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.

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.

Final adventures and the trip home

To see pictures from this trip, click here.

This is being written from the living room of Joelle's parents' house in Sumas, Washington on a cool, May evening. Getting here from Quy Nhon was a bit of a process, which began with an overnight train ride to Saigon, a short flight to Hong Kong, and then a long hop across the Pacific to Vancouver, BC where we were picked up and whisked back to the States by Joelle's family. Still a little hard to believe that, for the next two and a half months, America is home for us again.

The week before we left was filled with goodbyes, packing, organizing, and at least one fairly sweet adventure. Phuong, a 4th year student who's been a good friend all year, invited Jason and Steven to visit his hometown in a remote part of Dak Lak province. This was not your typical tourist town visit by any stretch of the imagination; Phuong told us that--apart from his foreign English teacher who visited the year previous--we were the first foreigners to set foot in that part of the country in a long, long time.

Our journey started with a bus ride south along the coast from Quy Nhon. We hopped off the bus at a crossroads about 20 miles shy of the tourist hub of Nha Trang and flagged down an overcrowded van on its way up into the highlands. Wedging ourselves into the backseat as best we could, we survived a hair raising trip on windy mountain roads ("some of the most dangerous roads in Vietnam," Phuong assured us) to the sleepy mountain town of M'Drak.

From M'Drak we were picked up on motorbikes by Phuong's brother, brother-in-law and uncle and carried even further into the countryside. After a lengthy check-in procedure by the authorities at a small local police station we were allowed to go all the way to Phuong's commune, a group of about 70 houses in the midst of coffee fields, surrounded by jungle-covered mountains.
The residents of the commune are, by-and-large, transplants from a single town in northern Vietnam. Phuong's family lived in a poor, overpopulated region near Hanoi and moved to Dak Lak when he was a child, drawn by a promsie of free land from the government. The village that we saw--small, simple houses dotting hillsides covered with coffee trees--had been hacked out of the wilderness by the hands of those first settlers. Electricity arrived in the village just five years ago. Trips into town used to take a full day on a muddy trail (rather than 15 minutes on a dirt road).

We were warmly welcomed by Phuong's family and fed all the best meals they could provide (boiled chicken for breakfast, fresh fish hotpot and dog for dinner). Since most of the village was curious about the foreigners, large crowds were common at mealtimes as people tried to figure out what we were up to.

One of the things that most impressed me about the visit--in addition to the sheer remoteness of it all--was just how self-sufficient Phuong's family was. Rather than heading to the market every day, they grew their own vegetables, raised their own chickens and cows, kept enormous fish in a pond next to their house, grew a variety of delicious fruit in abundance, and bought home-grown rice from their neighbors. Were the global food supply to collapse tomorrow, Phuong's family would do just fine.

A highlight of the trip was the hike Phuong took us on through the rolling hills near the village, down a valley to a meandering stream and finally down to the base of a huge waterfall, roaring in wild splendor, surrounded by nothing but mountains and virgin rainforest. We took turns jumping off of rocks into the pool below the falls, shouting for sheer delight.

Among other things, the trip convinced me (Steven) that I really need to study more Vietnamese if I want to communicate with people outside of a university setting. It was also a good glimpse into the lives that many of my students have lived, as the majority of them come from the countryside rather than the city. Overall, though, it was simply a blessing--a fitting finale to 15 months of work and adventure in Vietnam.

May Holiday

On April 30th, 1975 the course of history changed dramatically for Vietnam. Officially called "National Unity Day" here, it's better known in the West as the Fall of Saigon. Without getting too political, it's the day that North and South Vietnam ceased to exist as separate entities and became, instead, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

April 30th is now celebrated in Vietnam as a national holiday which--to no one's surprise--is followed by May 1st (another national holiday--known in much of the world as International Workers' Day--which has little or nothing to do with giving bouquets of flowers to people.) This year, these back-to-back holidays fell quite conveniently on a Thursday and Friday, which led to a four day weekend which was further stretched to a five day weekend for us by the fact that Steven doesn't normally teach on Wednesdays anyway. All that to say: We've had some time on our hands this past week.

