We’ve had interesting set lists during the last three breakfasts here at the hotel. The first morning they played the “Happy Birthday” song, but they played ten different Asian versions of it and were still rolling out more as we left. Yesterday they played techno and house music at an uncomfortably high volume. This morning they must have found the Spotify “Saddest Instrumentals Ever” channel because I was nearly crying by the end of it, but part of that was because the breakfast sucked too.
Today was dive day so we were out of the hotel and at the dive shop by 7:15. Us and an Australian couple were picked up by a taxi and driven to the main port, which was a chaotic mess. It seemed that every single dive boat, tourist boat, fishing boat, ferry and cargo ship were trying to get loaded and out of there at the same time so it was a complete frenzy of activity, none of which looked particularly orchestrated.
We were lead over to one of the dive boats, and on initial inspection it looked pretty hideous. There was a thick ring of used tires hung by chains all around the sides acting as fenders. The boat was built of wood, and looked like it may have hit a few sea mines left behind during the war, and then repaired with rudimentary materials. Us and another 25 or 30 passengers were helped onto the boat and once loaded, we slowly chugged away, escaping the toxic diesel fumes that had been collecting at the dock and poisoning the air. The one reliable variable that is sure to bring the seasickness on is diesel fumes, so I dreaded the imminent barfarama. Fortunately, the seas were very calm so I didn’t notice anybody losing their breakfast.
We arrived at the dive site and the captain and crew tied us up to the long line of boats that were already there. In all, there were ten dive boats, each with 30 people aboard, so that meant 300 people diving and snorkeling in the same area. I didn’t have a good feeling about this. I was put into a group of divers and we received the dive briefing from the Divemaster, who was a young dude from the US. I have been diving for 20 years and have around 70 or 80 dives under my belt, but I haven’t done one for at least three years so I really paid attention to his instructions. I was happy to see that their equipment was almost brand new and they were very structured and professional getting everybody ready and into the water.
The first dive was okay. Just okay. We went to a maximum depth of 50 feet and covered some sandy area outside the coral banks, but didn’t see much. We then moved onto the coral and it was mostly dead, which has been our experience in other locations we’ve snorkeled at. Why is the coral dead? It’s a combination of local fishermen throwing their anchors haphazardly on the corals, divers getting too close and damaging it with their fins, possibly some climate change effects, and probably a bit of dynamite fishing by enthusiastic fishermen. It really makes you sad, especially when I remember back to the quality of the dives I had in Thailand 20 years ago when I first got my diving certification – it was magnificent. But when you are dropping 300 people a day on the same spot, it is inevitable that the reef will get damaged - it’s just too many people.
Our dive lasted 55 minutes and when I surfaced I pulled off my mask and unloaded two nostril cavities of mucus into the water. This is one of the disgusting side effects of diving – breathing dry air through your mouth only for nearly an hour causes an incredible amount of mucus to accumulate. As far as I know, it’s the only social gathering when you can farmer hanky your nose and nobody really minds.
The second dive and snorkeling was excellent. Although only a short ride away from the first site, the coral here was vibrant, alive, multi-coloured and swarmed by fish and creatures in every nook and cranny. Two of the more interesting fish I saw were a stone fish and a lion fish. There were huge boulders and canyons here and we got to swim through multiple caves that were eerie and full of fish. We hit a maximum depth of 60 feet and stayed down for 50 minutes. There was only one other diver in my group and we didn’t run into many other divers until the end of the dive as the site itself was very large. Ana and the kids said the snorkeling was fantastic and they saw all sorts of fish including a puffer fish.
We got back onboard and the crew helped me remove all the diving gear and they packed it away, leaving us to grab a beer and sit back and enjoy the sunshine. Although the boat didn’t look like much on the exterior, it really was a good dive boat is it had plenty of space, non-slippery wooden floors, a washroom, and reasonably comfortable seating. On the way back to the harbor I cracked out a cigar and sat on the back of the boat with my feet dangling in the water enjoying the view and having a chat with our Divemaster about his diving experiences in the region and beyond.
Once we returned to the dock we were mini-bussed back to the centre and we stopped at a restaurant for drinks and a cool down. The temperature here has been in the 35 to 37 range so those Asian butt sweats were at an all-time high. Since we were leaving today we had to check out of our room before we left for diving, and we just left our luggage at reception, which meant we had to keep ourselves busy for a few hours until the scheduled bus departure at 6:30pm. We walked down to the beach, spread out our towels and enjoyed our remaining time in Nha Trang swimming in the ocean and watching the many people enjoying the beach and beautifully warm ocean.
