Counting your blessings.

When you stay in a place for an extended period of time, the nicer novelties quickly wear off. You may begin to spend a lot of time focusing upon the grittier aspects of life and sometimes that can get you down a little. To attempt to skip the stages of cultural adjustment would be to go against nature and will only backfire on you; but if you have been through it before, acceptance can come much earlier than it once did before.

In my case, I have tried to force myself to break free from the idea of being on a vacation of indeterminable length. Yet sometimes you have to think positively and when it is a beautiful day like today, simply allow yourself to enjoy it briefly.

Beautiful days are not something that you will only encounter when you are on vacation, they can happen during your everyday life. Without meaning to get all philosophical here, maybe it is often just good to enjoy the simple things.

It may just be a hot dog and a beer you say. Yet if you allow yourself to look around, you may notice you have nice clean air, a beautiful blue sea and hot weather; the kind of environment that many would pay good money to enjoy. The hotdog was merely acceptable and the beer nothing special. Yet it was relatively quiet, the area was not so crowded, it was actually a nice situation to be in.

That is until you step around the corner and hear music blaring and a group of daytime lunch drinkers having a little song and dance. That being said, you cannot have everything your way and you can smile knowing that somebody is having fun. Your desired moment of peace and quiet probably lies elsewhere.

Was I in any way productive this afternoon? Probably not. I did not write about my thoughts while sipping that second beer and looking out towards the sea; I simply enjoyed the moment for what it was. If everyday was like this, it would not be bliss that I described above. I’d just get bored of it all very quickly.

Was the adventures of this afternoon worth it? I’d say, yes. Sometimes, it is good to break free from whatever may trouble you and cleanse the soul. It is easy to feel rather ungrateful even when in reality, you possibly have it much better than you may think.

Could this mindset be applied on the way back home? I felt that it could and I feel that my hypothesis was proven to be correct. The sun shined so bright on the river, that it was difficult to capture the perfect photograph. Đà Nẵng can often feel like two different cities, but it is important to allow oneself to appreciate all elements of it.

Then, I glanced back over the river before walking back over the Golden Dragon Bridge. Nearby, I witnessed a group of mainly female tourists dressed in burqas. They were all smiling and appearing to have a great time, posing for pictures. While taking the above photographs; I found myself struggling to ensure that I hadn’t accidentally snapped anybody from that group without permission.

Something seemed rather peculiar to me; all of the burqas seemed to be a uniform shade of yellow with some black details. A cultural aspect that I do not understand. Normally when I see a swarm of anything black and yellow, I get rather afraid but their smiles were strangely infectious and put me at ease.

Maybe I had enjoyed my precious few moments of the day and it was now time to depart while leaving them to enjoy theirs.