Quy Nhon visit

UPDATE: Since this post was originally written, we've learned from our organization that Quy Nhon will indeed be our home next year. Woohoo!

We recently returned from a trip to Quy Nhon (pronounced “queen yawn”) a smallish port city about two thirds of the way down to Saigon. It is a potential placement (i.e. permanent home) for us starting next fall, so our organization paid for us to go down, check out the city and university, meet our potential teammates who work there already, and get a feel for the place. There were a number of things that were noteworthy about the place.

For one thing, people take their nap time very seriously. Most people in Quy Nhon follow a strict regimen of early to rise, late to bed with a big old nap in between. It’s not that people are lazy (far from it) it’s just that it’s so dang hot during the afternoon that no one in their right mind would be outside. At dawn, the streets, parks and beaches are packed with people walking, jogging, playing volleyball and generally enjoying themselves. The first university classes start at 6:30 AM (and I used to complain about having an 8:00 class…) and most everyone is where they need to be by 7:00 or 8:00. Because they get up so early, lunch starts around 10:00 or 10:30 AM. By noon, the city looks like a ghost town—the streets are deserted and most of the shops close down as people head home to sleep through the heat of the day. But once the sun drops toward the hills in the west, life starts up again and the beaches are packed with locals playing soccer, swimming or just enjoying each other’s company. It’s a much different world from the 9 to 5 lifestyle and we enjoyed it.

We also noticed that we, as foreigners, stuck out even more in Quy Nhon than we do in Hanoi. Even though it’s a decent sized city (250,000) foreigners simply don’t travel there very often. It’s off of the main highway, and the city of Nha Trang (a few hours to the south) has much more developed tourist facilities. We observed a few English classes at Quy Nhon University and spent some time hanging out with students outside of class time. At all times we felt like we were the most exciting thing that had happened in years—students crowded around, eager to ask questions and get to know us. A little exhausting, perhaps, but we certainly felt welcomed.

Finally, there is the obvious fact that Quy Nhon is a lot smaller and less crowded than Hanoi. With about 1/20^th the population of Hanoi, it’s the first place in Vietnam that we’ve felt comfortable enough to venture out and start exploring on bicycles. Its size also makes it easy to get out of town quickly—there’s a beautiful road that heads down the coast to several quiet beaches, and the rice paddies and hills of central Vietnam are right next door as well.

All in all, we loved the city, enjoyed meeting the students and our potential future teammates, and were a little sad to leave when it was all over. Depending on how everything shakes out, we may be on our way back there to stay come September.