christmas day on ninh van bay

this is ridiculous.

i'm sitting in the 'library' at the six senses hideaway on the coast. the library is a deck made of weathered wood, with a high thatched roof, and the no walls. i'm looking out on the bay, surf is crashing in and there are several vietnamese fishing boats crawling in the water.

six senses is on a small island- we arrived by boat. there is a short beach (in front of every cabana, just beyond the personal plunge pool) and the island quickly inclines in a glorious cluster of trees and rocks. to make the view even better, this portion of the beach (the kilometer or so that the resort covers) is concave, so to both sides you can see the cliffs and trees rising up and reaching out over the water.

it's rained just about non-stop since we arrived yesterday afternoon, which i beautiful in its own right, but we are definitely mourning for the beauty we know we'd experience in this green place if the sun were out. the puddly gravel walkways and wooden deck pathways are littered with large snails and slugs. the high winds rattle the wood and canvas of our cabana, make the thick nautical rope whine pleasantly, and render our rain ponchos ineffective!

last night we had dinner in the restaurant, at one long table. the room is a much larger version of this library, with a tremendously high thatched roof, and wet, powerful wind threatened our napkins and gave the whole affair sort of an urgent feel. as we dined on course after course, troupes of young, heavily made-up and thoroughly sequinned vietnamese girls performed a series of dances in unison, divided in the middle by a 'fashion show.'

yesterday's ride was incredible. another rainy day, i abandoned my rain coat early (it was very hot) and succumbed to the wet. when it wasn't raining, our bikes still plowed through mist and steam and ground-level clouds, and ripped up puddles of thick mud. i had a solid racing stripe of brown dirt when i was done, from the back of my head to my bum, thanks to the kickback of my rear tire.

here was the vietnam that i had imagined. we perimetered miles of rice paddies, in various states of harvest. during the first part of the ride, the shoots were so green they were fluorescent. just like the pictures, workers in conical hats patiently picked their way through the ten-inch water. other paddies were muddy and devastated, post-harvest, and workers slogged around with hoes, churning the mud.

we cut through lots of villages, where we were often received with giggly 'hello!'s, mostly from kids. i'd always return the hello full-voiced and with a big sloppy grin, and kids and adults alike would descend into peals of laughter. we're a heck of a parade, with our neon clothes and big fancy bikes and western faces.

the houses in these villages vary greatly in style and value. many are narrow concrete construction with colorful fronts and bare gray sides, as if they were supposed to be nestled in a crowded city block- but they stand alone in a field! many houses are combination residence/ convenience store, and all seem to have a front room with no front wall. most have large outdoor living areas, cantinas of a sort, with simple sheet metal roofs to keep the rain off. the small, brightly-colored plastic kiddy chairs (such as mom and i have purchased from the grocery store for my niece anahita) are ubiquitous- they are EVERYWHERE. almost as common as motorbikes! in fact, the preferred sitting and hanging out apparatus around here seems to be kiddy chairs and motorbikes- only beat out by the tireless squatting on the haunches that the vietnamese do so well. the floor is never too far away, and even the elderly pop up and down with alacrity.

as we turned one corner, an open-front house was blasting "feliz navidad.' it was still ringing in my ears as we broke from the jungle and penetrated yet another rice paddy, this one ringed with a low green mountain swathed in impossibly-low-hanging clouds.

it's christmas and i am on an island, off the coast of vietnam. it's achingly beautiful, and wonderful to be with my sweetheart, but, as the surf crashes and the rain pours down around me, it's also throbbingly far from family and home.