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.

Chuc mung nam moi!

Well, a happy New Year to everyone. No, I didn't just awaken from a six week long coma or look at the wrong month on the calendar this morning. Here in Vietnam, the (Lunar) New Year happened just a few days ago.

New Year's is a big, big deal in Vietnam. It's known as Tet, and the celebrations go on for a good week, at least. Traditionally, Tet is a time when families welcome back the spirits of their departed ancestors by putting goodies like fruit, rice wine, and sticky rice "cakes" out on the family altar. They send them off after a few days by burning paper money (which the spirits presumably take back to spend in the afterlife). In the meantime there are fireworks and lots of visiting of relatives and friends.
We're not gonna lie--there are some fairly annoying aspects of Tet. We find that kids are given a long break from school and no one really knows what to do with them. Packs of middle schoolers roam the streets with airsoft guns shooting bystanders who catch their eye (including foreign teachers who happen to be riding their bikes around town at the wrong time). Happy New Year to you too, kids. People also tend to drive their motorbikes with an extra dose of crazy thrown in at this time of year and we hear ambulance sirens with sad regularity.

One of my favorite things so far about Tet, though, are the colors. Vietnam is normally a colorful country (in many ways) and Tet is the colorfullest time of year, to coin a new word. Yellow and red are the main ones, but it seems that, so long as it's bright it's all right. Here are some recent pictures with brief explanations for you.

This is the cay may--a special kind of tree that blooms at Tet. I think they're rather expensive, though, so they're much less common than these flowers...

...which lined one of the main streets in town for a good mile on both sides, right up until New Year's Day, when they all mysteriously disappeared.

Flags are plentiful. It helps, I suppose, that red and yellow are big Tet colors.

There's a Children's Park with rides and playground and such right across the street from the University that's usually fairly mellow and quiet. Not during Tet, though. Balloons are the big thing.

My attempt at a cool shot.

It seems that Wal-Mart doesn't have a worldwide monopoly on silly oversized inflatable holiday characters.

All of the markets close down for three days or so during Tet, so everyone does their holiday shopping the day or two beforehand. Crazier than usual.

Visiting graves, cleaning them up, burning incense...all part of the package for most people.

Of course, the cows continue to do their part in keeping the grass trimmed.

Prettier than any firework, balloon or massive inflatable creature--in my humble opinion.

It's a bird...it's a plane...

What on earth are these people doing?



Beach ballet?


Fleeing from oversized, crab-clawed extraterrestrials?


Ultimate Fighting: Beach Edition?

Here, maybe this picture will help…



That’s right. Not Ultimate Fighting, but Ultimate Frisbee.

What you’re seeing are the first publicly released photos of the Vietnamese National Ultimate Frisbee Team in action. What’s that you say? You didn’t know that Vietnam had a National Ultimate Frisbee Team? Well, they do now. Because that’s what our shirts say, and there’s no one around to tell us different.


It all began last year when I (Steven) took note of the fact that the only sports people seemed to play on the beach in Quy Nhon were volleyball, soccer and a local specialty I’m going to call “throw handfuls of wet sand at members of the opposite sex and run away.” Since I don’t particularly enjoy or excel at any of these sports, I decided—along with my teammate Jason—to introduce something new to the mix.

Jason and I happen to own identical 175-gram Ultimate discs (a sure sign that we would be good friends from the get-go). One day, we pulled them out and started tossing them around with students on the beach at exercise time.

At first, the kids were--to be honest--downright terrible. Many were the Frisbees that had to be fished out of the ocean. There were plenty of near-misses, with wildly-flung plastic discs nearly causing serious injury to elderly folks, young couples and small children alike.

But things slowly improved. Under the patient tutelage of Steven and Jason, the students (shall we call them ‘apprentices’?) stopped hurling the discs willy-nilly and gained some control. They began catching more than they dropped. They learned different styles of throwing. They discovered Rule #1 of Frisbee, which is this: It really isn’t that difficult.


The students—who numbered just three or four at the beginning—enjoyed tossing the Frisbee, but they didn’t really understand what the big deal was. Throw, catch. Throw, catch. Throw, miss, chase into the ocean and retrieve. It got a little tedious after a while.

But wait, we told them. There’s more.

