The Nature of Travel

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

What storms await us when we venture far from home?  Before the trip often we visualize what will befall us on our travels.  We try to think of what we will do, imagine what the sights, sounds, and smells will be like.  I cannot see the pictures Jason and Ian conjured up in their heads.  I can think back on when I was finishing my last preparations to leave and every moment was daydreams of what awaited me in the far east.  Sometimes I think of the movie The Beach (admittedly because I never read the novel) and think of the best and worst of travelling, and really the best and worst of people.  What I like is the interaction with locals and the sharing culture and experience.  What I dislike is the traveler that is there only to act such as Columbus and take from the places they visit.  Vietnam is a very good place to encounter both of these aspects.

Cu Chi Revisited

M60 and a Chud. That's all I have to say about him. I have been to the Cu Chi tunnels previously, but decided that Jason and Ian should see them. They are an interesting part of the history of the Vietnam War, and besides the little propaganda video to start off the tour, rather enjoyable.

Ian shooting the AK.

Dirty Life and Times

Hardly seems like Vietnam

Walk off any of the main streets in Da lat and you're in the countryside

Next two pictures are across the street from each other

Only a hundred yards from where I live

Kids go home for lunch in the middle of the day

A back alley shortcut

Down some lonely road in the middle of the city

View from atop a hill

Pitchers and Catchers

"They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come."  Field of Dreams.

People will return once again to the fields of their childhoods to cheer for their heroes.  We'll watch games that mean nothing in standings and be thankful that we have one more time emerged from the doldrums of winter.  The snow will melt and our heroes will journey north with the first birds of the season and bring with them the game we all love, and we will watch them and wish it were us running on to those fields.  It's hard for some to understand the special connection with baseball that America has; it's hard for most to understand how even the seasons seem to have revolved around it.  Baseball has returned and with it another youthful Spring of optimism.  I may have left America for now, but I have brought the game with me.  Go Yankees!

Flower Festival

Every two years in Da lat they host a flower festival in January.  Think inundated with fragrant flowers and Vietnamese tourists.  Literally every hotel room in Da lat is filled and the streets are overrun with tourists.  I live in a very small city, and for about a week every two years it is insanely swamped.  I suppose it's good for business though.  I have to imagine that all these hotels that spend the majority of their time empty need this flood of tourists like the ancient Egyptians needed the Nile floods.  The city prepares for the festival by dressing everything up, planting new flowers, and actually turning on the large fountain we have downtown.  I have only ever seen it working once.  All along the lake in the middle of the city there are shops set up selling flowers and anything you could need to grow flowers.  At night their is a huge pageant with dancers and music and it is one of the few times that Da lat will make it on to the national television stations.  There is also a convention set up with vendors from all around Vietnam selling a variety of goods.  The only thing I bought was some fried hot-dogs.

Worst Road

The road from Da lat to Phan Thiet goes through some mountain passes and some of the more remote and impoverished areas I have seen here.  Going through these remote villages (if they even are that), I couldn't help but think how anyone ended up there.  One of the more substantial settlement looked like it had built by the government for a local minority group.  The road twisted through this hard land, and for itself it seemed as if time and government had forgotten it.  There where parts of the road entirely missing, parts where it was safer to drive off the side of the road, and parts where it appeared the pavement had erupted forming a crater with a ring of debris.  This made the going tough, but none of the students on their way home for the holidays seemed to mind.  One young man sat the entire six hours on the bus with a desktop computer on his lap.  I took this to and from Phan Thiet.  To make matters worse on the way back as we were leaving the worst section of road behind us and winding our way up steep mountain terrain we became stranded by a piece of bridging that had fallen off the back of a tractor-tralier.  We pulled up to find a line of trucks stopped in the road.  I followed the bus driver and out of the bus to get a stretch of the legs and noticed that the truck drivers had logs behind their tires indicating to me that we were going nowhere anytime soon.  Whatever goods the trucks were carrying, most likely seafood from the coast, were beginning to thaw and dump water along the road.  They had already brought a crane in, but it seemed as if they were to be here a while.  I watched as a car pulled up to bring some of the men dinner, and found this to be an ominous omen.  They sat and played cards and one slept in a makeshift hammock under the bridge section.  Things could have turned out worse for us though.  We were lucky.  It happened that a bus of equal size to us was on its way to Phan Thiet and trapped on the other side of the accident.  We managed to switch buses and cargo and once everything was settled between the two parties we were back on way along the worst road I traveled so far in Vietnam.

