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Published: July 26th 2011
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Breakfast
The food wasn't good, but the scenery was beautiful. The journey to Nha Trang, a city on Vietnam’s coastline, would be long, we were told, and so we had to set off in the tour van at 6AM. No one told us quite how long the trip would take, and so we were surprised to (eventually) discover that we would be in the van for eleven hours. What a trip!
Not all of the travel time was due to the miles between Dong Nai and Nha Trang. In fact, I am not quite sure the actual distance that separates the two, and neither, it seems, is Google Maps. That is because we took the scenic route, a beautiful drive across miles and miles of countryside, on a relatively new road. We made several stops for food and restrooms and had to slow down several times because of the monsoon rains, but we eventually made it, tired but none the worse for wear.
Our first stop in the morning was at a beautiful botanical gardens park, some of which is still under construction. The scenery with all of its tropical plants and waterfalls was gorgeous. The breakfast fare was nothing to write home about (unless it was to say,
Dear Mom, please send real food because I am hungry after having broth and a few noodles for breakfast), but in my mind the locale was worth the stop.
The scenic drive followed the Vietnam coast, wrapping around one city and then another, sometimes getting close enough to see the ocean, othertimes staying in between mountains and rice paddies. We saw acres and acres of dragonfruit orchards and I wish that we were able to capture the look as we drove past. Dragonfruit grows on a cactus-like plant, and the orchards train the vine to grow along a post and then droop to the ground, making the plant look similar to a type of weeping cherry. Dragonfruit itself is beautiful – pink and red and green on the outside, with a white fleshy center filled with little tiny seeds. When we had some for lunch it took us a while to place the taste and texture: it’s like a kiwi.
Lunch was at a hotel on the coast. The only reason we stopped there was to eat at the restaurant, which was filled with tourists (mostly Vietnamese, perhaps on a mini-break?). I sometimes forget that it is customary
outside the US to stop at hotel restauants to eat – something that would never even occur to me at home.
By the afternoon the car ride was a bit wearing and we were all looking forward to the arrival in Nha Trang. When we finally pulled into the hotel – Hotel Angella – we welcomed the sight of a room with a bed and a shower. The hotel is fairly nice, and it used to have beautiful views of the ocean. We know this because currently there is new construction on all sides, probably future hotels that will tower over Hotel Angella and her eight little stories.
In the evening we went to a sit-down restaurant and ate some mediocre food. Our small family group agrees – we’d much rather be allowed to go out and find street food and eat that, but the tour provides meals at “nice” restaurants and so we go there.
Nha Trang has a night market a couple blocks from our hotel and so after dinner we decided to check it out. The market is not very big, maybe the length of a block with vendors offering trinkets on either side of
the walk. We found a few gifts and then headed back to the room, very tired after a long day of…sitting.
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