Ten days ago...
I was on the back of a motorbike returning to the Vietnamese town of Nha Trang, weary but happy after a swim at a pristine beach about an hour ride up the coast from where we were staying. I had my music in my ears, to distract me from the anxiety of almost being flattened by trucks every ten seconds, or flattening some form of farm animal ourselves. I was soaking up the sounds, the sun, and the surroundings when suddenly we rounded a corner and we were at the top of a steep descent and my breath was literally taken away by the beauty of it all. To my right were towering moss-green mountains, rolling out into glistening rice fields of a lighter shade of green. I wondered if the millions of delicate green stalks sprouting from the bed of water were somehow growing diamonds or grains of rice, because in the afternoon sun, they sparkled like a crop of jewels. Our rough road sliced the rice fields in two, and on the right, the fields led into the seemingly endless expanse of the ocean, the brightest blue I've seen in nature. Scattered across this vision of green and blue were small huts, farmers harvesting rice, their conical bamboo hats shading them from the afternoon sun, and the occassional cow, much skinnier than those we see in our land.
I sat up straight on that motorbike seat, trying to soak in as much as I can with a kind of excited urgency that comes from seeing something that is too beautiful to last very long. I tore my eyes away only once to glance at Sao behind me to make sure she wasn't missing this vision, which, of course, she wasn't. I don't even remember what song was playing in my ears and I don't have a photo because I didn't want to miss a second of it by fumbling with my camera. But it remains one of the most incredible moments from an even more incredible trip.
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