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Finally made it to Da Nang after four days on the beach further down the coast in Nha Trang. Nha Trang had a great beach, but there wasn't much else to do. But we didn't mind at all - after being in cities for a couple of weeks it was nice to spend some time relaxing. The beach was quite busy - touristy during the day, and in the evening as the sun went down all the locals came down to swim while it was cool. We often found that we were out when the Vietnemes were out as it is too hot for us in the day.
One night we walked a mile or so along the beach and then went for a swim. The beach was packed and we were the only non-Vietnamese people, so we were quite conspicuous. At one point, a group of 20 or so teenage boys formed a conga line in the sea, and then circled us and started splashing! We splashed back a little bit and everyone thought it was very funny. A young woman came to speak to us to practice her English so we sat for a while with everyone staring
at us. Some people took our photo - sometimes they asked and sometimes you could see them pretending they were not taking our photo when they clearly were.
It is so strange being looked at by everyone but it kind of makes me (alice) feel like a film star. On the beach in the evening and in Da Nang we got the most attention. However last week in Saigon in the Reunification Palace, we got trapped on a stairwell as about a thousand school children walked down. As they passed us, the first few smiled, then the next few started waving and saying hello, and then some of them started bowing as well (hands together Asian style- polite rather than deferential). It was quite surreal.
We had a bit of a hellish 72 hours from 31st May. We wanted to go to bed really early as we were tired and needed to get up for our train at 4.30am. We had to pack in the dark as there was a power cut and then luckily the power came on. However we could not find the remote control for the hostel's a/c and therefore spent the next 45mins unpacking
everything to find it. At last I went downstairs to tell them that we had lost it and they informed us that they had taken so that everyone did not turn on their a/c at the same time. We needed to wait for another hour to get it. As we said before- some random guy broke our door lock by trying to get into our room when we were not in it. This meant the hostel staff spent a good hour trying to open our door. This meant we did not get much sleep that night. We got up v early and got on the train for the 9 hour journey where random songs about Saigon were played really really loud! They hotel we stayed in in Da Nang was the worst so far and the most expensive. Figures.
Da Nang was... interesting. It's the fourth largest city in Vietnam, and once again, we were pretty much the only tourists. Most backpackers seem to miss it out, and it doesn't have a great beach so not much in the way of package tours either. We spoke to some backpackers in Nha Trang who were surprised when we said we were going to Da Nang - one bloke said "That's the place no one goes to, isn't it?"
Our feeling is that we don't necessarily always want to go to the same places everyone else goes to - it's so easy to do that here because everyone is either heading North or South. So we thought we'd give Da Nang a go. It's been harder work, because no one speaks English and our Vietnamese is limited to say the least, and it's also been incredibly hot.
We found a great bakery/cafe called Bread of Life which serves American pancakes for breakfasts (Alice is soooo back on the wheat!). It is a cafe which employs Vietnamese deaf young people, teaches them sign language and new skills. The cafe stated that often the young people are not aware that there is such a thing as sign language and therefore lots of children can't communicate with anyone until they meet up with such organisations. We have found quite a few great cafes doing such things. We went to Lanterns in Nha Trang, Sozo in Saigon and Friends in Phnom Penh. They are all aimed at tourists, some serving comfort Western food (which you sometimes need after eatting lots of currys), some serving local food. It seems a great way of supporting local people with resorting to giving to begging children.
That cafe was really our saving grace in Da Nang, although there's a decent Indian restaurant as well (Mumtaz). We only stayed in Da Nang two nights, and the only touristy things we did were go to the beach - not that pretty - we went when it was cloudy and it looked scarily like an English beach. Warmer sea though, although you have to wade a long, long way out before it's deep enough to swim.
The other thing we did was go to the museum of Cham sculpture. The Cham were the major civilisation in the area of what is now Vietnam from around the 6th to the 12th century (roughly!!). There are temple ruins etc spread all over the country, and some sculptures have been collected at the museum in Da Nang which was established by French archaeologists in around 1910. The sculptures and carvings are very impressive and it's nice to see them in the shade, where it's cool enough to look at them properly. When we went to the temples at Angkor in Cambodia, it was so hot that we could see lots of beautiful carvings but we couldn't really care enough to look at them for more than a minute. Or see past the sweat pouring off of us!
The Cham sculptures mainly depict Hindu gods although you can see Buddhist influence starting to creep in. Some of the friezes are incredibly lifelike- hard to believe they were carved 1000 years ago. We saw a frieze showing a king, seated, surrounded by dancers and musicians - the carvings were tiny but you could see the band's instruments.
Moving on to Hoi An from 3rd June. We have added a few more photos to some of the previous blogs now as we have finally found a computer which allows us to upload them!
Lot of love to everyone back home
a and j xxxxxxxxxx
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