Mad dogs, Englishmen...and Quy Nhonese?

Let me begin by saying that Joelle and I come from the Pacific Northwest, a part of the world that receives only slightly more direct sunlight each year than the dark side of the moon.  When the sun appears in Washington, people flock to it.  We soak it in, knowing that it might not appear again for weeks or months.  In the long days of summer, when it’s light out until 10:00 (or later) at night we eat dinner outside, play Frisbee or go for long bike rides at 8:30 at night, delay going to bed until midnight…all so we can catch a few more of those precious rays.  Embedded deep in the psyche of every true Washingtonian is a simple equation that states:  SUN = GOOD.

So it was funny to me at first when I moved to Vietnam and realized that people here avoid exposure to the sun as assiduously as I might avoid exposure to, for instance, anthrax or news about Justin Bieber.  When class is over and my students are going home for lunch, they transform from pleasant, casually-dressed college students into armored, bicycle-mounted UV-battling warriors with nary a millimeter of skin showing.  Jeans and long-sleeve shirts with sweatshirts over top, gloves that go past their elbows, face masks that drop all the way down the neck, toe-socks to cover the feet and yet allow for the wearing of flip-flops, topped off with an umbrella (not for rain but for sun).  We’re talking UV-Protection Level Midnight. 

This has become completely normal to see over the years and it’s quite understandable. If you’ve ever spent more than 10 minutes uncovered in the sun here you quickly realize that your primary goal in life has become finding shade (preferably air-conditioned) and staying in it until nightfall.  Here's a typical beach scene in Quy Nhon between the hours of 8:00 AM and 4:30 PM.  Notice:  Population zero.

That’s why I laughed in my friend’s face when he mentioned in passing this morning that today was a special day.  A holiday of sorts in which lots and lots of people go to the beach at high noon to take a dip in the sea and look at the sun.  Those were his words:  look at the sun.  At noon.  Not only did this sound foolish and potentially dangerous, it sounded like the least Vietnamese thing imaginable.  It was as if once a year everyone just went crazy for 10 minutes and did the precise opposite of what they were supposed to do.  It would have been like the whole population of Bellingham running up to Canada to go shopping and buy gas at Canadian Costco for an afternoon.  Never happen.

I wasn’t sure I believed him, so at 11:45, forsaking lunch and my family (for 20 minutes), I grabbed my camera and headed down to the beach.  Sure enough, the world had gone mad.  Quy Nhon is known for looking absolutely deserted from about 11:00 AM till 3:00 PM.  People who arrive in town for the first time at midday sometimes wonder if the zombie apocalypse has actually begun.  No one ventures outside if they can possibly avoid it.  The old saying from India about “only mad dogs and Englishmen” going out in the sun rings true here, as the only type of person you would tend to see on the beach at that hour (other than a fisherman) is the pasty European kind, punishing their skin because hey, they’re on holiday and they figure a raging sunburn will make everyone back home jealous. But the beach today was far from deserted.  Kids and parents, grandmas and college students—up and down Quy Nhon’s 3-mile long crescent of sand, they were sprinting or hobbling or sauntering out to the water and splashing around in the glaring hot sun like it was no big thang.  

Hundreds—maybe thousands—of people were out there, many of them fully clothed, enjoying a little dip, laughing and playing.  There was something wonderfully childlike about it all, as though some usually strict parents had allowed their little ones to stay up past their bedtime just this once.  

I even saw a guy waterskiing behind a fishing boat, it was that nuts.  (I’ve never seen anyone waterskiing in Vietnam, let alone behind a fishing boat.)

