VNAH retreat

Since Wednesday night when we got on an overnight train in Hanoi, Alison and I have been on a staff retreat for the organization where I'm volunteering, Vietnam Assistance for the Handicapped (VNAH). It's pretty amazing, I've been there a week and a half and we're now on an all-expenses-paid trip to Quang Binh province, which is on the central coast of Vietnam, a little ways north of Danang and the DMZ. What makes this even more awesome is that the one other American in the office isn't here, so it's me, Alison, 10 of my Vietnamese coworkers, and their families. That, combined with the fact that Dong Hoi is a pretty small town, has led to way more stares than usual, with most people that drive by us on motorbikes turning completely around to watch us as they drive past. Since we're the only people in the group that don't speak Vietnamese, we mostly just sit there and try to figure out what's going on, but my coworkers are all super nice and speak pretty good English, so they make an effort to talk to us too. So far we've walked around the town quite a bit - it's right on the coast, so it's gorgeous, and there are tons of little fishing boats scurrying around just outside our hotel - and today went to the beach, which was fairly hilarious. There are a lot of little kids with us, and they're naturally super cute in the ocean, plus Alison and I didn't know the Vietnamese protocol for beach-going, which led to us standing around for a while trying to decide if we should put down towels, go in the water, or what. Turns out that instead of laying on towels on the dry area of sand, everyone just sort of sits on the wet sand super close to the water and barely goes swimming. Still really nice though, the water was pretty warm and the beach was completely empty except for us - not quite the Jersey shore scene that we're used to.

By far the highlight of the trip has been the food (much like being in Hanoi, I guess). Obviously we've been getting great seafood since we're right on the coast, but beyond that every meal has been an absolute feast - it's always all 25 of us, spread out at a really long table with huge numbers of dishes scattered about and everyone eating a ton. There's no way I could do these meals justice with a description, so I'll just try to list what we had each meal - I think you'll get the idea. Here we go.

Lunch on Thursday: clams, squid, crabs, lobster, pineapple and cucumber with chili salt, rice, and two different soups.
Dinner on Thursday: eel with green bananas, frogs, fried frogs, French fries, chicken, water spinach, some kind of chewy minnow thing, crispy baked rice, and soup.
Lunch on Friday: wild boar, squid, unknown fish, pumpkin buds, grilled whole shrimp (with heads), assorted steamed vegetables, field crab soup, rice, and watermelon.
Dinner on Friday: hot pot soup with lots of different vegetables, squid, an eel-like fish, crabs, rice vermicelli, and watermelon.

All with plenty of Bia Saigon. So yeah, we've been eating well this trip.