What's over there?
DANANG, VIETNAM – A while back I read a story about the ‘money game’ described by an expat living in Mexico.
It was all about the challenges of acquiring and keeping enough small-denomination bills to be able to shop in local markets and stores.
We play that same game here in Vietnam.
DANANG, VIETNAM – Here’s an unusual sight from today’s morning shopping excursion. No, not the construction site… those are seemingly everywhere around Vietnam.
What’s unusual about this scene is the row of palletized building bricks. Neatly stacked on wooden pallets and wrapped in plastic for easier handling. We don’t normally see that.
The typical construction site scenario around here goes like this:
A large stake-bed truck pulls up to the site, piled to the top with red clay bricks, neatly stacked right on the truck bed.
Several laborers, who rode in on top of the load, hop off the truck and drop the stake sides. They then proceed to unload the thousands of bricks and neatly re-stack them on the ground… brick by brick!
And since the bricks had been stacked directly on the truck bed, you can probably guess how they originally got there.
That’s right; the laborers back at the factory (probably the same ones who rode out with the load) stacked them there… brick by brick.
So Vietnam scores extra points for “full” employment.
Efficiency? Not so much.
DANANG, VIETNAM – We’ve crawled out of bed before dawn plenty of times to catch an international flight. But getting up at 5 a.m. to drive less than 10 kilometers up the road? That seemed a bit much.
With most international borders still closed, our near-term travel plans now feature so-called ‘staycations’ and short trips to places closer to home. Last week we joined a few expat friends to do just that.
DANANG, VIETNAM – This month marks a milestone for us on our world travels. Three years ago, on June 15, 2017, we bid farewell to our home of 25 years in Western Washington state and set off with one-way tickets to Edinburgh, Scotland intending to travel around the UK for a couple months.
Ten weeks later we hopped back across the water to the U.S. to visit friends and family on the East Coast and the Midwest. Then, after two months in the Seattle area wrapping up some final loose ends, we flew off to Asia.
Continue reading “Three Years On The Road Now – And Counting…”
DA NANG – After what seems like ages of lockdown, we’ve been itching to get out on the road again.
Hey… that’s our name, right?
Local travel is starting to open up again in Vietnam and airlines are offering some great deals on flights. So we decided to take a short trip.
Not quite ready (or able) to venture too far afield, we decided to spend a week in Nha Trang, Vietnam.
Located about 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Da Nang, and sharing the same coast, Nha Trang is one of those places we’d heard about but hadn’t got around to visiting yet.
With daytime temperatures hovering near 100 degrees F (37 C) during our stay, we didn’t do a lot of outdoor activities. But we did venture outside our beach-view apartment several times to check out some of the local sights.
Here are a few photos from our trip (click on the thumbnails for a larger view):
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