It has been a few days since I arrived back in Da Nang and I must say it is a much different place than I left some four months ago. I was fortunate back in January and February to experience Da Nang and most of Vietnam in a mild spell of “winter”, if one can call any place and time in indochina such a word as winter. The evenings were cool and the heat of the day was manageable with a nap in the midday heat. Summer however, was a very different thing. The intense heat will be a discussion soon enough.
After a grueling thirty hour journey by air I was more than pleased to finally see the monkey mountains and the lady Buddha outside the window as the plane touched down in the early morning of June 26th. It was just after seven a.m. and the sun was already high in the tropical sky. Sunrise this time of year comes at an incredibly early hour. The sky begins to glow with a sliver of morning light just before four and the day is bright and alive by five. 
Customs and immigration were a breeze as usual and it took fewer than 20 minutes to process my visa. Waiting for my luggage at the carousel however, was a very different story. I could see Diễm outside patiently waiting as I stood by and after roughly 45 minutes retrieved my luggage and exited the international terminal and officially stepped back onto Vietnamese soil. As the giant glass doors slid open in front of me the heat enveloped me like a blanket as if I had just opened an oven door. This was the Vietnam I had read about, inescapable heat and humidity. I instantly began to sweat and the lack of a shower since I left home some two days ago was not making me any new friends.
Diễm had a taxi waiting for us and our apartment had been prepared the day before so I could get straight to a shower and freshen up. I found a brand new apartment building just about a ten minute walk from the beach. With a coffee house next door and a few small marts nearby, it had everything we needed. The building itself was beautiful, very modern and clad with white marble tile floors. The ground floor was reserved for parking tenant’s motorbikes and the second floor had a common area overlooking the street. We were on the fifth floor and were our apartments first inhabitants. The landlord known as Phú was offering a very deep discount to the apartment buildings first inhabitants and I quickly took the opportunity. After all taxes and fees our fourteen day stay set me back a whopping $236 dollars. 
After a much needed shower I unpacked my luggage and we took inventory of the kitchen and made a list for our trip to the grocery store. I brought quite a bit of meats and fish from home, Diễm and I would be preparing most of our meals and though we would be purchasing some proteins here, I brought some things a bit more familiar to my culinary abilities. We chose the standard grocery store in the modern mall called Vincom plaza. There we could find all of the grocery needs to stock the refrigerator and pantry. Though the open air markets were great for fresh produce and unique items, the vinmart offered things like cooking oil and other bottled pantry goods, drinks and frozen products you couldn’t get in the market.
We stocked the kitchen, made a quick dinner of fresh spring rolls and bún cà or fish noodle soup, and it was time for me to sleep. The hormonal imbalance of jetlag is very real and I new tonight would the first of many struggles to find equilibrium again. I turned the air conditioner to the lowest it would go, I assumed the markings on the dial translated to “Arctic” at least I was hoping, and I settled down into a nice and cool silky bed while my mind collapsed in on itself under the weight of its inability to even be cognizant………fade to black