One day, when we had a total of six people out on the beach, we played our first “real” game of Ultimate. As expected, it started off pretty terrible but the students caught on quickly. And they enjoyed it.

Throughout the second half of last year and the first half of this year, we’ve continued playing regular games of Ultimate with the students. The group has grown from three or four regulars in the beginning to seven, eight, sometimes ten students (plus the two foreign coach/players). At times crowds gather to witness the sheer awesomeness unfolding before them. Some of them actually have enough courage to come down and play with us, and a few of those stick around and become part of The Group.

We even have visiting foreign players who put in an appearance now and then—Joelle plays once in a while, and we usually rope most of our visitors into playing at least one game while they’re in Quy Nhon.


Partway through first semester this year, I realized something: These students were good. I mean, they were really good. They were fast, they knew how to throw and catch, they understood the game. And they made me work hard to keep up with them. When others showed up to play, the students themselves were able to explain the game and teach the newbies how to play much more quickly than I could. Hmmm. An important Nugget of Wisdom in there somewhere, to be sure.

We finally reached the point toward the end of first semester this year that we figured our skills (and, indeed, our fame) had grown to such a point that we would have to make ourselves official. And by “official,” I mean we had to make cool shirts for us to wear.


In a time-honored Vietnamese tradition, I went out and “borrowed” a couple of design ideas from various places, put them together, and we had ourselves a shirt design. This is what I came up with.

So, now that we are the undisputed representatives of Ultimate Frisbee in Vietnam we just need some other national teams to contact us and play a game or two. Any takers? Anyone?


P.S. Yes, we're aware that there are already some Ultimate leagues in Hanoi and Saigon...and we're willing to consider taking them on as minor league partners to our franchise.

P.P.S. Thanks to Sylvia for taking some great pictures of the team in action, and to Paul, for being a visiting foreign star player.

Christmas in Vietnam

Q: What do a bunch of cute kids, a freaky Santa face, a swivelly computer chair, a Swedish tea ring and the game "Bananagrams" have in common?

A: They're all featured in Steven and Joelle's 2009 Christmas From Vietnam video! Check it out.

Steven & Joelle Christmas 2009 - Vietnam from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

(You should probably watch it full screen and in HD to get the full effect.)

You have entered...the Economic Development Twilight Zone

This holiday season has been a full, busy, but great time for us as we've had a chance to share about Christmas and our reasons for celebrating it with hundreds of excited students. It's really quite impressive to look at the holiday from an outsider's perspective--just how much effort and money we as Americans pour into Christmas. No other holiday even comes close. No wonder people around the world are fascinated with it.

In addition to trying to explain Christmas to everyone, we've been doing all our 'normal' stuff--teaching classes, hanging out with students, going to the market, meeting with teammates, etc. etc. etc.

We've been busy, so it was with no small amount of enthusiasm that we woke up last Saturday, saw that it was going to be a relatively cool (less than 85 degree) day, and decided to get on our bikes and flee town. The trip we took was one that we had been planning for a long time--one that would only really be possible in cooler weather, due to the time and distances involved. It was, as it turned out, a trip into Utter Weirdness.

We started by riding across town to the Thi Nai bridge--currently the longest bridge in Vietnam at about two miles. The bridge was built across a big lagoon which lies behind the peninsula that Quy Nhon occupies. It was constructed for the express purpose of connecting Quy Nhon and its port to another, larger peninsula on the other side of the lagoon which is slated to become the Nhon Hoi Economic Zone (take a look at the map below, if that helps).

Since real estate on Quy Nhon's narrow peninsula is in short supply, it made sense in someone's mind (or pocketbook) to encourage industrial development on this other peninsula in an area resembling the Sahara desert, with towering sand dunes and little else. The result was a kind of weirdness which seems unique to East Asian countries with centrally-planned economies.

The best way I can describe it is as a cross between the setting of a 1960s "last man on earth" sci-fi movie and Alice in Wonderland. Roads that go nowhere, creepy deserted warehouses, concrete animal statues--this place has it all. Upon reaching the far side of the bridge we found out that our camera batteries were low, so we weren't able to take very many pictures. But take a look at what we did capture, and I'll try to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Here we see the Thi Nai bridge in the background and a fit young man with a sweet steel-frame bicycle. (No it's NOT a girl's bike. All the bikes in Vietnam have the angled cross-bar like that. They really do.)

