couple of spots on the main bus routes, hardly anyone who's not Vietnamese ventures very far outside the city, including us.
This was going to have to change. And change it did. A couple weeks ago, a New Zealand volunteer living in Quy Nhon told us about an old Catholic seminary he had been to. He described for us the general part of the province it was in, but said it would be hard to find if you'd never been there before. Perfect. I did some digging online and Jason rounded up a few of our friends with motorbikes. We set out from Quy Nhon yesterday morning under delightfully cloudy skies with some vague directions clipped from a website (in Vietnamese) and a not-so-detailed map of the area.
As it was, we only had to backtrack once and we got far more than we were hoping for out of the whole deal. The seminary was great--quiet and peaceful, with stately old trees swaying in the breeze. It's been officially shut down by the powers-that-be since the early 1980s, but an elderly Vietnamese priest still lives there and cares for the place, and employs a husband and wife couple who help him out.
We've heard two different versions of the history of the place--one, that the seminary and church were built by the French in the early 1900s; another, that they were built by the Portuguese long before that. It's possible that both are true--the site could have been used by the Portuguese (perhaps even as early as the 1700s) and then re-built by the French later on. Either way, the grounds are well-kept and it's a wonderfully quiet place surrounded by rice fields and well-shaded by the trees. I asked the priest/caretaker if it was possible for people to come spend a night or two there (they certainly have enough rooms) and was told with a smile that sure it was possible so long as permission was granted by the authorities. Which, I'm guessing, means "No."
Either way, I'd like to go out again and spend the better part of a day with a Good Book and a journal. Seems to be a great spot for reflection and thinking.
Our journey wasn't over yet, though. As it turns out we were right out near the hometown of one of the friends who had come along with us. Following his lead we wound our way through more villages and rice paddies until we came to a Catholic cemetery that, according to our friend/guide, dates back four hundred years. The tombs were impressive and shaped like lotus flowers, turtle shells and other crazy, unidentifiable objects. One of the tombs even had stairs that descended underneath it--right down to the water table (which in that part of the country was only about five feet beneath us). We didn't venture down to see whether the tomb's occupant was hanging out down there or not.
From the cemetery it was just another couple of miles to an old Cham tower--the oldest of the 14 towers left standing in the province, apparently. The Cham were a people group from India who settled most of southern Vietnam a long, long time ago. They were eventually driven out by the Vietnamese coming down from the north, but not before they'd built themselves a bunch of brick towers all over the countryside. This tower dated from the 11th century, and was in quite good shape for being around 1000 years old. The Cham were remarkable for building things with bricks but no mortar. Somehow they fitted everything together so precisely that they didn't need the stuff.
From the tower we circled back around the lagoon behind Quy Nhon and hit the new highway which runs the length of the sandy, deserted "economic development zone" across the water from the city. We cruised along the wide, vacant stretch of asphalt and across the long bridge spanning the lagoon, back to the city and civilization. All told it was a tour I would have been happy to pay $30 or $40 for, which we got instead for the price of a couple liters of gasoline and lunch for our friends. Days like that make me happy to be here in Vietnam, happy to have friends willing to drag me around by motorbike for half a day, happy to be slowly unfolding the history and character of these people.
Rather than just posting a bunch of pictures, I thought a video would be in order to share a little more about this trip, so you can take a look at the link below. (Watch it in full screen for full effect, of course.)Binh Dinh Exploration from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.
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