In the literal sense, there is no feeling like forcing yourself to get up early, feeling that cool, fresh dark air on your face, and seeing the world before you transform as color is slowly
introduced.Figuratively, there is not much difference - it's good to mentally force yourself to wake up, put some things behind and see the world transform before you as color is slowly introduced.
While looking for a decent sunrise shot I came across these pics, taken in 2002, in Mui Né, Vietnam. It is of some Vietnamese Fishermen in the South China Sea, at dawn. I can still remember that d
ay, having decided the night before that as the beach bungalow we were staying is faced east, this would be one hell of a decent Sunrise. The bungalow itself wasn't anything too amazing, apart from the location. It was something like $10USD a night, including breakfast for a tiny room with bathroom...the 'resort' was a collection of these things on the front part of a family's ocean front land. Mui Né seemed to us to be one of the last(but i am sure there are more) coastal villages to be hit by western tourism. I guess anytime soon there will be expensive resorts dotted along that coast, and the innocence and quaintness of the place will be replaced by more and more craziness, noise and boozed backpackers. I hope the resort tourists don't complain about the noise of the fishing boats daily at 5am. I hope they wake up and go for a walk along the beach 
and watch the bay become orange.It's a cleansing experience to be privileged enough to be able to be in a foreign country and just relax watching people go about their normal day making a living. It makes you realise just how lucky we are just being born where we were born, and it puts a bunch of shit into perspective.
I took my Dad to Vietnam around this time last year for 9 days. It was his first visting to a developing country, and he still tells me it was a life changing experience for him. We went to the north, around Hanoi and to the hill tribes around Sapa.
In most parts of Asia, the most fascinating time of the day is just before dawn. The markets are where it's at, craziness.
These other couple of desert type shots are also from Mui Né at this weird place just past the village. It seems like a chunk of the Sahara, right there in Vietnam. I can imagine movies could be filmed there. I spotted an old bullet, intact and unused. It looks like a .308 or something, and I wondered if some angry US Marine tossed it into the dune when his M-16 jammed back in 1973.We all need life changing experiences every now and then. It's good for the soul to realise where it has come from and where it needs or wants to go. Complacency robs us of pushing ourselves, or appreciating circumstances and it makes us take things for granted that are truly amazing.
Official Mui Né website