Our first discovery when we reached the far side of the bridge was an exciting one. At the base of the bridge, some sort of resort was under construction. And as anyone who's been to Southeast Asia knows, no high class resort is complete without a menagerie of concrete animals to "enhance" the natural landscape. In this case, the animals were dolphins (apparently being launched into the air by an underwater explosion of some sort) and seals...

...harpooned seals...

...with holes in their heads...

...and giant swans.

Leaving our animal friends behind, we moved further into the Nhon Hoi Economic Zone, past a huge (deserted) gas station, and a (deserted) strip mall with billiards tables, a cafe, and a karaoke bar. We entered an area with big roundabouts and massive six- and eight-lane, newly paved roads...

...many of which dead-ended in sand dunes...

...all of which were almost completely deserted and half covered with sand.

In fact, the only economic development we saw in the Economic Development Zone (apart from the deserted gas station, half-constructed resort, and empty strip mall) were some big warehouses that must have taken a beating in the two big storms this year; the majority of their roofs were lying in pieces scattered about on the sand beside them.

After some further biking on deserted six-lane highways through the dunes, we came to the little fishing village of Nhon Ly. To reach the village you have to bike past a massive graveyard that's probably as big as the village itself. Graves stretch across the dunes for perhaps a half mile before you actually come to the village. Kind of creepy.


Nhon Ly village was a friendly little place with narrow, winding streets and some nice-looking (though not-so-clean) beaches. But it's a long ways from nowhere.

All told it was a good, worthwhile trip--if not for its scenic beauty then for its sheer oddness and its glimpses of another side to life in a quickly-changing country.

Chance of a White Christmas: Nil

This morning I got an email from my dad with a picture of my parents' house in the newly-fallen snow of last night's flurries. A quick check of the weather back in Washington shows lows in the teens and highs in the 20s and 30s for the next few days. A white Christmas looks like a real possibility.

And here in Quy Nhon? Well, we've got lows in the teens and highs in the 30s too. Just look:

Oh, wait. That would be 30 degrees Celsius. Yeah, sunny and upper 80s for the highs most days in these parts. Last year at this time we were smack in the middle of the rainy season, but there's nary a drop to be seen for the next week here at least.

That hasn't prevented us from getting in the holiday spirit, though. Thanksgiving/Christmas is a great time of year not just because of good food, packages from home, nice music and the presence of minty things in the house. It's also a great time to share with students.

This year, for instance, we celebrated as close to a "real" Thanksgiving as we could with several of our close student friends. Joelle made a ton of food, we read the Thanksgiving story, played some games and had a generally great time.

Then, two days later, we did it all over again, this time with our teammates Jill and Jason and some other foreign friends. Watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles while eating homemade pumpkin cheesecake and apple pie brought a fitting and familiar end to the Thanksgiving festivities.

After Thanksgiving, of course, it's time to get ready for Christmas. Though we settled for a miniature fake tree last year, we went all the way and opted for a real, live one this year. And when I say "tree," I mean, of course, "small ornamental shrub." That's right--for about $1.75 we went out and purchased one of those 70s-era evergreen shrubs that take over people's flowerbeds and are all prickly and usually give you rash if you brush against them. Nothing says Christmas like a 70s-era prickly rash-inducing ornamental shrub, right? Most people in the States who had those particular shrubs came to their senses in the early 90s and tore them out, but in Vietnam there still seems to be a market for them. In any case, it works fine and it's about as close as we're gonna get to the real thing. One nice, familiar holiday surprise was the poinsettia we were able to purchase at the same time.

Thus, with some rearranging of our room, the addition of some lights to the windows and a few other decorations here and there, we've got a room outfitted for Christmas. And if we turn both of our AC units on, you just might be able to close your eyes and imagine Jack Frost himself nipping at your nose.

Of course, one thing we'll never be able to replicate here are all the friends and family we've left back in the chilly, dark US of A. So, while we love Quy Nhon and are looking forward to sharing Christmas with our Vietnamese friends, we will be missing all of you and thinking about you lots.