Down by the South China Sea
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2006
1
9
27
Trip End
May 21, 2006
Nha Trang, Vietnam
Friday, February 17, 2006
After escaping the clutches of the T. M Brother's, I made my way to the Phong Lan (orchid) guesthouse, down a twisting narrow street - more like a driveway really - a short walk from where the bus dropped us off. The Phong Lan is a small (8 rooms) family-run guesthouse with a 1960s interior, complete with floating granite staircase, and minimal south east Asian kitsch. The tiny lobby is comfortable and only marred by the strange poster hanging from the stairs: two very American-looking children wearing straw hats. Under the staircase is a built-in aquarium with one huge fish that lurked in a corner most of the time. One street away from the main beach, the Phong Lan is in the main tourist area of Nha Trang. Since this part of the city is very compact, with lots of twisting narrow streets, I didn't even realize how large the city was until my third and last day when I walked to the giant Buddha near the main market. Nha Trang is Vietnam's main diving spot, so many tourists were serious divers. Otherwise there seemed to be a lot of elderly Scandinavians. Besides diving, there's not a lot to see and do in Nha Trang, but it does have a nice, laid-back atmosphere. It seems to be a new city, but it has an old feel to it with all the tiny streets, street cafes, and markets. After a day on the beach, I signed up for a boat tour of the islands around Nha Trang for the next day. The boat tour included some swimming/snorkeling around one of the uninhabited and protected islands, lunch, a visit to a fishing village, a special music performance, a floating bar, and a "fruit party." That last one is what really got my attention....Once the minivan had gone around to all the hotels to pick up the westerners, we were dropped off at the Nha Trang port to board the boat. I was surprised to see a lot of Vietnamese get on our boat, and figured that maybe they used it as a ferry to get out to the islands. Turns out, they were tourists too, (or locals looking for a wild time) and in the end, there were more Vietnamese on our boat than western tourists.
So, we set off for our day of fun which involved swimming first followed by the floating bar. Unfortunately, the only thing the "bar" was serving was red wine from Dalat, in the hills north of Nha Trang, which tasted like a dessert wine gone bad. The westerners were amused by the goings-on, the Vietnamese looked bored. After lunch, which was a decent spread, the musical act started up, all on the boat. Our all-purpose guide and ring-leader, grabbed a microphone, pulled out some English-language song books with Vietnamese translations and tossed them across the makeshift stage of the wooden seats turned down. Two other guys appeared out of nowhere, set up a microphone and a drum set that looked like it had been dredged up from the bottom of the sea, and pulled out a guitar. They jumped right into some Beatles' stuff, in English, and tried to get the passengers to clap along and sing. The only (captive) audience member who volunteered to get up and sing was a Vietnamese woman who wanted to sing something in English for her Canadian boyfriend, but the only thing she knew was "We wish you a merry Christmas", so she sang that. Otherwise, everyone looked simultaneously amused and embarrassed and the real star of the show was the two-year old who kept running up and down the stage and throwing things at his parents.
After that forced merriment, we were allowed to get off at one of the islands and walk around. I spent most of my time talking to Dave and Sue from Australia, a Haliburton employee and psychotherapist, respectively. Dave spent a year in Vietnam during the war and had some interesting insights into Vietnam. Soon it was time to get back on the boat and head to the fishing village while having our fruit party, which turned out to be nothing but a bunch of fruit on plates. Westerners, amused; Vietnamese, bored. The fishing village was interesting enough although it seemed like they did more fish farming than catching. Several holding pens next to the dock had literally hundreds of squid, lobster, or prawns in them, just waiting to be picked out and sent across the bay to the restaurants in Nha Trang. The tiger prawns in particular were amazing, the size of small lobsters, with brown, white, and orange stripes down their backs. The islanders use traditional basket boats (they look like bread baskets) which they row with one oar, standing up. Six-year old kids were skimming across the water in miniature versions of these, while their mothers coaxed the westerners into the larger versions for 10-minute joy rides. Then it was back to Nha Trang where I had the strange urge to eat a lot of tiger prawns. Maybe the boat ride is all plot to get tourists to eat more seafood and thus support the local economy. Whatever the case, it was clear that Hanh's Green Hat tours, which was running the boat, was just copying a formula that someone invented a while ago and was successful enough at making money. When we were out at sea, experiencing our musical performance, there were about five other boats near us, each with their own musicians singing and playing instruments. Our boat thankfully did not go to Monkey Island, another star attraction, where there is a "monkey circus" and a rabies problem.
The next day I decided to check out Nha Trang's other destination: the Thap Ba mineral mud spa. A few miles outside of Nha Trang in the hills, the spa seemed to be a really popular place with the locals. It's very well-organized, with a restaurant, a gift shop where you can buy jars of mineral mud, a mineral water swimming pool, and massage therapy, for an extra price.
I signed up for the mineral mud bath which was fantastic. The mud is kind of soupy and comes right out of the ground. It's warm, not hot, but for the 45 minutes I sat soaking in it, the temperature never changed. You get your own wooden tub up a little hill under some palm trees that the attendants fill up with the mud, and then you get to sit there as long as you want, if nobody else is waiting. There were about 60 tubs, and only a couple of other people doing the mud bath, so I happily took my time. The mud bath is followed by a saltwater spray, and then soaking in another tub down the hill filled with very hot mineral water. After all that, I felt ready to take on the 12 hour bus ride the next day to Hoi An.
I wrapped up my last day in Nha Trang with a visit to the giant Buddha and Long Son pagoda and monastery. It's very active monastery; the day I was there a monk was teaching a group of Buddhist nuns, and another group of nuns were playing a sort of musical chairs game with a group of school kids. Last but not least, I finished the day with more seafood and tried not to think about getting up at 6am the following day for yet another bus ride.
Comments
You look great!
Great photograph of you with the lighting and your smile. The colors and palm trees could be early south Florida, but the growing coloration into the temples with majestic buddhas are another world as well as the pristine white Ao Dai, so beautiful.
Michael