In a Scrape in Mui Ne

Yesterday was my first day teaching...so to be followed by more, with the added benefit of getting paid to do it!...at least that's the plan. Right now I'm looking to work outside of Saigon, but job hunting from afar isn't the easiest thing to do, especially when your contacts are in Seoul, Hanoi, Nha Trang, and possibly a hut in Nepal. But I'm doing my best to be an International Emissary...then looking up what exactly and "emissary" is and does... but through a complex network and flow of e-mail exhcanges and cell phone credit rapidly dropping on long distance calls, I've managed to actually talk to some "higher ups" (I hear the guy in Nepal has the biggest goat heard within 5 days walking distance! there's some credentialing for you!)
But in between all my networking and name dropping (and by that I mean "name misprouncing") I've had some time to enjoy some Vietnamese ventures...and come away with (ahem) minimal damage. This last weekend I jumped on board the midnight bus to Mui Ne with a couple friends and a bikini in my backpack and a few hours later we found ourselves in honest to goodness Bungalows, listening to the waves on the warm beaches of the South China sea. I'm so used to the chilly beaches of the Maine coast, I've never swam in warm salt water before (mmmm...somehow that description doesn't sound as lovely as the actual experience felt...) After mornigs on the beach, under palm umbrellas we decided to take a trip. We rented scooters for $4 and road along the coastline. There was only one road in town, which made for easy directions, and we buzzed by fishing villages and street markets and carts pulled by some kind of Vietnamese Oxen, steered by old ladies in conical straw hats (the hats still get me, they're too genuine to be cliche, but to cliche to be real...)
We finally found the famous sand dunes where we were quickly surrounded by school-kids chatting in their junior-entrepenuerial English offing rides down the dunes on plastic sleds "Where you from? You wanna ride? 2000 dong. How old are you? what your name? You my friend, I give you slide 1500 dong" All of these were more statements than questions but they were fairly persuasive. So needless to say Im a sucker for sleds and cute kids, and dunes. Afterwards we stopped at a hammock cafe and sipped fantas and coconuts and rocked lazily in the netted slings, one leg hanging over for balance, lightly pushing off with the toes. But right on time the afternoon clouds began to gather so we decided, scooters not being covered vehicles, that we'd better head back. Easier said than done. Pulling out of the cafe, my scooter skidded in the gravel, we lost control and spilled onto the road- earning me a brand new set of road rash patches on my right shoulder, elbow, forearm, hip, and knee. But not to worry, I was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of local women dusting me off and coating me in unusual orange ointments. Smelled like menthol and stung like hell...I took it as a sign that it was working.
Mainly my pride and dignity was more injured than my body, especially as the entire town waved goodbye to the pathetic tourist who fell off her motorbike. We had to hire a couple guys to drive us home...on the scooters we had rented. About halfway home we ran headlong into the monsoon season in full effect. I couldn't have been more soaked if I had jumped fully clothed into the ocean, I at least would have been warmer then. And then the petrol gods (I think I wrote a paper on them for one of my Eastern Religion classes) desided to punish us for our injurious scootering and one of the bikes ran out of gas. So we stood shivering under the rippled tin awning of a street side shop, while the guys went for fuel. The family that owned the shop stared at us with a mix of pity and curiosity and before we left they had unveiled my scrapes and applied a brand new coat of their own medicinal ointments...still stung like hell, must still be good.
Finally making it back to our bungalows that evening, I don't think I could have ever felt so warm and cozy in a grass hut.