The most I’ve been able to find out about this holiday, named Tết Đoan Ngọ, is that it falls on the 5^th day of the 5^th lunar month every year—shortly before the summer solstice.  (That, incidentally, would explain why I’ve never heard of it because we’ve always been back in the States for the summer).  Tradition says that a dip in the sea at this time is supposed to wash away bad luck and give strength and health for the time ahead.  Like many traditions that people here might not fully understand themselves, it probably came “from China.”  It’s also interesting in that the whole dipping-in-the-sea-staring-at-the-sun part of things seems to be almost entirely localized to Quy Nhon.  When I do an image search for the name of the holiday, the only swimming pictures I get are of Quy Nhon’s beach.  Students who came to Quy Nhon from other provinces have confirmed that this is something only "those crazy Quy Nhonese" do.

 In any case, I walked along the beach for a bit, enjoying the atmosphere though not partaking in the actual process of it all.  After a while, soaking wet people started filtering back to their motorbikes or running back to their houses across the hot sand.

It was a good reminder to me that sometimes life refreshingly chooses not to fit the mold that we like to put it in.  Expectations get turned on their heads, and I recall that I still have a whole lot to learn about this place and these people.  I also saw it as a kind of cheerfully defiant act of civil disobedience toward the sun itself, which can start to feel like a merciless dictator in this season.  Distant echoes, perhaps, of the children of Israel turning their backs and walking out on Pharaoh (who was, after all, supposed to be the embodiment of the sun god himself).

I’m willing to bet that an hour after I left, the sun once again ruled over a desolate beach.  I can’t be certain, though, because by that time I was taking a nap with Micah in a dim, air-conditioned room and leaving the beach to any mad dogs or stray Englishmen who happened to be about.

Children's Park

Whew.  There’s something about relocating your family across the planet with a 2 and a half year old and a 2 and a half month old in tow that makes a person want to lay down and sleep for a month or two.  Can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s there.  But with two beautiful little ones like this, it's all worth it.

We are, in fact, back in Quy Nhon with TWO kids now and we’re happy to be here.  The process of getting here went rather smoothly, despite the fact that we had a veritable mountain of luggage.  Micah was a great traveler as usual and our wild-card unknown, Sedakah, proved to be a fantastic traveler too.  She seemed to enjoy being on an airplane more than she enjoys most things, and was content to lie in her bassinet and smile at the ceiling for most of the trip.  Getting settled has taken a bit longer and been more stressful than usual due largely to the fact that Micah picked up a bad cold or flu bug on the way over and was sick for probably 10 days.  He was a fairly grumpy, needy kid for a while which made the rest of life more difficult.  He’s feeling better now, though, and we’re happy to have our joyous, funny, smiling little boy back.

We decided to celebrate finally getting settled (and mostly healthy) by a trip to the Children’s Park yesterday afternoon.  Now, the Children’s Park is a place we have been many, many times.  It’s on the beach right across from the university, so we tend to at least pass through it with some regularity.  But it’s only this year that Micah has really gotten to the age where we figured he would enjoy more of what the park has to offer.

If you’re an American and you hear the words “Children’s Park” you might imagine a grassy, treed area with some swings and slides and a ball field or two for the kiddos to go entertain themselves with.  Apart from the grass and trees, you would not be imagining Quy Nhon’s Children’s Park.  Think “Permanent Carnival, Set Among Trees” and you would be getting closer to the truth.  It really is a nice setting, with big shade trees and a cool breeze off the water.  For Micah and his buddy Ezra, it was Shangri-La.

Our first stop on our Children’s Park odyssey was the fish pond, where you use a plastic fishing pole with magnetic “bait” on it to catch a whole bunch of plastic fish, turtles, alligators and various other aquatic creatures with screws in their mouths.  Micah tried his hand at spear fishing a few times, with little to show for it.  Fun, but really just a warm-up for what was to come.  Cost: 7,000 VND or about 33 cents for a pole and unlimited plastic fish. 

 

Right next to the fish pond was a small paved area that was just perfect for driving little electric cars around.  As Micah started to tire of the angler’s lifestyle, he began longingly eyeing the cars with their youthful drivers zipping back and forth next to us.  It was only a matter of time before we seated him in a plastic jeep with laser turrets and let him go.  I (Steven), ever the watchful parent, followed him around to make sure he didn’t drive into a tree or go off the embankment onto the beach.  Ezra got stuck with the pink and purple Barbie car, but didn’t seem to be too fazed by it.  Cost:  12,000 VND or about 57 cents for perhaps 5 minutes of motorized joy.

