For a lot of people, the cold season or typhoon season is a real bane on their existence. I would imagine that the people who feel the most strong about this are the people that have businesses built a bit too close to the sea that are getting the land literally ripped out from under them in the My Khe Beach area of Da Nang.

I said "which happens every year" 2x in the title on purpose because I have seen this exact same scenario happen every single stinkin year yet people still think it is a good idea to build things this close to the sea. Every year they bring in a crack team of coastal protectors, which I appreciate, good job guys! But at the same time I shake my head in disbelief that after years and years and years of exactly the same thing happening at exactly the same time of year, that people still continue to build on this land without taking any sort of new precautions to attempt to change this.

If you look around any town that that has an area that is covered with horrible vandalism and bad graffiti, you start to notice that where there is a little, there will be a lot later. I don't know how these areas get determined by the talentless community that just seems to want to uglify anything they can get their hands on, but when I think about this situations I realize that this is kind of the reason why we have laws: A lot of people just simply cannot be trusted to do the right thing when left unpunished.

Let me be clear about this right from the start: I am in no way encouraging anyone to intentionally break the law in Vietnam or any other country for that matter. I am merely pointing out a new product that helps to circumvent the rather strange motorbike laws that exist in this country.

Part of the charm of this country is the fact that it is very different from the western world. There are times that I get very frustrated, actually kind of mad, at how things are set up here but I wouldn't trade them for how things are in the western world. For the most part this country is far less of a consumerist type of society and we aren't bombarded with advertisements everywhere we look attempting to get us to be spending money at all hours of the day even with money we don't even have yet.

We are in the winter season here in Vietnam just like a lot of you people around the world unless you live in Australia or a few other places and this is what the locals that are involved in the tourism industry refer to as "low season." Most of the tourists stay away this time of year because at least by local standards, it is quite cold. Too cold for a dip in the ocean to be refreshing not to mention it is also the time of year where the tides are reliably crazy and potentially dangerous. The lifeguards are on high alert and unless you have a surfboard, they are unlikely to get you get in in the water below ankle depth.