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Our second day in Vietnam was starkly better than the first, and oh so welcome! We woke up to a sunny day in Hoi An, rented bicycles and went about our day enjoying the city, which is recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It used to be an international trading port so it has a really unique style with a mix of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and European architecture. After touring the Old Town, bargaining for a few t-shirts, getting tailor made sandals (there are over 200 tailors in this small city), we enjoyed delicious coconuts then headed to the beach for the afternoon. There was a bakery that sold to-die-for pastries that touched just the right spot… pure bliss! Two bites in and I had already forgotten about the crab stinking journey that had brought us here 😊
The next day we were due for an early rise to embark on our 900km adventure with Ahn, our Vietnamese guide/rider. He attached our backpacks on the back of the bikes and off we went. We left Hoi An after breakfast and headed inland towards the Ho Chi Minh trail into the Central Highlands (CH) for 5 days and ended
the trip by the coast in Nha Trang. Riding on the backseat of a motorbike let me take it all in, the lush, dark green jungle, the waterfalls and the breathtaking scenery but with 200km a day, I never wished for Kim Kardashian's bum like I did on this trip, the extra cushion would have been more than welcome! We got to experience the real Vietnam and it made for quite a few unforgettable memories. We stopped at various points throughout our trip to cool off in gorgeous waterfalls and to learn more about Vietnam's main productions, from rice fields to rubber and coffee plantations to all sorts of oil "factories" (which is to say we visited someone’s house where they make peanut oil etc.) I even got to make rice paper! We got to visit a few minority villages on the way as well. Anh also introduced us to some delicious Vietnamese dishes in some dodgy looking places that we would have never tried without him. Simo jumped on the bandwagon and had noodles for breakfast too, just like the Vietnamese, but I went to the market and bought fresh fruit instead; sweating from spicy noodle soop at 7:30am
for yet another meal was just a bit much to handle, plus where in the world would I get to enjoy in season mangoes, mangosteens, rambutans and pineapple for 50cents?! 😊
I guess not too many foreigners make it to the CH (we didn't see any) because we got stared at all the time, especially Simo; the Vietnamese really liked him, both girls and boys. No but seriously he got so many compliments and people in cars or motorbikes we passed would just stare and point. One guy even followed us until we stopped for coffee (sidenote: "coffeeshops" in the CH had hammocks instead of chairs, they made for an amazing resting spot) and asked Anh where we were from then literally just stood there and gawked until Simo asked him if he had a problem (I got used to the staring problem in China so it stopped bothering me here but Simo just doesn't get it... seeing the Moroccan reaction to a Vietnamese habit became quite the entertainment.)
After a fun 5 days with Anh, we parted ways and stayed in Nha Trang. There were floods the day we arrived. Some streets were closed off to cars,
where you would see people on motorcylces chest-deep trying to get out. The downtown area was still bustling, people just went on with their evening as if nothing special was going on. It was our first taste of what the rainy season looks like in the region, and honestly, we had never seen it rain this hard before in our lives!
We were craving some old-fashioned rushes of adrenaline and decided to go to Vinpearl, an amusement park, for Simo's birthday which ended up being the funnest birthday ever 😊 It felt like we were celebrating his 12th birthday not 25th. We first went to the arcade and had a blast playing my favorite game, air hockey (which Simo got good at after just a few games,) bumper cars, shooting games... the whole shabang! Simo even competed with an old Vietnamese lady in the hammer game, which she didn't lose by that big of a margin, she was so ridiculously strong! Then we went to the aquarium which was just awesome. Aaaand we left the best for last: the water slides! We ran around from one ride to the next, rushing back up the stairs of slides we loved
We visited a minority village in the Central Highlands
Funny story here. The government sent a doctor to this tribe to educate the people about birth control. He demonstrated the use of condoms on his thumb, and came back a year later confident he would find less babies. Much to his surprise the tribe leader complained about the condoms not being effective because there were just as many pregnant women around. He affirmed that they were indeed using the condoms on their thumbs but still getting pregnant. Needless to say, another presentation was required :)and going around trying to hog tubes for the rides that needed them. This was so much better than any park I had been to (and I've been to many!) because the lines are so short so you actually get to go on every ride in the park at least once. And the Vietnamese people are the most fun in parks, it was incredible! So many older men and women, some in bathing suits, some fully clothed, running around with huge smiles on their faces and just cracking up before/during/after every single ride. Every time you came down a slide, you were greeted by hoards of them laughing their asses off at people's facial reactions. The joy was contagious and great to be around all day!
The other highlight of our time in Nha Trang was the mud baths. The tubs (full of mud what else?) were off-putting at first but oh how silky smooth our skin was after 30 mins in there 😊
After our second day in Nha Trang, we decide it was time to move on but the whole transportation issue came up again. We were done with buses so we decided we'd try the
trains, at least we were sure we wouldn't have to endure 10 hours of honking again. Simo went to the train station and bought hard sleeper tickets (with over 80 million mobile Vietnamese people, soft sleepers don't last long). Hard sleeper beds are doable but he went ahead and bought tickets for the top bunks (which I had previously warned him never to buy but let's not get into that story 😊) He basically had bought us coffins for the 12 hour trip to Saigon, since the top bunks are so close to the ceiling, you don’t have space to lift your head or knees. We then decided a bus might be a better idea after all, but luckily we were able to get tickets for a sleeper bus for humans only and we arrived in Saigon safe and sound!
We ended up liking Saigon a lot more than we expected. It’s a city that has so much for the senses to take in. Like in all other big SE Asian cities we’ve visited, there were a lot of interesting smells on the streets from all the food vendors on the sidewalks and a healthy amount of motorbikes zooming
by trying not to run you over when you cross the street, which seemed to be a challenge for most Westerners but Casablanca streets trained us well. It was visually impressive with the high sky scrapers mixed in with more traditional looking buildings and modern malls. There were also tons of coffee shops and bakeries which made for great breakfasts. There were a few parks scattered around the city, they were so well kept and there was always some sort of activity going on, from power walkers to old people using gym machines, to kids playing the Vietnamese version of hackey sack; we even saw a dance lesson take place out in the open air once... really cool.
We went to the Mekong Delta from there for a couple days but didn’t like it so much as it didn’t have much to offer in landscape compared to what we had already seen in central Vietnam. It was interesting to see how the floating market in Can Tho works though; apparently 60% of the 20 million people living in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam use the river as a mode of transportation/business.
Back in Saigon, we learned a lot
about the Vietnam War. We went to the War Remnants Museum which made for a sobering morning, some of the pictures from the war and the after effects of the dioxin that was sprayed throughout the country were tearjerking (check). On our last day in Vietnam, we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels which were about 50 km away from Saigon. It’s a huge network of connecting underground tunnels that the Viet Cong used as hiding spots during the war. We got to crawl through a part of the tunnels which was scary to say the least, it just goes to show how tenacious the Vietnamese people were. They actually made that part of the tunnels larger so that tourists can fit (according to the guide, foreigners’ asses are too big.) They are now about 1 meter tall and 70 cm wide, talk about a tight fit!
Overall Vietnam was great to us, we had a jam packed schedule for the two weeks we spent there and we'll definitely be taking away tons of memories.
We are currently in Nusa Lembongan, an island two hours from Bali and loving every second of it. Stay tuned for our last
blog entry for stories from our final island hopping adventures!
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Ruby Dao
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Is this spot in Nha Trang.?. i am heading to it this August and this one just looks awesome ! What is its name? Thanks!