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Published: March 16th 2010
After a few days in Dalat we moved on to Nha Trang. Nha Trang is a beach resort about 5 hours by bus away via many a long and winding road down through the mountains. The scenery en route was pretty spectacular - even the toilet stop was at a roadside cafe surrounded by luscious green mountain scenery. A pretty amazing place for a loo.
Nha Trang is actually quite a big city. It's not the place for someone looking for quiet huts on the beach and rattan beach bars. The beach is a strip of sand sheltered by palm trees and covered in little beach beds and their accompanying wooden umbrellas. A promenade style road then flanks the whole beach. On the other side of the road there are a few of the big international hotels like the Marriott and a few covered restaurants. Most guesthouses, bars and restaurants are down side streets. When you walk down some of the side streets you could really be anywhere - there are dive shops, pizza places, shops selling t-shirts and the sort of western style bar selling burgers and beer that you get all over the world. Shirtless gangs of white
beach beds
A bargain at just over a quid for the day. You need the shade cos it's way too hot for sunbathing. All the bright red tourists walking around showed that.guys in big straw hats swigging beer out of glass bottles and western women with sarongs over their bikinis and bright red shoulders walk ing past as street vendors try to sell you sunglasses.
It's not without it's charm though. We stayed in a small hotel along one of these side streets. In proper Vietnamese style it was tall and thin with one front room and one back room on each floor. We got the front room with a big balcony overlooking the street for a mere $15. Ok, it didn't have a sea view. Well, if you looked really hard through a gap in between the buildings in front I think there might have been a tiny bit of blue, but Kris reckons it was just the sky. However, as we were four floors above the road, it made for great people watching in the early evening as everyone started heading out.
We realised that we haven't actually been to many beach resorts in Vietnam. In fact, Cat Ba is the only beach we have been to. Even if we have actually been to Cat Ba a lot. Which seems odd, since this is a long thin
country with one whole long side of coastline. We've been to a lot of beaches in Thailand...and Cambodia but not in Vietnam. We'll have to make up for that this year. So it will be interesting to compare them.
Competition
Nha Trang is cheap. Quite strangely so. We have been used to prices in the north of Vietnam which, we assume, have some communist ideals. For one, everyone sells things for the same price. Competition doesn't drive prices down. If everyone sells things for the same price then nobody looses business and nobody out competes their neighbours and friends. So, the row of cafes on Minh Khai street in Haiphong all sell their beer Hanoi for about 14,000 dong a bottle. Cans in the local shop cost 8,000 dong each. If you buy a crate of cans of beer, it costs 8,000 x the number of cans in the crate. You don't get a discount if you buy more. If you go over to Cat Ba island, you would imagine that drinks would be more expensive. After all, it's a tourist area and the drinks have to be brought over from the mainland. But
sitting on the harbour front on Cat Ba watching the sun set over the sea, the beer is in fact often cheaper than it is in Haiphong.
Nha Trang has things differently. Competition is evident. As we lay on our beach bed, people gave us flyers for various local restaurants and bars. One sold their beer Saigon for 8,000 dong a bottle. The next sold theirs for 6,000. As we walked around the tourist areas, bars had boards up outside, out competing each other for happy hour prices. 6,000 dong a bottle and free snacks. Buy one drink and get a free cocktail. Happy hour from 4-6. Happy hour from 4-10.
"Happy New Year"
We had decided on three nights in Nha Trang before moving South down the coast to the smaller beach resort of Mui Ne. We quickly realised the flaw in this plan. Lunar New Year - known as Tet here - was swiftly coming upon us and consequently various things were happening. The Vietnamese were celebrating the holidays, some hotels and restaurants were closed and others were running on skeleton staff. We were told there would be less transport, but
the tourist buses were actually still running, whereas the flights and trains were all booked up. Also, swarms of people from Saigon were descending on one of their nicest local beach resorts. Since Mui Ne is only 4 hours from Saigon, it looked like it was likely to be very busy, hard to get a room and also very expensive. So we extended our stay in Nha Trang for another three nights and decided to experience Tet there.
You may remember that we have celebrated Tet in Vietnam before. Last year we spent it in Hoi An. This Tet was very similar, although without the lantern festival. On Tet eve Vietnamese families and friends were out around the city. Lion dancers performed around the city. I must admit that when I first saw the lion dancers, I presumed they were dragons. Each lion is made up of two people - the head and the tail. Kind of like a pantomime cow, but that's where that resemblance ends. They are really amazing gymnasts. To the beat of a drum the lions dance around and at various points the back of the lion lifts the front onto their shoulders so it
looks like the lion is rearing up on it's back legs. It's pretty cool to watch. We actually saw some on Vietnamese tv at the Asian Indoor Games. Teams from different Asian countries compete for the best performance. On the games the lions even balance on lines of metal poles, jumping from pole to pole. Incredible.
At midnight the bar we were in let off fireworks. Inside the bar, which was a little odd and dangerous but didn't last long. There were fireworks above the sea as well.
Strange journeys
As everything starting opening again after the holiday, we decided to leave Nha Trang and head back to Saigon. We were meeting friends from Haiphong in Saigon and Nha Trang was getting very busy. It seemed that lots of people from the surrounding areas were flocking to the beach to enjoy the remainder of the holiday. A lot of these people hadn't seen that many white folk before and so were enjoying sitting on the beach and staring at the foreigners. It was rather like being back in Haiphong so we decided to go back to being anonymous again in the busy, foreigner filled streets
Strange sleeper bus we travelled back to Saigon in
Instead of seats, it has beds - three rows of bunks. Which was kinda weird since we travelled during the day. of the big city.
We booked to travel the 12 hour journey back to Saigon by bus during the day. You can travel by night on sleeper buses, which have beds instead of seats so you can lie down as you travel and, in theory, sleep. Each bus has three rows of beds on two levels and you travel with your feet in a sort of box below the person in front of you's seat/bed. Kris doesn't sleep very well on transport so we decided to travel during the day. It isn't like we are doing a two week tour of Vietnam and are short on time after all. So, we were rather bewildered when, our 8am bus pulled up and it was a sleeper bus. The sort with beds, just during the day. So that made for rather a strange journey, travelling along in a bed in broad daylight as people around us snored away.
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