So, with bus tickets in hand, we left Quy Nhon on Wednesday morning for a 5 hour trip up the coast. Our destination was Hoi An, an ancient Vietnamese port town that's now a major stop on the north-south tourist route. We first visited Hoi An in December with Will and Carissa and, while it doesn't rank as the most "authentic" Vietnamese experience available (tourists outnumber locals about 3 to 1, I think), it's easy to get to and is a good spot to buy reasonably priced souvenirs. Since we'll soon be seeing our families, friends and supporters for the first time in 15 months, we figured we had some shopping to do.

Hoi An was much the same as we remembered it--pretty, rainy, and crawling with foreigners. We did our shopping, had our fill of Western food and were ready to return to Quy Nhon with our loot. As it turned out, our last day held something far different and more authentic in store for us.

Mo, one of Steven's first-year students, happened to be home visiting her parents over the long weekend in a village just a few miles outside Hoi An. Joelle has been getting to know Mo (pronounced like the first syllable of 'mother') over the last few months and she had previously invited us to come visit her hometown. So we took her up on her offer and, around 10:30 in the morning, found ourselves in the quiet village of Dien Ban, walking up to the front door of a small house and being greeted by Mo, her family and several curious neighbor kids.

Mo told us that she's the only person in her village who speaks English, and we believe her. She said that several years ago a couple of foreigners rode their bicycles through town but we were first ones to visit since then. We strolled with her along the narrow streets of the village, past a house with red chili peppers drying on the porch and roof, stepping off the road when cows came trundling along the opposite direction. We visited her uncle's house where the family's most recent rice harvest was spread out evenly all over their living room floor as it dried (they would normally dry it outside, but the weather hadn't been cooperating).

Back at Mo's family's house we sat down to a tasty lunch of duck and taro soup with her parents, her older sister and her sister's boyfriend. We weren't able to communicate a whole lot with the family (we asked some basic family information in Vietnamese, and her father asked how long we'd been married and if we had flies in America like they do in Vietnam). Still, we felt welcomed and honored just to be there. We've been off the beaten track plenty of times before, but never had the chance to sit down to a meal with a family in the countryside.

The family has a total of seven people, with three beds to share among them all. Mo pointed to a pair of queen-bed sized lofts about 10 feet off the concrete floor of the main room and explained that that's where they went when it flooded. One of the bunks was for all of their furniture and possessions, the other was for the people. The floodwaters reach about four or five feet deep inside their house every couple of years. "We used to be very poor," Mo explained, "But we're doing better now." Mo--the youngest of five--is the first in the family to go to university.

The bus trip back to Quy Nhon later that afternoon took us through rice fields and small towns, over swollen rivers under a threatening gray sky. As we went, it was nice to feel like we understood the things we were seeing just a little bit more than we had before.

To see pictures from our trip, click here.

Living the Good Life

As I write this, there is a man in flip-flops pounding on our bathroom wall with a chisel and sledgehammer, removing broken tiles and making an incredible racket. He and his partner just finished destroying part of our floor (also due to a whole row of tiles which broke rather alarmingly all at once one day). Our apartment and my lungs are covered in a fine dust of concrete and tile fragments, and the weather outside is gray and soggy. Some days are like this.

But as much as we might try stir up sympathy by making everyone believe that we live a life of deprivation and hardship here, the secret is getting out--most of you (especially those who have been able to visit us) understand by now that Quy Nhon isn't exactly the armpit of Southeast Asia. It is, in fact, amazingly beautiful and largely undiscovered by international tourists. In recent years, though, there are a few who have begun to recognize the tourism potential of this area and thus we've started to get the first really nice, world-class resorts being built along this stretch of the coast.

Somehow this past week we had the opportunity to visit not one but two resorts a short distance outside of Quy Nhon. The first, called Life Resort, is a small, comfortable place about five or six miles south of town, sharing a beach with a fishing village. If I were in the practice of giving out stars to such places, I might give it four or so. The beach is clean and the rooms nice and spacious; it costs about $100 a night to stay. The day before our 3rd wedding anniversary we rode the city bus out to the Life Resort and met the new manager there--an Australian fellow who we'd heard was really nice. As it turned out, the reports were correct; he let us into the resort for free, gave us some complimentary cold drinks, sat down for a chat with us and then let us use one of the guest rooms to shower and change after we'd gone swimming at their beach. So we swam, enjoyed the beach, had a good dinner and headed home. A pretty sweet evening.