The majority of the tourists here are Russians, and they are so easy to spot. To begin with, they never smile or laugh. In fact, when you pass them on the street they look as if they are about to punch you in the face – women and men. Russian tourists are split into two categories – Young and Old. Young Russians are generally tall and slim and they nearly all have striking blue eyes and are quite attractive. The men are so similar it is actually funny. They all have identical brush cuts, strong builds, wear thick gold or silver chains around their necks (often with a large medallion), and appear enraged. Also, they all wear speedos, or similar types of, form-fitting, snug, banana hammock trunks. I myself do wear a gold chain, and if I was a bit taller, a bit stockier, and much less happy I could almost be mistaken for a Russian - except that I’m not gifted with the abnormal testicular mass required to showcase that particular choice of beachwear.
The Old Russians are different. Yes, the men still wear the genital clutching swimmers, but they have enormous beer bellies, are mostly bald, and nearly always have a large wife and two skinny blued eyed kids trailing behind them. And they all look like they are called Boris. They never speak English, and they never smile, but they do look slightly less likely than the young ones to launch an unprovoked attack on you as you pass them on the beach.
The whole thing is quite strange, because the Russians I know in Canada are extremely friendly, happy, smiley and would never punch me in the face. Maybe they get happier when they leave Russia? Or maybe it’s just a tourist thing? I may never know…
I’ve been thinking a lot about money. You may have noticed in these journals that I frequently note how much things cost. I do this so that I can look back later and be reminded of what the day to day costs were like in the places we visited, but also because I am constantly amazed at how little some things cost here. For example, our typical bill for a full dinner or lunch with a beer or two and drinks for everybody is around twenty dollars, but has been as low as ten. If we were on a tight budget and really scrimping we could probably get by on five to eight dollars per person per day for food. The bus tickets are ridiculously cheap. The ten hour overnight bus we are taking tonight costs thirteen dollars per ticket. Hotels have been reasonable, usually averaging around $55/night which includes breakfast. But you can get dorm rooms in backpacker joints for as little as five bucks per night. The point is, you can travel or live here for a very long time on a small amount of money.
So what is money? Money today is typically a sequence of numbers you see in your online banking, or on the receipt from the ATM, or on your paystub. This makes it easy to forget what real money feels like. When I was a kid I used to stuff money into the pockets of my jacket, use it up, and then replenish it when possible (not very often). Every autumn my mom would retrieve the winter jackets from the downstairs closet (which had been packed away all summer – at least a month). I would put my jacket on, unzip the pockets, and see what was there. Sometimes I had forgotten a bill – usually a fiver or sometimes a ten if I was real lucky – and finding that money felt like winning the lottery! I would pull that ten dollar bill out and thank the past me for the generous gift. Ten dollars was a LOT of money. Ten dollars is STILL a lot of money, and if you don’t believe that then travel through Cambodia or Vietnam for a day. Many people in this region live on a hundred bucks per month.
Sometime around the age of 40, my relationship with money changed. I don’t know what triggered it, but one day money stopped mattering to me. Up until that point I had always been quite conscious of money, and I focused on earning and saving and investing as much as possible. But what changed is this: I no longer felt like I was ever going to run out of money and be completely broke. This feeling had been driven into me from a young age. When my brothers and I were young, my parents worked hard to earn as much as possible just to keep us fed, clothed and in a house. We were taught from an early age to go out there and earn money to pay for the things you want, by yourself, instead of relying on others (parents, government, friends) to pay for things for you. We also learned about value, and how to make the most of the money you had, and if you didn’t have any money, you had two choices: go without, or go earn some more. It was a great lesson, and has served me well my entire life.
After high school I went to university and paid for it myself. My parents helped by letting me live at home, paying for food, and floating me the odd twenty every once in a while (usually on Thursdays at Bud’s On Broadway for tall Rye and Cokes) which helped me through those four years. But I was flat broke most of the time as the money I made during the summer was needed for tuition and books, and I usually had a grand or so left over which had to last the entire school year.