After the cars, Micah was really keyed up and ready to go.  He strolled through the park asking to go on every single ride.  Miniature swan boats that had to be paddled by hand.  Big pit full of dirty plastic balls.  Spinning spaceship ride.  We finally settled on what seemed to be the tamest option, a mini roller coaster that went round and round a small oval track.  When I say “mini,” I mean mini.  I went along with Micah to make sure he didn’t get bored and try to climb out midway through the ride.  It required some serious folding of my 6’ 4” frame to fit me into the roller coaster.  Apparently they don’t make these things for adult male Americans. 

Whatever the case, we got onto the mini roller coaster with little Ezra and his dad, Will, as well as a couple of Vietnamese dads with their sons, paid our money and off we went.  Around and around.  And around and around.  And then around some more.  Pretty fun for the first six, seven, eight times.  Started to get old after 12, 13, 14 revolutions.  How long does 50 cents buy me on this ride? I started to wonder.  Then I looked around and realized that the ride operator had just up and left us to ourselves.  And I mean left.  He had gone down the way to let some people onto a bigger roller coaster and seemed in no hurry to get back to our ride to shut it off.  Micah—the kid who gets motion sick and upchucks within 20 minutes of climbing into the back seat of a car—was not the ideal child to be riding with on an endlessly circling roller coaster.  I kept asking him how he was doing and he kept replying, “Fine.  Fine,” but I didn’t necessarily trust his answers.  Finally Will’s wife, Kristin, saved us by going and flipping the kill switch herself.  We all climbed out and sauntered away as the operator continued AWOL.  Cost:  10,000 VND or about 48 cents per person but be prepared to stop the thing yourself.

One of the best parts of the whole roller coaster experience, in addition to the operator's disappearing act, was this guy.  Wow.  Just wow.  He stood and gawked at us while we returned the favor.

As we prepared to leave the park, Micah started his whine/crying and “I-don’t-want-to-leave”’s to let us know that, yes, he had had a good time and yes, he wanted to come back again sometime.  All-in-all it was a fun, refreshing experience for everyone and a sort of rediscovery of a very familiar place.  For all the times I had strolled through the Children’s Park, not once had I stopped to fish or drive cars or go on the roller coaster.  Not once had I looked at it through the eyes of a toddler.  Now, I have.  And it is indeed a wonderland.  All for less than 2 bucks.

It's Saturday, this must be Cambodia...

Yes, Cambodia it is.  Phnom Penh, to be exact.  I (Steven) arrived here from Vietnam last night and will be here for about 9 days to serve as a mentor teacher for new teachers from our organization who are going through a training program.  Starting Monday I'll teach a couple of--ahem--"model" lessons for Cambodian students and will spend the next few days observing the new teachers showing off what they've learned during the last 3 weeks of TESL training.  I'm excited for it.

Joelle and Micah are back in Quy Nhon.  We arrived there about a week ago from America and had time to get the house mostly cleaned and get over jetlag before I had to take off.  At the end of next week we'll all be meeting up in Hanoi for some Team Vietnam orientation time before the school year starts.  Craziness.

Since I have a little bit of time, I thought I'd update everyone on how our travels went and what we've been up to.  Our trip from Washington to Quy Nhon was, in a word, sweet.  Micah once again proved that he is a champion traveler and once again garnered praise from someone sitting near us on the 11-hour Seattle-to-Seoul flight.  A lady told Joelle at the end of the flight that Micah was one of the best behaved little ones she'd seen on a flight and that Joelle's parenting skills were top-notch.  I concur on all counts.  Somehow she kept a 23-month old happy and occupied for probably 8 of the 11 hours we were in the air (he slept the other 3 hours).  Not an easy task in a tin can traveling at two-thirds the speed of sound across the Pacific Ocean.