Four days later we were at it again. This time, our personnel director Susan was visiting from Hanoi and all of us (the Fizzards, Susan, Joelle and I) got into a taxi and headed a little further south to a place called Bai Tram Hideaway Resort. "Hideaway" is an apt name in this case, as it's located off a spur highway at the end of a 3 mile stretch of what is quite possibly the worst dirt road in Vietnam. The jostling, bone-jarring ride was worth it, though, as we were greeted with our very own pristine, private beach and clear, turquoise waters.

Bai Tram is still very much under construction. At this point it consists only of a restaurant/reception area and seven villas (out of a planned 150 or so). We didn't mind, though, as this meant that we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. A former Quy Nhon student and a good friend of Jill and Jason's is the Guest Relations Manager and was able to get us in and show us around. The villa she took us to--a single bedroom house with a separate living area, private pool and beach view--goes for around $700 a night. Sheesh. We swam in their pool, took a dip in the ocean, climbed around on the rocks and generally made believe we were fabulously wealthy for the better part of a morning.

As I floated in the cool water and took in the scenery I quietly contemplated the lifestyle of a volunteer English teacher in Vietnam. Visiting two gorgeous resorts for free in the space of a week wasn't exactly what we had anticipated when we signed up to come over here, but hey--we'll take it.
And even as the sound of chisel on bathroom tile continues to reverberate around our apartment, I can honestly say that our entire time here in Quy Nhon (not just the time spent at 4 and 5 star resorts) has been far beyond what we could have asked for or imagined.

To see some pictures from our pair of resort adventures, click here.

Kontum

To skip all the blah blah blah and just see some pictures of our weekend in the highlands, click here.
The last couple of weeks we've been blessed once again to have a friend visiting us from the States. Kimberly--a friend of Joelle's since their days in New Zealand--came for ten days to see what life is like in Vietnam. After a few days seeing the sights around Quy Nhon, we decided to take a few days and explore somewhere else. Steven had to be around to teach so we couldn't go too far; looking at a map we saw Kontum--a province in the highlands on the Lao border, a bit north and west of Quy Nhon. The guidebooks described Kontum as kind of a remote, end-of-the-road, out-of-the-way sort of place. In other words, just where we wanted to be.

A three and a half hour bus ride took us from Quy Nhon through low plains and rice fields before climbing steeply up winding mountain roads into the hilly plateau of Vietnam's central highlands. A tourist trap Kontum is not, and our first impression of the city was a bit underwhelming. It has the feel of a place that is entirely under construction--roads ripped up, machinery moving to and fro. The surrounding countryside was pretty, but not as striking as the territory further south around Dalat.

However, the big draw to Kontum isn't the tourist amenities (of which there are none) or the scenery but the ease with which you can visit ethnic villages and interact with the people. In other parts of Vietnam where we've seen ethnic minority folks it's always had a bit of an artificial, circus sideshow sort of quality to it--the main purpose of some of the villages we've been in has seemed to be selling souvenirs to foreigners. Not so in Kontum. Just on the edge of town are three or four different villages, and a few kilometers out are many more. The province has around 700 villages, if I remember my numbers correctly. Though some of the villages have modern brick buildings, a lot of the people live in stilt houses with walls made of mud and straw. Their cows camp out downstairs. Everyone was extremely friendly--the kids in particular--and no one tried to sell us anything.

We had a guide for one of our days out in the country and then just walked and biked the rest of the time. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story...

The Year in Review...

Exactly one year ago today, a plane out of Hong Kong touched down at Noi Bai airport outside of Hanoi and disgorged two very tired, rather disheveled and discombobulated Americans. These travelers' names were Joelle and Steven and they weren't coming to Vietnam to take pictures, buy a few silk scarves and leave. Like a stubborn case of athlete's foot, they were going to be around for a while.


