It was one of those god awful days in Mui Ne when the electricity is shut off from 8:00am until 5:00pm for routine maintenance. There is no prior warning and this is the fourth time it has happened since I’ve been here. I only have a fan in my room, no A/C and that’s never a problem except when there is no power and with no cross ventilation, it is impossible to breathe in there. I can’t write because my laptop battery won’t last more than an hour. I had things to do so I just took off to worry about it later..
On the way to the bus stop I went over the errands I needed to do; first was to go and pick up my train ticket for next week, next was to go to the ATM. And oops; no electricity means no ATM. The bus had arrived so I got on.
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My guy who had the ticket was out and wouldn’t be back for two hours. So I walked to my next destination, the internet café where they sold blank CD’s. I mentioned my ATM problem and they assured me that ATM’s would work. I doubted this but gave it a whirl. No luck..
It was only 10am. Too early to go get that meal I had been dreaming about and too hot to do much else. I caught the bus back home.
Now what was I to do? I tried stretching out on the bed to read the one book I had and didn’t much care for, but just wasn’t not enough air. I tried sitting on my front porch but it was too uncomfortable.
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Time crept on and I tried not to think about it being a wasted day. Then just when I was again thinking it was a wasted day I spotted a beautiful lizard on the rock right across from my room..
I do love lizards and had seen a spectacular blue-headed guy near the front of the hotel a month ago. Back near my room there are only these rather plain ones. This one didn’t have a colorful head, but he was of that pre-historic dinosaur body style. I ran to get my camera.
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Carefully stalking him and trying to get a good shot did not turn out the way I had hoped. I only have one lens on my camera, but there is some zoom capability. And since it is my new, very expensive DSLR camera, I was sure it would suffice. Wrong. I’ll work that out later. But as I was trying to get a clear picture of my reptile who had noticed my approach and scooted up a coconut tree, I found a second brand of lizard.
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Talk about camouflage! This critter was about 4 inches long and looked like coconut bark. Had I not been right on top of him in my attempt to capture the image of lizard number one, I would never have seen him.
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I still have hopes of getting a picture of the blue lizard and this unbelievable moth I have only seen once. It was an army-green-cami painted moth.
It turned out that they do have a very noisy generator at the hotel which they turned on at 2:00pm. I flipped on the fan and cooled down and planned the rest of the day. Since I rarely walk to the beach at sunset I thought I should try to get a few more photos before I leave in a few days.
It’s lovely in the early evening as the sun goes down at 6:00 pm. The tide is way out and local folks keep busy picking up various types of edible shell life. The families from the neighboring little shops walk through their backyards down to the beach. Kids and mom’s and dad’s and dogs romp in the shallow water. My favorite little tiny dog seems to be the alpha who lords over the big ones..
Feeling invigorated by the cool evening weather and wonderful sights, I smiled as I unlocked my room only to be greeted hundreds of flying termites.
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I’d had this problem after the rains when I lived in HCMC. I’d learned that one need only turn off the lights and open the windows. When the bugs had attacked the room a few weeks ago after some rain, I did just that. But this time the windows had been closed so I didn’t understand where they’d come from.
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I walked to the bathroom to make sure its window was shut and was greeted by a horror movie scene; one million flying and crawling termites covered the sink, tub and walls. These guys don’t bite, but they were flying down the back of my shirt and I couldn’t deal with the invasion until the next morning. I went to the front desk and two of the ladies came back with me to fix the problem.
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They came with a can of bug spray which I always try to avoid using, but this was desperation. As I sat outside my bungalow, they sprayed and swept and washed away the invaders. At one point I walked back in to see that one young woman, after spraying half a can of insecticide, had closed herself in the bathroom to clean it. I told her it was not safe and to open the door. No problem, was her response.
Eventually all the bugs were gone. I installed the mosquito net over the window as I do every night, turned the fan on full-force, and kept a wary eye out for any more flying bugs.
I went to bed and was glad the day was over.
Kate
