While some participants in the SALT program were being thrust headlong into their assignments, meeting their host families and starting new jobs with uncertainty, I spent my first week in Vietnam on vacation.

Here, fellow SALT participants Rachel, Anna and I pose like the tourists we are outside the ancient Champa ruins of My Son in Central Vietnam. Click the photo to see the whole photo album from our week, which took us through Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue, Dong Hoi, and out to such classic attractions as Marble Mountain, My Son and the caves at Phong Nha.

It was the MCC Vietnam staff retreat, and I arrived just in time to come along: our 16-hour train ride south (longer than the advertised 12 hours I cited below) left Ha Noi at 11pm the same day I landed in Vietnam. I slept well on the train and on subsequent nights, and really didn’t feel the jet lag I was anticipating.

I’ll try to keep these blog entries short and relatively thematic so that people who don’t particularly care about me can more easily skip the information they find excessive. You can learn more about our travels through the photo album linked to the pictures above.