In the twelve months since then, we've seen a fair bit of this here country. We've tasted its food (even some of the stuff that looked gross), swam in its seas, hiked its mountains. We've made friends, embarrased ourselves on numerous occasions, had close calls with pickpockets and purse snatchers, been hit by a speeding motorbike, and somehow gotten a newly-purchased wardrobe stuck in a tight spiral staircase. We've ridden on planes, trains, basket boats, xe oms and elephants. We've watched mold grow on every single piece of clothing and furniture we own, battled hordes of giant cockroaches, sweated more than we ever imagined possible, and witnesed our bus driver getting punched in the eye by a rival bus driver. More than that we've laughed till we cried with our Vietnamese friends, had deep conversations in broken English over strong iced coffee and wondered how on earth a place so different from our home could still be so dang beautiful and sometimes feel so much like...home.


It hasn't all been easy. There have been broken bones (two of them), miserable nights spent in the bathroom, and tears (lots of those) over loved ones so far away. There have been birthdays that we've couldn't make it to (including several literal days of birth, with babies back home popping out like to make Orville Redenbacher throw a fit). There have been hikes we could have gone on, massive snowstorms we missed, foods we have longed for, and people on the other side of the ocean that we really wish we could have just sat down and had a burrito with once or twice.

Has it been worth it? Yes. Absolutely.

Are we excited about coming home for the summer in a few months? Yes. Absolutely. As wonderful as they are, Skype and Facebook are no replacement for a real chat, and we're so looking forward to being able to see many of you this summer. We're also incredibly thankful for the support, encouragement, emails and blog comments y'all have given us over this past year. We miss you guys.

As a parting gift for our one year anniversary, we now present to you the Shetterly timeline--a few key pictures from the past year in Vietnam:

Spring 2008: Encountering the joys of learning a tonal language, our first six months in Hanoi were focused largely on language study. Here we are with one of our tutors.

April 13, 2008: Approximately 8 seconds into his first basketball game in Vietnam, Steven blocks a bullet pass with his right thumb, which promptly breaks. Here he is awaiting medical care at the clinic in Hanoi.

May 2008: The weather grew warm. Uncomfortably so. The logical course of action was to stick a big fan up the back of one's shirt and look like a body builder for a while.

May 2008: 90 degrees in the shade with 70% humidity and somehow she still manages to look good.

June 2008: Ninh Binh, our first escape from Hanoi without the aid of someone who speaks Vietnamese. We survived, and saw a rice harvest in full swing to boot.

Summer 2008: East meets West. The pervasive influence of punk culture extends even to this young, impressionable Vietnamese caterpillar.

July 2008: A scenic shot of the historic battle site of Dien Bien Phu...and Joelle's forehead.

September 2008: A bird's eye view of Quy Nhon, our new home, confirms that yes--this is indeed a dang beautiful place.


October 2008: A class of Vietnamese students goes to the beach for a picnic and invites some foreign teachers along. A good time is had by all.

November 2008: Steven makes a fool out of himself by singing "Stand By Me" with his teammate Jason in front of 500+ students. Joelle continues to look really good. Both receive flowers.

December 2008: Christmas parties and excited students. Fun.

Christmas 2008: Visitors from distant lands arrive to celebrate the day with us. We are blessed.

January 2009: Three Iblings siblings and Steven make their way through southern Vietnam on the way to Thailand for classes, a conference and elephant riding.

Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.

He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.

-Ps. 126

Anyone still reading this thing...?

Wow. I wouldn't blame you at all if you had stopped checking our blog. As it stands it's been well over a month since we last updated.

To employ a much-overused phrase: It has been the perfect storm of busyness, travel, computer problems and laziness that has kept us from updating you all on our lives in a timely manner. Sorry 'bout that.

As I write this, I sit overlooking a city street from a cafe in Chiang Mai, Thailand with a brand new HP laptop at my fingers. How did we get here? Where did the new computer come from? What on earth has been happening the last month and a half? I'll try to give you the quick-and-dirty (or not so dirty) explanation below:

• December flew by in a blur of activities, visitors, celebrations and extra classes. As a team, we wanted to make the most of the season with students, so we had several things planned each week. From cookie making parties to Christmas movies to a big party with around 120 students AND Santa Claus himself, we did our best to communicate the meaning of Christmas to anyone and everyone who would listen.
• Partway through December, Joelle's brother Will and our friend Carissa arrived in Vietnam to celebrate Christmas with us. We had a great time showing them around Quy Nhon, traveling with them, introducing them to students and enjoying the season.
• After Christmas, Carissa headed back to the states and Joelle's younger sister Bethany arrived from Egypt where she's been living for the past several months. After a few days in Quy Nhon we picked up and traveled to Saigon via the scenic route (hitting up the coastal city of Nha Trang and the highlands city of Da Lat on the way).
  