After I finished university, and started working and earning decent money, the reality of having more money that I needed to live on was very new, very exciting, and opened up a lot of possibilities. Those pounds or rupees or Bahamian dollars or American dollars that were deposited into my bank account on a regular basis, at times, made me feel like an imposter, living somebody else’s life. And I spent a lot. And I saw a lot of the world. And I got to do things that few people will ever get to do. And I had a lot of fun. A lot of fun. During this time I made friends all over the world and found my perfect partner. Without money, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.
When Ana and I returned to Canada my uncle Gerry taught me all about investing. Even though I had a Finance degree, I really knew nothing about it, and my ill-advised experiments with investing in offshore funds did not turn out particularly well. But I did have money and uncle Gerry showed me what to do with it and mentored me for many years, and continues to do so. Over the years, Ana and I have done many money making side projects to increase our income and we have learned to be extremely thrifty on the boring, everyday things we don’t care about (bills, vehicles, dining out, unnecessary kids activities, groceries) but splurge out on the things that give us great happiness (sailing, vacations). I track our cash flows to the dime and every year we can usually save over 30% of what we earn, which we put back into investments. So overall, we have found a system that works for us and are in pretty good financial shape – but it took a lot of years and learning to get where we are at today.
So what really changed with my relationship with money? I am no longer excited by finding a ten dollar bill in the pocket of my winter jacket. To me, it is just another ten dollars that will go to paying for groceries, gas, mortgage, or maybe it will go into an investment account. In the words of the great B.B. King, the thrill is gone. It sounds sad, but is really not, because these days I know that whatever happens to us, in our jobs or our lives, there’s a very high probability that we will be fine financially. Yes, that ten dollar bill is a lot of money, but I know what to do with it to maximize the utility I will receive from that ten dollar bill. It is not a windfall like it was in the past; it is now part of a larger plan.
Which brings me to the budget for this trip. We do not have one. Yes, we have an idea of what the trip is going to cost us, and we have pulled back on our spending this previous year to ensure we have the cash available, but we are not adhering to a strict budget, nor are we tracking our expenditures down to the last dime like I do at home throughout the year. Why? Because I know we have the money available, and what we are investing in is time with our children, self-knowledge, ideas we can bring home to Canada and, in a small part, helping some less fortunate people out by spending money in the countries we travel through.
Oh, we spent the entire day today hanging out at the beach.
Throughout this trip we have not done much for “kid-centric” activities. We’ve dragged them through busy markets, Buddhist temples, genocide museums, war museums, had them sit with us in gritty bars, and gone for long, hot walks though congested, polluted, busy city streets. We’ve kept them up late, woke them up early, and pushed them well past the breaking point at times. At restaurants they order the local food, some of which they like, and some they do not, but there are no chicken nuggets, burgers, hot dogs or nachos. And they never complain.
So today we had the chance to take them somewhere special. There is a place here called Vinpearl Land and it is located on an island just off of Nha Trang – in fact, we could see it from the beach yesterday. It is Vietnam’s premier theme park and I had previously read about in the Lonely Planet and done some research online. The reviews of it were not great, saying it was worn and dilapidated, a far cry from Disneyland, a rip-off, an OK option if you have already exhausted all others, and so on.
Well, as we learn time and time again, you can’t plan your trip around what the guidebooks say, or what your friends say, or what the internet says – they are all just opinions, which are as different and varied as people are. Simply put, this place was AWESOME. For a person living in Ontario, if you combine Marine Land, Canada’s Wonderland, the Toronto Zoo and Ripley’s Aquarium, and then cut the admission price in half, you get Vinpearl Land.
We flagged a taxi at 7:30 am and he took us to the cable car station. Because Vinpearl Land is on an island, you have to either get there by cable car or high speed ferry, so we took the first option. We went into the station and found an ultra-modern gondola and a very short queue. The kids have never been in one before so were a little apprehensive at how it worked, but when those high speed cars came charging into the station, all of a sudden they dropped into the loading area and slowed to a snail’s pace, allowing us to easily step into the eight person car. The car was dropped back onto the main cable and we were off! We were lifted up into the air and had an instant view back to the beautiful, white beach of Nha Trang with the backdrop of towering mountains. The car was hoisted up and over the bay and ran for over three kilometres to the island, some of which appeared to be under construction.
