2008 Blogs

Back "home" again, in Nha Trang

03/15/2009

My trip from Kuala Lumpur to Nha Trang took nearly all day but was thankfully uneventful.  As the taxi driver drove me from the airport to Nha Trang I savored the views of beautiful Cam  Ranh Bay and felt a welcome sense of familiarity as we entered the city.  These past few days were exhilarating.  After a little over 2 months in Vietnam, it was such a treat to stay in a luxury hotel and have a real shower, bath tub, and thick mattress.  Like the other Fulbrighters, I gorged myself on seemingly endless buffets of sumptuous food (although nothing compares to Vietnamese pineapple).  It was great to see the other researchers and lecturers--the ones I met in January seemed like old friends now and and there was an opportunity to make new friends.  Keynote speakers gave me a broader understanding of the region and the work I'm doing, and it was stimulating to hear reports of the important and valuable research being done here in Southeast Asia.

 

As much as I enjoyed my brief foray into that world-class city, it felt good to return to Nha Trang this evening, to a place where people sit on red and blue plastic chairs in the cool of the evening, sipping tea and talking over events of the day.  I realized that I had missed seeing the fishermen's boats on the horizon, the bicycles in the street, the families of three and four riding on one motorbike.  Yes, a small portion of Nha Trang is a tourist destination, but in many other parts of the city people seemingly are more in touch with one another and with their physical environment than their counterparts in more developed nations.  No, they aren't consciously doing lots of recycling (unless you count going through someone else's garbage to find things you can use).  What I mean is that people here (myself included) fall into a rhythm of waking up with the light, napping in the heat of the day, drying clothes in the sunshine, being outside in the early evening, and much more.  It is a place where people pay with cash, not credit cards, and if you don't have the money, you can't buy it!

 

I'm not an economist, and lack the language to discuss this topic on more than a personal level.  As the conference presentations confirmed, and as I can see in my limited travels here, Vietnam is a poor nation and has a long way to go by the market economy's standards.  I can't help but wonder what the destination is, and what the tradeoffs are along the way.  I just know that I am glad to be here at this point in time, when the people of Vietnam can still show me how to appreciate the ordinary things in the world around me, and most of all, the people in the world around me.