• From Saigon, we flew to Bangkok and then Chiang Mai where we've been for the past few weeks. Steven took classes for his MA degree in TESOL for two weeks while Joelle, Bethany and Will gallivanted around the area.
• Sadly, our time with Bethany and Will came to an end. Will headed back to the States while Bethany returned to Egypt. We had a couple days of down time, then started our annual conference with our organization.
• For the past several days we've been hanging out with some 600 other teachers from all across Asia taking teaching workshops, fellowshipping, learning a lot from the Word and relaxing. In another few days we'll be returning to Vietnam and a period of relaxation before the next semester begins. Whew!

As for the new computer: If you'll recall, I (Steven) got pegged by a speeding motorbike a couple months back. In addition to a cracked shoulder blade, our poor HP laptop was part of the collateral damage of the whole incident. It had been riding in the bike basket and landed hard on the pavement when I went down. Though it didn't die instantly, it slowly grew less and less usable until it was finally apparent that a new one would be needed.

One of our teammates offered to have her parents bring us one from the States (they were coming to visit her in Thailand). We took her up on the offer and a few days later, lo and behold, we had in our posession a newer, faster, and cheaper laptop than our old one. Sweet.

So we are back up and running with the technology stuff again. If you've tried calling or emailing or checking our blog or pictures lately and haven't seen much, our apologies. We're a bit backlogged now on getting pictures uploaded, but hope to have that done soon. Check our photo album regularly to see if anything new has been added.

Thanks for being patient with us. Really, we're alive and we're glad you guys care about us!

Ninh Binh Part Two

How time flies. This is the second part of our Ninh Binh story (see below for the first part) which covers the rather eventful day two of our trip. Sorry it took so long to post.

On Sunday, the second day of our trip, we awoke late-ish and had breakfast and coffee in our room. Around 9 or 10 o'clock, just as the sun was really starting to get hot, we hopped on our bikes and headed out of town toward the mountains again.

We hit a road which ran through small villages along the foot of the mountains before turning and following a series of roads that worked their through valleys back into the hills. We were looking for Hoa Lu, an ancient capital city of Vietnam (and big tourist attraction near Ninh Binh). Once again (unwisely) using the map that had been provided for us from the hotel, we figured we could find our way there, tour the place and be back at the hotel before lunch.

Our ride took us through green valleys between these amazing mountains--past rice fields and small lakes and villages. We marveled (as we sweated profusely) that such things could even exist. It really felt as if we were in a movie at times.


As far as we rode, though, we didn't come across Hoa Lu or anything that looked even remotely close to an ancient capital city. We were lost. Multiple times. By the time we finally started asking directions and made it to Hoa Lu, we had gone probably 5 or more miles out of our way in 95 degree heat. We were exhausted. It didn't help that our first view of Hoa Lu was a big, dusty parking lot with tour buses and rows of vendor's shops. No imposing battlements or ancient temples--just big ol' buses and chintzy merchandise. I'm sure there was more to it but, as I told Joelle at the time, Hoa Lu really needed to work on its curb appeal. By this time it was well after lunch and we'd only brounght snacks with us. We decided that walking around in the sun for another two hours looking at the remains of some old buildings wasn't what we needed. So we sat in the shade with a Vietnamese family, ate and drank a bit, and got back on our bikes.


We took a different road on the ride back to the hotel, which ended up being even more spectacular than the road there. Still, we managed to get lost again and by the time we made it back to the hotel we were truly wiped. We had a very late lunch, packed our bags and prepared to head back to Hanoi. This is where things truly got interesting.

Rather than walking a whole entire kilometer from the hotel to the station, we decided to 'go local' and wave down the first bus we saw pulling through town that was bound for Hanoi. We didn't pause to consider that, if the bus was going to stop for us, it most likely would stop for anyone and everyone else.