We had a short plane transfer in Seoul and arrived in Saigon late in the evening.  We all got a good sleep at our favorite hotel (the aptly named "Happy Inn") and flew to Quy Nhon the next afternoon.  Our house was in remarkably good shape for having been left to its own devices over the summer, but it still required a good spring (fall?) cleaning.  Joelle once again proved her awesomeness by getting things cleaned up while Micah and I played toys.  Our teammates the Bankstons showed up a few days after us, with their little one Ezra in tow.  We've been enjoying their company and helping them get moved into their new house off-campus--just a couple of blocks down the street from us.  So far things are going very well.  No dog bites or hospital visits like last year.

Here we are in the taxi on our way from Quy Nhon's airport to the city.  Somehow Micah (although he weighs about 1/6 as much as I do) triples the amount of luggage we have to carry.  The massive stack of bags behind us is, embarrasingly, all ours.  Micah is zonked out on our laps, demonstrating his ability (inherited from his mother) to fall asleep just about anywhere.

We've enjoyed getting back to Vietnam for many reasons, not least the food.  Micah loves him some coconut, and in the following shot we're breakfasting on xoi (sweet sticky rice) our first morning back in Quy Nhon.  Both are, in Micah's estimation, "ummy."

After long travels and a couple days of hitting the cleaning hard, we opted to spend an afternoon at our favorite "staycation" spot:  A local hotel with a nice pool and a rooftop cafe overlooking the bay (where we had to wake the waiter up from his afternoon snooze to order a banana split).  We love you, Quy Nhon.

This last shot, I include just because of its sheer awesomeness.  Before Micah was born I told Joelle that I wanted a chubby, happy baby.  She totally delivered (pun intended).  Add some robotron sunglasses, a wolf shirt and a we-are-the-champions-my-friends pose and you've got a pretty good idea of what our little man is all about.  With a baby girl on the way this winter, I'd better figure out what I want to order this time...  :)

2012 in Review

Hi folks.  Yes, it's been nearly a year since I last updated this.  That's going to change, though.  Promise.  :)

For now, you can have a look at our "Year in Review" slideshow/movie, with pictures from this past year.  Go ahead.  Watch it.  It's only 2 minutes long.  How bad could it be?


Shetterly Year in Review 2012 from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

A Quy Nhon Christmas

All smiles.

So it's not quite Christmas yet, but we thought we'd post this video Christmas card for those of you who keep up with us.  Last Friday, Steven and Will (the other foreign teacher at Quy Nhon University) had a party (or actually a series of parties) for all 200+ of their students at our house.  We invited each class of over 50 students to come, one per hour, throughout the afternoon and we had different activities for them to try--games, songs, card making, snowflake making, cookie decorating.  In all, about 120 of the 200 showed up and we had a blast.  An exhausting blast, to be sure, but a blast nonetheless.  You'll get to see some of the party, along with just some pictures of our family getting ready for Christmas.  Maybe post-Christmas we'll post a follow-up video as well.  In the meantime, Merry Christmas and enjoy!

(I apologize for the "squished" look of the video.  Apparently my video editing program is having some problems distinguishing between widescreen and not-widescreen.  We'll see if we can get that fixed.)

The Grand Tour

Here we sit one week from Christmas already!  Where have the last three months gone? We realize we have done a poor job of keeping you up to date on the last months events in our lives - but after we take you on a house tour and get you reaquainted with Quy Nhon, I am sure we will get more regular with updates!

Our first 3 and one half months of renting a house and living in a comunity has proved to be great for us!  

I (Joelle) had some hesitations for sure, but I have loved it.  Now please join Micah as we take you through the house we have come to know as home.

To start with, our house stands like most Vietnamese houses - narrow and tall.

