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Published: April 3rd 2011
Greetings from Nha Trang, Vietnam! Well, I guess it finally caught up to us. For the first time in all our years of travel we have hit a brick wall in terms of weather! The day we arrived around 5 p.m., it was lovely and sunny and you could tell it had been a great beach day. The next morning we pulled on our bathings suits ready for the beach when we took a second look and realized we would not be going to the beach that day. For the next 9 days it was wind, rain and cloud except for about 2 hours of a few blue patches of sky and 5 minutes when the sun poked out. Consequently I my pictures will be rather grey and gloomy!
Needless to say we never made it to the beach at all. Instead we made the best of it and started walking!! Nha Trang is known as Vietnam's Ocean City with a 7 km long beach and a wall of tall hotels and palm trees much like Miami. I imagine it would be beautiful in the right conditions. To our surprise the place is very upscale with hotels such as the
Sheraton and Marriott as well as scads of all kinds of other tall slim hotels offering rooms for every budget. We still find the skinny hotels with one room on each floor very funny. Nha Trang is very futuristic with wind and solar generated street lights and a cable car that transfers people over to another island.
We are staying at The Light Hotel - a very nice place with huge rooms and all the ammenities across from the beach. The beach club we would have spent on the ocean is called Louisiane and includes a very nice restuarant, its own micro brewery, a pool, beach chairs, massage etc. Oh well, it sure looked nice!! At our hotel we came across a few conventions of some sort and a couple of wedding. The wedding dresses are stunning and I can imagine very inexpensive to what we would pay.
The streets of Nha Trang are very interesting and entertaining. We especially enjoyed the backpackers area here. There is a big selction of great little local restaurants with excellent food for cheap. After about 30 years of trying I have finally mastered "the chopstick". Warren has been trying to teach
me but I just couldn't get on to it. And then finally one day I realized I had my thumb too far up, and voila I can now even pick up a pea with them!!! It is fun to visit and chat with the local vendors, waiters and other travelers. We have met a few Canadians who live here full time, have a small business and of course a Vietnamese wife! We have met lots of Brits, Aussies, a few Americans and of course the Russians.(they are everywhere but do not socialize!) Sometimes we will spend a whole afternoon chatting with other travelers at a little cafe.
It seems everyone here has a job. Even though some of them sit on a little stool all day and night selling corn on the cob and baked sweet potatoes (which by the way are very good) they seem happy and content. Their friends show up and they make a night of it on the sidewalk corner. One guy sits and repairs bike tires!! It's hard to believe they can make enough money to sustain themselves but they don't seem to be suffering. We seem to be more sympathetic to street vendors
and are always buying their stuff. We got a nice surprise one day when we fouind out from a nice man (who fought in the Vietnam war and has no use of his legs) that the Canadian government gave the Vietamese veterans and agent orange victums a hand propelled bicycle so that they can operate a small business. When we told him we were Canadians he was thrilled to tell us his blue bike was given to him by the Canadians!! We bought postcards from him and of course we gave him a hefty tip. There are also sewers (men and women) who have their sewing machine sitting out on the sidewalk ready to do repairs or whip up a pair of jeans.
We talked to a girl (Yen) who translates for a cosmetic company and waits tables in the evening. She has an accounting degree but says the average salary for a beginning accountant is only $100 per month. She can make $200 translating and waiting. To us that doesn't seem right. She says she pays about $50 per month for her room and utilities so I guess you have to consider the cost of living. She says
Doc- A Vietnamese Veteran
Proud to tell us that the Canadians gave him his bicycle.she could make more money in Saigon but does not like the big city. We also noticed the garbage system here. It is most often ladies who come by at night and pick up garbage and recycling. Businesses and homes just throw everything on the street(no garbage cans) and it will be picked up at some point. Some ladies do garbage, others cardboard, tin cans, styraphome, wire etc. We have seen them weigh the cardboard or other material, tie it on the back of their bike and away they go! These ladies also sweep the street as they go.
Since we have changed our itinerary from beach to streetside I have been doing some shopping. One day we headed to the central market which is a partly enclosed circle shape on three different levels. So you just keep walking around and around. The top floor was interesting in that this is where fabric in particular silk is sold. Every pattern and color you can imagine. Everything is of course bartered for. Usually you start out at 50% and end up paying 65%. If you wallk away, often you can get it for 50% of the original stated price. A
few kimonas, dresses, T Shirts and ties were purchased that day.
There is a great organization called "Easy Riders". These are Vietamese Vets who are familiar with the area and will take you on a motorbike tour (any length) through the beautiful central highlands north and west of here through the mountains. We might have considered this but the weather was a factor as well as our excess baggage. We have also seen a few road bike groups.
Instead of taking a city tour by bus we decided to venture out and walk to these attractions one each day. Fits in well with our much needed exercise program and is a good way to see the local goings on. Somedays we have covered 20 kms!! We're not fast but steady. We visited the Oceanographic Istitution where the highliglht was the skeleton of a humpback whale. The center founded in 1923 was the first place for scientific reserch in Indochina. Another day we visited the Cham Towers which were built in the 7th century to honor a king. Local buddists use the temples today for prayers and worshipping. We also saw a pagoda from the 19th century that has
a impressive reclining buddah as well as a 79 foot tall white lady buddah.
We have begun to understand the traffic system in Vietnam and it goes something like this. The biggest vehicle takes priority. The few cars, trucks and buses that storm down the road do so with bikes scattering from their path. Buses beat cars, cars beat motorcycles, which beat cyclos (passenger bikes) which beat normal bikes. Everything beats pedestrians. But there is an art to it and we are starting to catch on.
We were happy to be a part of "Earth Hour" here in Nha Trang on March 26th. The lights went out at 8:30 p.m. for an hour and we were given candles in our room. Most of the city was dark. Apparently it was the biggest world participation ever. However, I remember a similar activity for earth day last year but it was in April. There was a stage set up all weekend with entertainment. There were crowds of boy and girl scouts who were particpating in the rallies and events.
Because of inclement weather, we changed our flights and extended our accomodations on our next island destination, Phu Quoc so
we will leave Nha Trang 4 days early in hopes of better weather. We have our fingers crossed! We had hoped to sail to some of the beautiful islands around Nha Trang and do some snorkeling so we are hoping we might try again in Phu Quoc. We are devastated about the earthquakes in New Zeland and especially in Japan. Now they say the one in Myramar was felt in Hanoi. We are much further south luckily. We have also heard that Thailand is suffering from floods and there is a system hovering around southern Thailand and Vietnam. Let's hope we can dodge it!!
Cheers everyone. Again thanks for reading!!
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the sauer's
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Love hearing about your adventures. Wish we were there.