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Published: June 11th 2006
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Cao Dai Temple
The Cao Dai Temple outside of Saigong. Caodaism is apparently a "mixture" of Confuscionism, Hinduism, Catholicisim, Buddhism and Taoism. I didn't really understand a lot about it, but I guess each religion is represented and worshipped in their ceremonies. My apologies if this is, in fact, completely wrong. What's up!
After a couple of day trips in and around Saigon to see all the touristy stuff, we jumped a (terrrrrible) night bus to Nha Trang, and have been chilling out for a few days, planning the next move.
Nha Trang caught me a bit off guard. I knew that it's the most popular municipal beach in Vietnam, for both foreigners and Vietnamese people, but I was still blown away by how crowded it was when we arrived. The beach was PACKED with people. Granted it was a Saturday and the crowds have since thinned out, but I was still stunned to see how many people were on the beach. It's a little too busy for my tastes, so we've booked a short bus trip to Mui Ne, a more laid back beach with much less traffic. Mui Ne also has a few bungalow setups on the beach, which will be great. Thus far, the time in Vietnam has been spent in 'mini-hotels', which offer great rooms at unreal prices, but are hotels nonetheless. Nothing beats having your own bungalow a stone's throw away from the water, so it will be good to get back to that.
Cao Dai Ceremony
The ceremony happens everyday at noon at lasts 40 mins. Really interesting to see, though I had no idea what was happening, haha. The overnight bus from Saigon to Nha Trang is another story altogether. What a nightmare. We boarded the bus from the travel agency where we booked our ticket at 8pm, making sure to jump on the bus early in order to grab a decent seat. Apparently, the Vietnamese people taking the same bus all had seat numbers assigned to their seats, whereas we didn't. This lead to getting absolutely
bitched out a number of times for sitting in someone else's seat. Not having an assigned seat makes it next to impossible to get a decent spot on the bus (or even seats together), so that was a frustrating experience to say the least. After being booted to the back, we realized that we were the only non-Vietnamese people on the bus. Whatever, that's cool. At 2am, the bus pulled over in the middle of some tiny little town to pick up MORE people, even though there were only 5 free seats on the bus. 12 people got on, and the driver had to bring in tiny plastic chairs from a restaurant on the street so that people could sit in the isles because the bus had been overbooked. It was
Cu Chi Tunnels
Tunnel demonstration - VietCong style! then that 5 Vietnamese people came up to me and Lisa, yelling at us to get off the bus and take the train the rest of the way into Nha Trang. Understandably, I wasn't too impressed! A short, heated discussion ensued (though, you can't really call it a discussion, as nobody really spoke English - it pretty much consisted of us saying "no, I paid to be on this bus too" over and over), and eventually they gave up on trying to boot us off the bus at 2am in the middle of nowhere and continued on the way. Thankfully, the rest of the trip was fine (comparatively), and we arrived in Nha Trang at 6am, pissed right off and dead tired. Fun, fun, fun!
Besides that little hiccup, Nha Trang has been pretty cool. It's a very busy beach town, with a huge 6 km stretch of beach, and enough things to see in and around the town to keep you busy for a few days. I'm more interested in finding a quiet beach to chill out on for a while, though, so we're outta here tomorrow morning. We spent the day today wandering around the Ponagar Cham
Towers, ancient towers built for Hindu worship that are now used by many resident Vietnamese and Chinese Buddhist. Pretty neat to see.
Mui Ne sounds like a great spot - it's supposed to have FAR less traffic than Nha Trang, complete with a quiet beach and some huge sand dunes near by that you can go sledding on! It sounds a lot like Haad Yuan, from what I can discern, which is totally fine by me. If all pans out well, we'll spend a good week or so there before heading back to BKK so Lisa can do a few days of shopping.
Tried to add a few pictures, hopefully they all show up. The pictures include the day trips from Saigon to see the Cao Dai Temple, Cu Chi Tunnels and a Mekong Delta tour. Also a few pictures of the Cham Tours and Nha Trang beach. Hope that tides you bums over for a few days!
Easy!
-Mark
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