The cable car entered the station and slowed to a crawl, allowing us to get off. We walked out of the station and into the heart of the theme park rides. Now, I am going to say that this is not Six Flags or Cedar Point or Disneyland. But they did have a few smaller roller coasters, a Sky Drop, a Pirate Ship, bumper cars, and a few other larger rides that you would see in a typical theme park. But there were no line-ups, so we were able to go on all nearly all the rides in the park in only a couple of hours. In fact, I think I went on more rides than I ever have at a park, simply because we didn’t have to wait.
We then moved onto the aquarium. We visited Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto last year and this place essentially had all the same things, right down to the moving walkway that takes you through a tunnel underneath the giant aquarium. There were a couple of interesting differences, though. One huge tank was filled with multi-coloured moray eels, and inside the tank was a man in a wet suit holding a hose vacuuming off the surfaces of the tank. All around him were these huge eels with their mouths wide open showing off their teeth. We were anxiously waiting for him to back into one and have it latch onto his butt, but no dice. He was clearly an expert.
One part of the aquarium had a large viewing area and seating out front and we arrived just in time for the feeding show. A scuba diver swam into view carrying a plastic bucket and was being trailed by an army of fish, sharks and manta-rays. He reached into the bucket and started removing fish. He would toss a fish into the cloud of creatures and create a feeding frenzy. He would hand feed a fish to a shark, that would grab it away and swim off into the distance with its prize. But the best part were the rays. He used his hands to turn the ray so that the crowd could see its underside and then he would feed it a fish and we could watch its smiley-face mouth gobbling up the morsel. The funny thing about the rays is that their eyes are on the topside of their body and their mouth is on the bottom side so they can’t actually see what they are eating and must feel around for it. We sat mesmerized for the longest time, watching all the action in the tank – very cool. On the way out of the aquarium we found a long line of super massage chairs in a nice air conditioned room, so we grabbed four of them and sat down for the greatest mechanical massage ever, as these chairs even had leg holds that gave you a nice leg squeeze as it was kneading away on your back and shoulders.
At the centre of the park was a huge castle and a village surrounding it with retail and food outlets, a large water fountain and a 4D theatre, so we went to the theatre for the short, 15 minute show. This was another new experience for us. As the 3D animated film progressed, at certain points you would be shot in the face with water, or an air blast, or there would be a strange rumbling in your seat. There were also props in the theater such as talking statues and these big squids that were suspended from the ceiling and dropped down at certain points of the movie, scaring the crap out of people.
Next up was the dolphin show. I’m not big on dolphin shows but I guess it was okay. The kids seemed to like it. There certainly must be quite a bond between the dolphin trainers and the dolphins for them to become so well trained. Or maybe they are just in it for the free fish.
Lunchtime at the amusement park is always a shit-show. And today was no exception. We first went to the fast food burger joint and stood in line for far too long, fighting off the Chinese tourists trying to butt in line, and when we finally reached the front the clerk told us via hand signals that they didn’t have any more hamburgers, or really much of anything besides fried chicken. So we found a different place and did get some burger combos and seafood pizza that were reasonably good.
We kicked-off the afternoon by exploring the water park, and what a water park it was. There were quite a few of the huge, adrenaline junkie slides like that high speed one where you get a gallon of water and half your bathing suit jammed up your sphincter, and that one where you blast through in a dark tunnel and then get dumped, spinning into a giant toilet bowl. They also had a bunch of slides for tubes and that’s where we spent most of our time. Besides the slides, there was a huge lazy river and a giant wave pool. And, again, there were hardly any queues at any of them so I think we rode more slides than we ever have in a water park.
Directly beside the water park was a beautiful, sheltered bay with white sand, brown bodies, and blue skies. There was also a floating dock leading out to a series of inflated, floating obstacle courses. We all walked out there and started horsing around on the equipment. The brand name stamped on it was “Wibit” and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It was an inflatable sports park, full of obstacles and challenges, suitable for both children and adults and a hell of a lot of fun. I did a bit of research at the end of the day, found their website (www.wibitsports.com), and discovered that from the air the waterpark spells out the word “VINPEARL”. I imagined having this sort of thing at Port Dover and how wildly popular it would be, at least on the Saturdays and Sundays in the summer with great weather, outside of that it would probably be empty, so not much of a business plan there. Ana bailed out early and left to float around in the gloriously warm ocean while we punished ourselves on the contraptions.
