Vietnam: a Roberta sized world


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Asia » Vietnam » South Central Coast » Khanh Hoa » Nha Trang
February 19th 2014
Published: February 19th 2014
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Nha Trang


I'll admit it. At home I'm considered short. Though I keep telling people that if you average out heights around the world I am definitely average, I still have to navigate a world built for giants. Every chair I encounter calls for a decision: perch on the edge so my feet touch the ground or lean back all the way to have back support and let my feet dangle. In our last house I needed a foot stool just so I could cook in my own kitchen. So imagine my pleasure, no my euphoria, at discovering that the Vietnamese plan their cities and homes around people who are a reasonable height. Chairs in restaurants and cafes are downright comfortable and stairs easier to climb, hand rails are at the appropriate height. I feel as if I've been dropped into a place that was built just for me. Matt, on the other hand, has been struggling a little bit with the chairs and the low hanging branches on trees on the sidewalks. They prune them alright, they just don't take into account anyone over 5'7".

I have wanted to visit Vietnam since I saw "The scent of Green Papaya", Tran Anh Hung's film set in Saigon from the 1940s to the 1960s. It is a visual love affair with this country and I was determined to visit after seeing the film for the first time. I shared it with Matt when we moved in together. He loved it and we spend the rest of that weekend on a Tran marathon, watching "Cyclo" and "The Vertical Ray of the Sun" back to back. They are the reason we are here in SE Asia in the first place. When we landed in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and I saw the people and the cafes and the motorbikes and the birds singing their hearts out from bamboo cages on balconies, it was like walking into a dream.

The fact that this country also has a developed and varied food culture is such an additional joy. We plan our days around food, eating is a shared pleasure, and Vietnam has not disappointed. From the wonderful coffee and baguettes to the Phở and BBQ meats and grilled seafood there is so much to love about Vietnamese cuisine. Almost everything is served with long leaf cilantro, basil, mint, and other herbs. Lemongrass and lime perfume rich broths, noodles and rice and the chili is sweet and hot. The food just always tastes so fresh. We are in love with this cuisine! Our first day in Nha Trang we went from bakery to street vendor to cafe to restaurant sampling something at each stop. Eating from street vendors is a no brainer - it's cheap and fresh and the carts are spotless - the vendors wear gloves while doling out the food. We just walk up to one and point, not sure exactly what we're getting, but trusting our eyes and noses.

We are currently still in Nha Trang, a touristy, beach focused resort city. The city is very walkable and we have spent a week exploring and eating our way across it. Once again, we feel very safe here though we have been warned many times about keeping a close eye on our belongings; the motorcycle purse snatchers are notorious. But slowly we've become more confident and strayed further and further from the tourist section of town. Our first expedition was about 4 kms away, over the Cai river to the Po Nagar Cham Towers built sometime in the 8th century, before 781 AD.
Lunch for 2, $1.70Lunch for 2, $1.70Lunch for 2, $1.70

Delicious Banh Mi
On the walk we stopped on the bridge over the Cai to admire fishermen rowing their woven bamboo baskets to their moored boats. On the other side a woman was digging for clams in the surf. The next day we walked around 6kms to the Thap Ba hot springs centre where we were treated to an hour in a mud bath, an hour in a herbal hot springs bath (they pour hot mineral water into a little stone tub and then dump two large bags of herbs into it, it's like sitting in herbal tea!) and ended the day with a ginger oil massage. I can now say that I've had someone walk on my back and it felt great. On the way back we stopped for Bánh mì, and we both swore they were the best sandwiches we'd ever had.

The City has done a superb job of building little parks and placing benches in roundabouts so there are plenty of places to rest. Like in all hot countries, everyone seems to live right in the street and wherever you look you see people stretched out on motorbikes napping, or gathered in little chairs under trees in sidewalk restaurants. We've peeked into narrow alleyways where balconies have been transformed into hanging gardens complete with songbirds, or a cluster of potted trees and flowers becomes a makeshift garden outside a gate. One thing we haven't done is go to the beach. To call Nha Trang beach touristy would be understating it. It is lined with hotel rent-by-the-day chairs where tourists start drinking beer at 8:00AM. There is a well maintained boardwalk but the whole drinks on the beach scene isn't our thing.

On the way back from one of our walks we met a cyclo (cycle rickshaw driver) who asked us where we were from. When we told him Canada he asked if we knew Vancouver. It turns out he had studied English there and liked it a lot. He said it was nice to meet people from Canada. Apparently there used to be a lot of tourists from North America but now it is mostly Russian tourists who come, particularly since a Russian charter airline has instituted flights from 30 Russian cities directly to Nha Trang. We have certainly heard more Russian spoken on the streets than any other foreign language. Many of the menus and signs for souvenir shop are in Vietnamese and Russian. I'm not sure if it is the ideology they shared for so long or the proximity of the country that makes it so, but certainly they are the majority of the tourists here.

Nha Trang is a clean and pretty city, but we're making our way north to Hoi An, close to Da Nang. It was recommended to us by an Australian we met in Borneo. The city is a Unesco World Heritage site and is supposed to have a beautiful old district with quite a few historical buildings still intact. And....and a little less of a party atmosphere. There we hope to find an apartment and stay at least until the middle of May when our visas run out.


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25th February 2014

You two are pretty adorable!
Hooray! Thanks for the pics of your smiling faces. So glad to see you! Looks like quite a change from where you've been. Loooooove the picture of Roberta on the beach....beautiful. Also loved the picture of Matt getting a shave and having that Anna nose moved out of the way. Miss you and love you both!

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