Mui Ne

Mui Ne is a former remote fishing village turned resort town.  There is really only one road in and out of the town and it is lined with resort hotels and restaurants.  The most interesting thing about Mui Ne is it is the one of the best places for wind and kite surfing in the world.  It is nestled into a notch along the coast of Vietnam located about 20k north of Phan Thiet.  On one side of the town there is the beach and on the opposite it abuts red sand dunes.  Which is symoblically appropriate because Mui Ne is a major tourist destination for Russian tourists.  Many of the signs can be read in Vietnamese, English, and Russian.  Just to be clear I didn't stay overnight in Mui Ne because I simply can't afford it, and in truth beyond the small fishing boats on the horizon, it doesn't feel like Vietnam to me.  No we were in Mui Ne because Te Chung, Tony's former professor, was treating us to an amazing lunch.  We started the meal with bit of raw fish wrapped up in rice paper with some greens.  Then came pieces of grilled squid.  The third course was some sort of fish, related to cod we thought, cooked in soy sauce and vegetables.  Everything was as fresh as possible, we even picked the fish we ate.  To finish the meal we topped everything off with some seafood fried rice.  Delicous meal, beautiful surroundings, cold beer, volunteering has been really hard on me.

view from the restaurant

small piece of a very large squid

a very ugly, but very tasty fish Te picked out for us

Swimming in the South China Seas Before 7

I took a short weekend trip down to Phan Thiet.  I went there for a housewarming party the developer was throwing for a friend.  It was a pretty big party since it was in part for potential buyers of the complex.  They had a whole gourmet dinner, which included delicious grilled tiger prawns.  There was a band and karaoke and of course dancing.  What really made the trip something special, besides the free beer, was the next morning getting up at six to go for a swim in the ocean.  The housing complex is kind of out of the way and the only thing near it is a small fishing village.  So there we were swimming in the south China sea before seven along side the bowl shaped fishing boats/baskets.  They resemble large woven baskets.  The men go out in these boats at midnight and bring in the nets repeatedly until about seven in the morning.  While they toil in the sea, the women sit on the beach with their children and animals waiting to negotiate prices on their paltry catches.  The fish I saw them bring in were long and slender and looked to be nothing much at all, but I suppose they'll go towards making fish sauce, for which Phan Thiet is known.  We stopped and watched the negotiations, as they passed fish to and fro and I could only imagine how many of these narrow fish were needed to bring in one's salary.  It was us, the fishermen, the negotiating women, their children, their dogs, their motorbikes, and their cows.  It was the first time I have ever seen cows walking along beach in the early morning.  I walked picking seashells, digging up starfish, and wondering at the events in my life that had brought me there at that moment.

Tony petting his new friend

empty beach, late afternoon

Goodbye Barbecue

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The nature of travelling means that you make friends you may never get to see again.  Last month we had a goodbye barbecue for our friend from Tawain, Liang Yi.  She was probably my best friend here in the first few months.  This would be funny if you knew her.  She's not the type of person to be hanging out with the likes of me; I'm rock and roll and she's Star Trek.  Before she left she had a few laughs with all of us, I kind of told her this was the American way, grilling meat and drinking beer.  Anyway I make a mean side of pork here.

Jet Airliner

"May you live all the days of your life." -Jonathan Swift


Jay and Ian are coming to visit.  Generally before you have guests visit one would take the time before to clean and prepare for their arrival.  I suppose I should do the same.  A more creative writer than myself might take this opportunity to speak metaphorically about cleansing one's mind and taking stock of ones life to prepare for the arrival of friends.  I think that's for another blog.  I always liked going to the airport, even if I'm not the one going anywhere.  I like to see all the different people going here, there, and everywhere.  I like to think of their individual stories and think about where they might be going or where they're coming from.  A lot of them will sit next a person on their flight and never say more than a few polite words.  There is that bit of social awkwardness to overcome, I suppose.  There are those that are just so self absorbed that you might not want them to talk.  I think a lot of people are just nervous and don't feel they have an interesting story they wish to share with a stranger.  Too often we confuse what is interesting with the dramatic and tragic.  I suppose in being a ELA teacher that I should be a good story teller.  Maybe I am, but what I like to do is listen.  I like to hear the boring details of people's lives.  It is in these details that we find the true heart and soul of a story.  Their are billions of individual stories in this world.  That's what people should talk about.

You Playing The Foosball?

January is a month for birthdays.  Recently we had a birthday party for three of our teachers.  A lot of people were invited so the original plan was to have an outdoor party.  It started raining early in the morning and rained for about two days straight.  It was the first rain we've had in Da lat in two months.  We were able to move the party into the library and everything worked out.  The only thing we didn't move into the library was the foosball table that we borrowed from a local bar because it was really heavy.  I know because I carried up and down the stairs.  The Vietnamese are all really good at foosball.  I am embarrassingly bad at it.  Watching them play was like watching an actual soccer match.