Look Out, Vietnam

Last week, my entire life changed.

I have experienced what some would already call big changes in the last few years.

• My children moved out
• I got married
• We moved from the U.S. to China
• We moved from the big city of Beijing to the more rural town of Hoi An, Vietnam

Despite all those changes, last week was different. I broke down and rented a scooter for the month.

Growing up in rural America, having a vehicle is just a given. You have to have one. There is no other way to get to your destination. Even living in a bigger city, typically people have a vehicle to get around. There are exceptions, but not having a car is not the norm.

It was a bit of an adjustment going to China and giving up our cars, but Beijing literally has the best public transportation system in the world. I'm not just saying that because I was impressed. It really is ranked as the top in the world.

Once we figured out how it all worked, there was honestly no need for us to have a car. We could get anywhere we needed to be by using a taxi, subway, or bus. Plus, it was crazy cheap.

Then, we moved to Da Nang, Vietnam. Reliable public transportation is virtually nonexistent there, but living in the center of a big city (1.8 million) meant everything we might need was fairly close. We just walked everywhere. We were already used to doing a lot of walking because of our time in Beijing.

In the end, we settled in Hoi An. Hoi An is much much smaller and we live out on the edge of town. We don't even have an address. This means we cannot receive mail or order for food delivery. There is an outdoor food market near our house, but anything else requires a significant hike. We don't mind the walk, but there is a limited amount of options near us and the trips to see something new required a big time commitment and a lot of sweat (remember this is tropical Vietnam).

So, last week we rented a scooter to see how much we would actually use one.

It took me about 12 hours to answer that question.

We will use it A LOT.

There is a place I love to go for breakfast, but it would take me 30 minutes to walk there. On the scooter, it's only about 7 minutes. I've eaten there every day this week. I can pop over to the market across town that has a few more Western goods the market near us does not have.
And my favorite part…I can more efficiently explore our new surroundings.

I love to wander the streets of a new city and start discovering all the little-hidden gems as I build my mental map of how the city is laid out. This takes a long time to accomplish on foot and it is something that Red does NOT enjoy doing. Now that I have the scooter, I can tear up and down the streets and quickly discover what road meets up with what and find all those little shortcuts. I have learned so much about the layout of our city in the last few days.

And today we ventured outside the city. Having the scooter gives us the freedom to go explore without having to pay a cab to just cart us around all day. Especially when we don't really know where we want to go half the time anyway.

Today we went to Tháp Chăm Chiên Đàn to see some 12th-century towers built by the people of the Champa Kingdom which existed from 192 and was absorbed by Vietnam in 1832. We figured if we are going to start calling this country home, we should probably start learning a little bit about it.

Now that I'm mobile, no part of this country is safe. I'm ready to see it all.