What's over there?
XIENG KHOUANG, LAOS – It’s Fall in northern Laos, time to harvest the annual rice crop.
Laos’ beautiful mountainous countryside is filled with terraced rice fields, forming a patchwork mosaic of colorful polygons as far as the eye can see.
Continue reading “It’s rice harvest time in northern Laos (new video)”
HANOI, VIETNAM – Melanie and I have noticed something funny happening since we moved to Vietnam. We’ll be out and about, minding our own business, exploring a historic site or wandering around at a festival. All of sudden a young person or two – sometimes not so young – will come up and ask to pose with us for a photo. It’s weird.
Continue reading “Since when did we become Rock Stars?”
DANANG, VIETNAM – One thing we’ve seen again and again as we’ve traveled around Vietnam is a lot of construction. In Hanoi it seemed like there was a new building going up (or an old one coming down) on almost every block.
We saw the same thing on the Mekong Delta and up in the mountainous Sapa region. Even on Cat Ba Island in Lan Ha Bay, there was new construction galore.
Continue reading “In America it’s baseball. In Vietnam, construction?”
DANANG, VIETNAM – After living in Hanoi for seven months, we decided to escape the pollution and chaos and move to Danang, on Vietnam’s central coast.
Don’t get me wrong; we really enjoyed our time in Hanoi. We loved visiting its historic cultural sites and exploring its labyrinth of narrow bustling streets, and it certainly presented an eye-opening introduction to life in Southeast Asia.
Continue reading “How to find an apartment in Danang”
DANANG, VIETNAM – During the entire seven months Melanie and I lived in Hanoi I don’t think we were ever seriously at risk for getting a sunburn.
Most days in Hanoi the sky was sort of a dull gray. Sometimes we were pretty sure the sun must be lurking up there somewhere, and occasionally the sky might have a slightly bluish tint or a few fluffy clouds, but mainly it was just a dingy gray.
But things are a little different now that we’ve moved to Danang. Let me explain…
Continue reading “Look, up in the sky… It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… the sun?”