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Published: September 29th 2008
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One of the things I love about travelling is the journey time between destinations, simply sitting in a bus or train watching the countryside roll by as people farm the land and trade by the roadside. When this simple pleasure is violently stripped away from me and replaced with fear I can get a little agitated. After a peaceful few days sleeping by a lake, exploring waterfalls and being mesmerised by glowing bugs in amongst a symphony of jungle mating calls, we decided to high tail it to Nha Trang to sip cocktails on the beach and arrange our transport further north. The journey from Buon Ma Thuot to Nha Trang was a three and a half hour rollercoaster bus ride with a homicidal maniac at the wheel.
Buon Ma Thuot is the capital of the Central Highlands and not really a place on the tourist radar. Nobody spoke English and everybody seemed hellbent on ripping us off. I was also growing tired of the constant stares, so we arranged our bus to Nha Trang which was ‘no mean feat!’ The bus turned out to be a new Mercedes Benz minibus - air conditioned with only two other passengers. Bonus!.....we
thought…. We were placed rather rudely in the seats directly behind the driver, a middle aged immaculately dressed man with gold rings and excessive amounts of aftershave. Like most Vietnamese men, one of his little fingernails was long and pointed. I never did catch his name but let’s call him, Wanka. It’s appropriate.
Initially everything was fine aside from Wanka’s continuous fast chatter, foot tapping and neck spasms. His driving was no more erratic than we had become accustomed to over the past 6 weeks in S.E. Asia. The ear piercing shrieks of Celine Dion remixes blaring from the bus stereo drowned out my ipod and raised my blood pressure a little, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Then, as we approached a mountain range, the heavens opened up. Torrential tropical rain belted the minibus with great force. People outside were running for cover, motorcyclists covered themselves with whatever they had, cars slowed to a crawl, even the water buffalo in the fields seemed to stop working! What did Wanka do? He sped up.
He begun taking hairpin turns at neck breaking speeds on the slippery roads. Not only did he undo his seatbelt and sit forward
like an excited child in front of a computer game, he also unwound his window showering all 4 of his passengers with rain. His hand was permanently planted on the horn. Bikes, drenched locals and animals, large and small were leaping in all directions to avoid us. I was hoping that the two Vietnamese guys behind us who had been chatting to Wanka would tell him to slow down. One was laughing and appeared to be encouraging Wanka to go faster and the other was vomiting into a clear plastic bag. Hann and I held each others hands tight and prayed to ____________ (insert own God here) that we would survive. The bus groaned and jolted around cliff edges. Hann and I swore and muttered disgruntled noises at Wanka to slow down, but to no avail. He continued chatting to the guy behind us in what seemed like an amphetamine fuelled tirade. Rarely were two hands on the steering wheel. His multi-tasking skills were quite incredible, changing CD’s, tooting, dodging, talking, laughing, skidding, and the ‘pièce de résistance’, picking wax out of his ear with his primed little fingernail. For 15 minutes, he retrieved large gobs of gooey stuff from
his ear and flicked it out the window.
We eventually broke through the storm and made it to Nha Trang. As I retrieved our bags from the back of the bus with Wanka’s help, I told him he was the most reckless and irresponsible driver I have ever encountered. He didn’t understand a word. The name of the bus company is ‘Mai Linh’. They advertise themselves as ‘An Express Service’, which means ‘we drive like maniacs to get you there a little bit earlier’. Avoid Mai Linh buses when travelling in Vietnam. It was our second trip with this company, and both were awful. Local buses are slower, extremely bumpy, more social and hell of a lot more fun. Oh, ……and cheaper too!
Nha Trang is ‘Costa Del Sol’, Vietnam style. A beautiful white sandy beach surrounded by towering hotels. Everything is catered towards the tourists with beach chairs and umbrellas available for hire all over the sand. It’s a place for massages, shopping, seafood, makeovers and cocktails. Our hotel had amazing views over the bright blue water and islands nearby. Three nights there was more than enough though.
We caught an insanely early train up to
Da nang. No more bus rides if we can avoid them! The train was brilliant. We weaved and wove around mountains, shot through tunnels and gripped tightly to the stunning coastline. Strange and wonderful foods would wheel by every so often. The people were friendly and smokers were well accommodated for, much to my delight. We were besieged in Da nang by taxi drivers and hawkers. After some hard and crafty bargaining, we got a lift down to Hoi an. The drive south along China Beach revealed a stretch of coastline about to boom with tourism. Resorts are popping up everywhere, mostly foreign owned according to the driver. This world famous beach is soon to become 30km of towering resorts. Sad.
I could easily spend a year living in Hoi an. It’s a quaint little town with glorious old French architecture. Art, photography exhibitions, street performers and music radiate from every corner and alleyway. The food is by far the best we’ve had in Vietnam so far, especially the hawker style grub. Hawkers often approach us with baskets of regional specialities, providing us with a detailed history of the food, the cooking process and what the dish means to
the people. There’s a restaurant in town called ‘Morning Glory’ which specialises in street food. We’ve eaten there 3 times already and will eat there again tonight. Their food is divine and way too cheap! Hoi an is best known for its tailor shops offering “quality garments made to measure”. Most of the materials feel cheap and the tailor shops are in plague proportion here. They’re a bloody scourge on the place in my opinion, but they seem to be popular. Of course, I’m no fashion guru! Despite the place crawling with tour groups, I’ve fallen in love with it. Anyone who wants to spend a year away, writing a book, a screenplay or doing anything creative, THIS IS THE PLACE TO DO IT! Hoi an chugs with a pulse conducive to creativity, it’s friendly, picturesque and inspiring.
Tomorrow we head north to the Capital, Hanoi. We’ll spend our final 2 weeks exploring Sapa and Halong Bay. Apparently, there is some flooding up north at the moment, with 30+ deaths due to landslides and the flooding. Hopefully everything will go smoothly with our train journey north.
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Sis J
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Ah - Hoi-An - we loved it too, that's where we bought our art!!! Definitely agree with all you said. A tip, if you want to get some photos developed, you can get some great enlargements in the city which are cheap and very vibrant in colour, the Vietnamese seem to love colour so everything looks really intense, even if a little un-real. You two are quite the artists with your words and pictures!! xox I'm getting through your messages now, scary bus rides, don't like those at all. Did you end up getting to see wild-life?