You can see Steven's arm placing our internet wires in the right place. I don't know if he's ever had to hook up his own internet before, but in living here we often find ourselves doing tasks we have not done before.

I have really loved having space for a real kitchen! (If you remember, the "kitchen" in our old apartment was basically just the corner of a room).

We hosted Thanksgiving here and plan to have a group for Christmas as well.  It's been great having a kitchen to do all the prep in for those events.

Excited to go upstairs I guess!!

Here's Micah in his very own bedroom! It's actually the first time we've had the space for him to be in his own room and he's been doing well with it.  We do have a real crib set up for him now, but we keep the travel tent up and ready for when our 7 month-old teammate, Ezra, comes over and needs to have a nap.

Bath time in our beautiful bathroom! This is the more...hmmm...decorated of the two bathrooms we have, and we use it pretty much just for Micah's baths.

The third room in the house we use for storage and Steven's office. It's nice (for me maybe more than for Steven) to have him be able to have a space in the house to work. Nice because he can come anytime I need him!

The rooftop of our house is open-air but covered.  It's nice and breezy and is a good place to hang out on days when the house gets too warm.  It also has a kind of ridiculously over-the-top fish pond (complete with little figurines from the popular Monkey King legend) that Micah is fascinated with.  He can sit for quite a while and make fishy faces at the goldfish.

And finally:  the view from our rooftop.  Mountains dropping into the South China Sea.  Not bad.

Well, thanks for joining us for this brief tour.  Take care and do check back now and then.  We'll try to keep this thing updated a bit more frequently now that we're settled in and going strong.

Could it be a new video? Yes, it could.

Well, it's about time isn't it? Here are some highlights from the last few months in video form. Thanks for your patience with us. Somehow there just isn't as much time as there used to be for making videos and writing blogs. Hmmm. Curious.

For those reading this on Facebook, click here for the video.

Home and thankful

It's about time we got this blog thingy started back up again, don't you think?

After six great months back in the States, we've returned to Quy Nhon as a family of three. It's good to be back.

As I type this from the Seagull Hotel, our son Micah (cutest little guy in the WORLD) is snoozing in his travel bed and Joelle is across the street at the university doing some apartment cleaning before we move in. We'll be tag-teaming the apartment today while the other one looks after the little guy.


Micah was a joy to travel with; although we were a bit worried about how much plane-sitting, taxi-riding and hotel-sleeping he could endure it turns out he's just as happy a kid at 35,000 feet as he is at sea level. With the exception of a couple of short cranky spells, he was all smiles and giggles (or snoring) the whole way across the Pacific.

As expected, Micah--being the cute, chubby white baby that he is--has drawn plenty of attention on this side of the world. Everyone from waitresses to hotel workers to flight attendants have wanted to pick him up, squeeze his feet and make funny faces at him. We've been told that for some reason it's not culturally appropriate in Vietnam to call people's babies "cute" or "lovely" or any such thing, but that rule has been broken with impunity when it comes to Micah. The stardom hasn't gotten to his head just yet--he seems to be just going with the flow, for the most part.

Joelle has already received her first unsolicited piece of advice on parenting as well--the kid needs to wear a hat, according to the lady cleaning the floor in the Saigon restaurant where we ate breakfast yesterday. When we explained to her that we had walked all of 30 feet (across the street from our hotel to the restaurant) she seemed to accept that.

Around Quy Nhon the weather has been downright chilly--all the way down into the low 70s, if you can believe it. We were reminded just how different people's perception of temperature here is on the ride into the city from the airport--a little boy was riding his tricycle alongside the road while wearing a full-face ski mask. Winter's icy grip seems to be loosening, though, as the next few days are supposed to be up in the low 80s with sunshine.

All told, we're glad to be back. It was hard to leave family and friends behind in the States, but we both sense that this is where we're supposed to be. And although it's a bit more complicated than before, it's a lot of fun doing it all as a family of three.

Cúp điện!

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.

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.)

Binh Dinh Exploration from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.