Steady Footsteps

While health care technology in Vietnam has rocketed into the 21st century in Vietnam with cardiac bypass surgery, total hip replacements and in-vitro fertilization available now to those who can afford it, physical rehabilitation remains stuck somewhere in the 1950s. That's ironic because physiotherapy and occupational therapy rely on skill and knowledge--not to mention a bit of compassion--all of which are far cheaper than most any product of the medical technology or pharmaceutical industries.

Steady Footsteps' mission is to bridge the great isolating divide of language and culture and bring effective rehabilitation services to disabled people in Central Vietnam. Steady Footsteps focuses especially on the care of people with neurological disorders--kids with cerebral palsy, adults who have suffered strokes (CVAs), and people of all ages who have had head injuries. (Unfortunately, traumatic brain injury is one of the leading causes of death and disability in Vietnam, so remember to strap your helmet on securely before taking off on a motorbike adventure here!)

You can learn more about rehabilitation in Vietnam and the work of the Steady Footsteps organization here.

Surfing in Vietnam

If the chance to take the longest cable car ride in the world, view a giant dragon-shaped steel bridge breathe fire (really!), or experience acupuncture treatment for pain relief or drug addiction were not enough incentive to visit Da Nang, how about doing a bit of surfing?


The longest and most beautiful beach in all of Southeast Asia stretches from Da Nang's Son Tra Pennisula to the tourist town of Hoi An. This twenty mile (30km) long white sandy beach was the site of the famous China Beach R&R spot for GIs during the American War, as well as an international surfing competition in 1992. Despite the fact that Five Star resorts are popping up like mushrooms along the Da Nang/Hoi An corridor, surfers and other beach-lovers are few and far between. Most of the locals prefer to time their beach visits to the dawn and twilight hours, in order to avoid the effects of the intense tropical sun. (Just two hours of mid-day tropical sun on pale skin can produce a serious, second-degree burn.) If you plan to spend much time on the beach and in the surf, bring plenty of waterproof sun block! Otherwise, consider coming during the rainy season, between November and February when skies tend to be overcast and the waves are the biggest. 
 

The water here is relatively warm year-round, but you would probably be more comfortable in the winter months wearing at least a spring suit for surfing. Vietnam is, of course, a tropical country and it never gets very cold here but, when you're wet and the weather is breezy and overcast, it's easy to start shivering. 

This section of the coast is beach break. We have pretty consistently surfable waves beginning sometime in September and trailing off in May. During the summer months of June, July and August, the seas tend to be quite calm. Off-shore storms can be a source of wave action, stirring up the usually calm seas of August to yield a couple of days of good surfing or making the usually surfable November seas so rough that you might think twice about even walking on the beach! Up-to-date surf forecasts can be found here.
A word of warning: Rip currents here can be strong and drownings do occur. Make sure you use a leash. If you do become separated from your board and are caught in a rip current, remember to swim parallel to the shore until you are out of the current before attempting to swim ashore.

How to Grow Bean Sprouts the Vietnamese Way

Growing bean sprouts can afford you the benefits of fresh produce in four or five days at any time of the year, in any climate, and requires neither sunlight nor soil. This technique produces large quantities of ready-to eat organic produce, utilizing only clean sand and water, a plastic strainer and basin, and your bare hands. 

 Clockwise from upper left: dry mung beans, soaked beans, decanted water--ready for addition to soup, bean sprouts.

Start out by rinsing your beans (I'm using mung beans in these photos) and then allow them to soak in a bowl of water. After about 8 hours, drain the beans, which will have doubled in size, and reserve the liquid to use later in soup. Spread out a single layer of beans in damp sand and cover with several inches of sand. Top off with some more water if the sand is not already sufficiently damp.

 The deeper and better drained your volume of sand is, the less chance that the beans will rot instead of growing. My own bathtub-sized container is located on a covered porch. It's made of brick and cement and allows drainage from the bottom. I use local builder's sand, most likely dredged from a brackish river, with any residual salt having been leached out with fresh water. An over-sized container such as this allows you to grow multiple batches of sprouts, staggering their maturity so that you could potentially have fresh sprouts as often as you like. Some folks here in coastal Vietnam use a section of concrete drainage pipe filled with sand, set on end on a bed of sand. Others just bury their beans directly in a patch of sandy ground. In the winter, in colder climates, sprouts would need to be grown in a more protected location.

 In a few days (depending on the depth you planted, the temperature of the sand, etc.) the bean sprouts will start to push up through the surface of the sand. At this point, you can either procrastinate by tossing a bit more sand atop them, or else get ready to dig! Bare hands work best for me, allowing me to extract the sprouts with minimum breakage. 

 Deposit your new bean sprouts in a sieve, rinse three times in fresh water, and you've got fresh bean sprouts! Dump your rinse water back into the sand so that you don't clog your sink. I clean as much organic material out of the sand as possible with a strainer between plantings to minimize the risk of rot in subsequent batches. The neatest thing about this technique, from my point of view, is that the sand does the work of removing almost all of those annoying little green seed jackets with no effort on my part!