City of love x x x
Trip Start
Jan 31, 2011
1
53
57
Trip End
Jun 15, 2011
Quy Nhon, Vietnam
Monday, May 30, 2011
After not the greatest train journey ever (quite filthy, broken seats, pretty uncomfortable!) we arrived in Dieu Triu and got a taxi 10km to Quy Nhon. After checking in we headed out in the dark to find food (not the best way to find your way around a new place, granted) after wandering aboout aimlessly for about an hour we finally found the place we were looking for - no thanks to the rubbish map in the lonely planet guide which is blantantly wrong!.
The first thing we noticed about Quy Nhon is that it's all about lurve! There are so many young (and older) couples holding hands, riding around on motos or bicycles and cosying up together in parks all over the place, everyone loves each other - friends walk around with their arms around each other.. you can even see it in the local's clothes such as t-shirts which often have phrases about being in love or pictures of hearts on them. Everyone says hello and there is a really nice feel to the place :-) However, on the downside we found it ridiculously hard to find our way around and ended up getting lost so many times (costing us lots in taxis to get out of the pickles we kept getting ourselves in!).
Next day we fancied a bit of beach-bumming so got a taxi up to the other end of town where the beach is supposed to be the best... hmm? we suspect the lonely planet writer must have spent about 10 minutes here because most stuff in the book is a load of tosh! the beach wasn't great at all, so after a quick drink and snack at 'Barbaras kiwi cafe' we headed back to our hotel to re-think the plan of action. We found a posh resort with a lovely big pool and terrace where you could pay a couple of quid to use the facilities so we actually had a really nice day there sunbathing and swimming... that was until it started raining (it usually does late afternoon) and we had to make a hasty retreat back to the dryness of our room. That night we set off again in search of a food - looking for a couple of places in the lonely planet guide (more fool us)... about 2 hours of getting lost, a lot of walking, scribbled maps from locals, 3 taxis and 2 restaurants that no longer exist later, we arrived feeling pretty frazzled at barbara's cafe and vowed never to trust the lonely planet guide here again! We had some good food there though and chatted to a Norwegian guy living in Quy Nhon who could put away a lot of vodka!
Next day we were up early for a 6 hour bus ride to Hoi An.
Despite getting lost, Quy Nhon is a really lovely place to wander around due to the friendly locals and the brilliant people watching spots that are all over. It's got a really young and friendly vibe going on, hopefully it will stay that way and won't get spoilt by tourism in the coming years which is definately a danger.
