The Windmill Traditional Cache
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Size: 
(small)
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This cache was placed just outside of a geocache-friendly location, The Windmill. It is located in one of the upcoming tourist areas near the beach. Please be aware of mugglers..
Danang is one of South East Asia's fastest growing cities. Whilst 10 years ago you would bump into a tourist about once every 2-3 weeks in town and had to fly to Saigon to get bread and feel civilized, nowadays its hard not to bump into tourists and there is plenty of civilization around. Most Western tourist tend to pilgrim towards Hoi An for a few days, a small town about 30km from Danang or stay in one of the bigger resorts on the beach, but Danang has a lot to offer as well besides a mixed expat-Vietnamese community, to name some: Monkey Mountain, Cham Museum, The bridges and the Hai Van Pass. Windmills Unfortunately there is no history to be found of windmills in Vietnam. For informative purposes I'll explain some history of windmills in The Netherlands. A (traditional) windmill is a mill that converts energy of the wind into rotational energy by means of its blades. That energy was used in the past to mill grain, pump water, saw wood or a combination of them. The first date and where the first windmills were developed are somewhat disputed, but it seems the oldest windmills were found in China & Persia and originate somewhere between 25-700 AD. The oldest windmills found in Europe seem to originate around 1100 AD, however these windmills were quite advanced which was impossible without some prior centuries of evolution. Wind and water mills played an important part in the economic development of Europe from 1100 AD onwards. At its height some 200.000 windmills and 500.000 watermills were operating in Europe. The Netherlands had around 9.000 windmills, by contrast Germany had 18.000 and Norway only a handful. Watermills were more important in the majority of Europe as e.g. in Norway were water was always flowing somewhere, however that wasn’t the case in The Netherlands, but there was wind. The primary function of the windmills was the grind grain and to a lesser extend drain lowland. The Netherlands consisted around the 1400’s of wetlands, swamps and so on. The windmills helped drain the wetlands and improved safety and living/production conditions for many, a big contributor to the foundation the Dutch still enjoy of today. After 1600 many new industrial applications appeared for the windmills: saw, paper, pepper mills, etc. The saw mill in particular added another important point in the Dutch history, it helped built ships for the world’s biggest and (first) multinational Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) fleet, consisting of 4800 ships, employing more than a million people worldwide. Most of those mills were in the Zaanstreek, which became known as the world's first industrial zone. Windmills stopped to be useful after 1900 because of the development of the steam machines. Nowadays there is little commercial use other than tourism for the traditional windmills, however the windmills have been replaced by wind turbines as part of renewable energy. The end of 2014 the wind turbines provided 2.800 megawatt (MW). By 2020 the renewable energy should be around 6.000 MW or 14% of the total energy consumption. Vietnam has one wind farm producing 16 MW of electricity. In contrast Norway produces 99% of its electricity by hydro-power. It seems still has a long road to go and the legacy of the windmills in The World is not over yet..
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Oruvaq gur ragenapr pbpbahg gerr..
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