As it was, a bus did stop for us and we got two of the last seats available (fortunately) and settled in for the ride. The vehicle we found ourselves in could best be described as an "old jalopy." It was really more of an oversized van than a bus, it had no air conditioning and room for about twenty people to sit. Joelle and I were numbers 17 and 18, approximately. By the time we got near Hanoi, we estimated that we were sharing that little bus with 35 to 40 people, four of whose sweat I was able to feel personally. People were standing, sitting on laps, straddling the gearshift up front, and hanging out the door. Just when I would think "We can't possibly fit anyone else on this thing," someone standing along the side of the road would wave us down, the ticket taker helper guy would hop out, squeeze them on board, and we would oh-so-slowly get up to speed again.

But things were to get more interesting still. At one point we had stopped to pick someone up along the side of the road when another bus (much nicer and shinier looking--I think it was a Mercedes) pulled up and stopped just to the left of us, literally inches away out our window. I don't know if the driver of the trailing bus hadn't been paying attention and had swerved at the last minute and stopped, if he was planning on handing something out his window to our driver or just what, but there he was stopped directly next to us. We stared at the other passengers out our window for a minute. Despite their being on a nicer bus, they looked just as cramped and uncomfortable as us.

Our driver, for his part, was looking in his mirror trying to make sure that the newest passenger had found a spot on his already overcrowded bus. Satisfied that he had, our old jalopy started to pull away...and with a loud pop proceeded to shatter the Mercedes bus's right side mirror. Oops.

Quick cultural note: As we all know, minor accidents in the States are usually resolved by the drivers exchanging insurance information (maybe a few snide remarks) and going on their way. Very orderly, methodical...boring. This minor accident was to be anything but boring. In a flash, the driver of the Mercedes bus was out his door and standing beside our driver's door, shouting through the window at him. A large volume of rather heated words were exchanged (none of which we could understand, fortunately) and then the Mercedes driver stationed himself in front of our bus--presumably to keep us from driving away--and started dialing his cellphone with a shaking hand. Soon, both driver's assistants were out on the road as well, adding their pointed perspectives to the rapidly-developing argument.


Apparently the Mercedes driver's phone call didn't achieve the desired result because after a minute both he and his assistant were back at our driver's window, shouting again (our driver--wisely--hadn't left the vehicle). The other driver started to pound on the side of our bus with his fist. At this point Joelle and I (who were seated directly behind our driver) were starting to look for an easy way to exit the bus should we need to. There was no easy way and so we resigned ourselves to sitting and seeing what happened.

Suddenly in the midst of the shouting, a hand--either the Mercedes bus driver or his assistant's--reached through our driver's window and gave him a solid slap across the cheek. Now other people on the bus were starting to look for a way to get out as well, and an elderly gentleman who was sitting next to our driver stood up, looked around for a second, and apparently for lack of anything better to do hurriedly buckled his motorbike helmet on his head.

A split second later another hand--this one a closed fist--made its way through our driver's window and connected squarely with his eye socket. Just when it was looking like our two buses might empty out and a full-on street brawl would ensue, our bus's assistant stepped in and pulled the Mercedes driver aside, calming things for the moment.

In a flash, our bus was rolling down the road again, with our driver nursing a bleeding gash under his right eye (his assistant had hopped back on after separating everyone). We continued on as normal to Hanoi, except that about a mile from the bus station our driver pulled the bus over, said something to his assistant, hopped out and walked off down the street wearing his dark glasses. The assistant climbed in the driver's seat and drove us the rest of the way to the station. Odd, we thought, but maybe the driver needed to get to a doctor or something.


When we pulled into the station, the full extent of our driver's wisdom became clear. No sooner had our bus parked than the Mercedes bus driver (who had also been going to Hanoi) and several of his friends came sprinting over to settle things with our driver. They were surprised and, perhaps, a little disappointed to discover that our driver was most likely already home and watching TV with an ice pack on his eye. Quick as we could, Joelle and I grabbed our things and exited the premises, glad that that part of our trip was complete.

All in all it was a wonderful--if partly uncomfortable and terrifying--trip.