So what more could this park have to offer? How about a zoo with monkeys, baboons, gibbons, rhinos, hippos, tigers, lions, giraffes and an enormous aviary with thousands of birds. It looked like the zoo was a more recent addition to the park as everything looked very new and very modern. In addition, behind the zoo was a massive construction area where they were building a brand new section of the park – the showpiece of which must have been the massive Ferris wheel, nearly completed, overlooking the entire area. To get to the zoo we rode three incredibly long outdoor escalators up a cliff to an elevated part of the island with the beautiful Nha Trang bay behind it. We only had an hour until the zoo closed so we walked through at a brisk pace and saw the majority of it. During the walk back to the amusement park we stopped and took some photos of the amazing sunset over the bay and the park castles in the foreground.
As the sky darkened, the lights came up and the park was aglow. There were still many, many people there, but the queues for the rides were still short or non-existent so we went on a few more rides, made slightly scarier by the darkness. The kids absolutely loved it and went on a couple of rides on their own. By this time we were really running out of gas so we convinced the kiddies it was time to call it a day and head back into the city for dinner.
We found a restaurant around the corner from the hotel that had a menu three inches thick, but if you didn’t want to go through all that, you could just look at the walls because they were wallpapered with pictures of the various dishes. Stella has her first pho soup and loved it. Magnus ordered something else, but once he tasted our pho he was kicking himself and vowed to order it every meal from here on in.
We stopped at a dive shop on the way back to the hotel and booked a diving and snorkeling trip. The next day was a busy one, so the owner told us if we booked the day after that we’d get a great discount so we went with that. It’s probably been at least two or three years since I’ve done a dive so I’m pretty chuffed about the trip. The others will be able to do some snorkeling on the reef while I’m diving so that is sure to be great fun. The owner also gave us a tip on a better place on the beach to rent beach chairs as it includes access to their pool, so that will be the plan for tomorrow.
We were back in our room by 10 pm and completely exhausted by the day’s activities so collapsed into sweet unconsciousness.
I knew that we were headed back to the heat, but I wasn’t expecting it to be 37 degrees, windless, and cloudless in Nha Trang! That was a bump in temperature of about 15 degrees and trust me, we felt it.
After a nearly four-hour ride on a cramped bus we were dropped off on a busy street in Nha Trang – Vietnam’s beach party capital. Fortunately we were able to walk to our hotel, so we strapped on our packs and started trudging down the street. The pavement was so hot it felt like my flip flops were melting and sticking to it. After a few blocks we found the Golden Sand hotel and the location was excellent – we seemed to be in the heart of the action and the beach was only one short block away. Our room was not yet ready so we decided to go out for lunch. There were a few restaurants clustered right around our hotel entrance, but they were mostly empty and looked a bit grubby, so we started walking towards the beach, hoping for some better options there. By this time the “h’anger” was really taking hold of the Olsons, likely due to the uncomfortable bus ride, meagre breakfast, the extreme heat, and the challenge of a new place. Tempers were short and patience was thin, and it got worse the further we walked, as we couldn’t find a lunch place we could all agree on. Seconds before the punches started flying, we found a nice little restaurant, got seated and ordered a round of cold drinks, which immediately took the edge off, especially since the price of Saigon Whites had hit a new record low – 10,000 dong, which is about 60 cents.
We enjoyed a delicious lunch despite the heat we were immersed in. I had the pho and it was remarkable – the crunchy bean sprouts, the stack of fresh basil leaves, the fiery red and green chilies, and the little bowl of brown and orange sauce, all dumped into the beef broth, created a hot, spicy dish that instantly drew the remaining sweat from my body. Soon my entire shirt was soaked, my hair was wet, and the perspiration was dripping off my nose and upper lip onto the table. One more beer please, sir. And a towel.
We returned to the hotel, got checked in, and had a little cool down session in the gloriously chilly room. But after a while I could see that if we didn’t start moving soon there was going to be a massive round of naps, which would just be wrong with that huge beach and warm ocean waiting for us. So I roused the troops and we walked down to the beach, along the way stopping at mini-mart and picking up two beers and a large bottle of icy water for two bucks.
Although Nha Trang is quite a large city, the section that contains all the tourist stuff is relatively small – two parallel streets that run alongside a beautiful beach, sheltered from the wind by a huge bay and a series of offshore islands. As we stepped onto the beach, we knew we were going to like this place. The white sand stretched for at least a mile, maybe two, and there were many people there, but not too many. We rented four beach chairs and umbrellas, dropped our stuff and then went for a swim. I dove into the water, expecting a refreshing chill, but instead it felt like a hot tub. Yes, it was that warm – I am sure it was the warmest ocean water I have ever felt, or maybe I was just overheated myself. It was glorious.
We spent several hours on the beach relaxing and swimming. The beach crowed looked to be primarily Vietnamese and Chinese and the non-Asian ones were Russians and Brits. During our walk we noticed that many of the restaurant signs and menus had Russian writing on them, and we had read that this was a very popular vacation spot for the Ruskies. More on them later.
There was one buoyed off section of the water where there was a dozen, huge, inflatable climbing structures. One was a trampoline on the water. One was a giant triangular shaped structure with a climbing wall on one side and a slide on the opposite. It was like a jungle gym on the sea. We bought the kids tickets to use it for the day and they had a great time climbing around, although there were only two or three of them they could get up onto as it looked to be meant mainly for adults. I went in there too and gave them boosts when they needed it.
We took the long way back to the hotel to explore the area a bit more and then returned to the room for a round of cool showers, water, and some fresh, dry clothes. We turned on the television and found a movie channel with a flick called Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. It was ridiculous, but pretty funny in parts. Fortunately all of the F-shots were bleeped out, but that seemed to be about half of the dialogue. I really don’t understand why there is so much profanity in movies these days. Sure, a well-placed swear word can packed some comedic punch, but when there is constant profanity any possible impact is reduced to nothing, and it simply grates on the viewer. People don’t even talk like that in real life so I have no idea why they insist on doing it in movies. That is why finding a great movie that doesn’t have any profanity is such a rare treat. Napoleon Dynamite anybody? How about Nacho Libre?
We headed back out into the streets of Nha Trang after dark to see what was going on. The night was electric and there were people everywhere. We stopped at a tourist shop on the corner by our hotel and booked our onward overnight bus tickets to Hoi An (which was still three days away) to ensure we had seats together. We then sat down at one of the restaurants outside of our hotel and ordered some food and drinks. All of the restaurants here were packed with people, and our server was moving like a rocket between the kitchen and tables, so much that her entire shirt was soaked with perspiration. The temperature had barely let up; it was stifling hot and the humidity hung like a blanket over the city. Magnus had never tried ostrich before so he order ostrich pepper steak and I got the ostrich fried noodles. I threatened to get the frog fried noodles but Ana’s dangerous glance convinced me otherwise.
After dinner we went for a walk in search of the night market (there always seem to be a night market within walking distance of anywhere in the cities here). We found it several blocks away and it was jammed with people. Ana and Magnus were excited. Stella and I were horrified. So we split up Scooby-Doo style; those two would search the night market and we would go drink beer. My daughter and I had another great conversation as we waited and watched the hundreds of people and scooters passing to and fro. We considered going for a foot and leg massage at the spa right next door, but agreed that Magnus would be terribly disappointed to have been left out, so we decided to save it for later.
We walked back along the beach and found it rich with activity. In their wisdom the folks who built Nha Trang had not allowed any big resorts to be built alongside the beach – instead there was a huge, public promenade, which gave rise to all sorts of social activity. There were couples sitting together on the beach, watching the waves. There were people swimming (made easier by the lights that illuminated the beach along the entire stretch). There was one group of tourists with bottles of wine set up on beach chairs, having a sundowner that just didn’t stop. There were people exercising on the free, public fitness machines along the promenade. There were many, many locals out for walks. There were kids goofing around, riding their bikes or swinging from the bars on the public park equipment. Ana and I talked as we walked and couldn’t help but compare this to home and imagine what was happening in Canada on a Wednesday night. In the countries in which we have been traveling people live their lives outside, on the streets. Where we live, people live their lives in their homes and in their cars. Of course it depends where you live in Canada, but in general we spent a lot of time inside buildings, and a lot of our money constructing, re-constructing, and improving our own personal castles, creating spaces that we use primarily ourselves. Of course the climate plays a huge role in this, and is surely the main driver, but at times I think we have gone overboard. Also, the streets here are used by people, by cars, by scooters, and by animals. The streets and neighbourhoods in Canada are built primarily for large vehicles, and for these vehicles to be driven at high velocities which, frankly, makes them treacherous for any other use. This is such a narrow approach and the contrast we see here is so stark. It gives one much food for thought.
