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Published: April 8th 2013
Vietnam so far has been very "go go go". We lingered a bit too long in lovely Thailand and Laos so much so that we had to cut some time from our stint in Vietnam (unfortunately)...So we've been moving from city to city every 2 days or so. We've managed to travel the whole country from North to South in just under 3 weeks!
We took yet another sleeper bus to Hoi An which (yet again) is being claimed as one of our most favourite places. The list is growing by the day! Hoi An is a shopper's dream. If you wanted to have tailor made shoes, dresses, suites and just about anything in between..that's Hoi An in a nutshell. Besides the tailors it is quite the romantic place. Located in central Vietnam on the coast. It has a river running through the old town and a beach about 5km away. Everything comes alive at night with colourful lanterns adorning all the cafes and restaurants riverside.
While walking around on our first night in Hoi An, we stumbled across a Vietnamese type bingo game called Bai Choi. Essentially you sit down on tiny stools and pay your 20,000 Vietnamese
Dong ($1) for a small wooden paddle with 3 different symbols on it (your bingo card). Then there's a man and a woman singing in Vietnamese while a third man picks up a different large wooden paddle with one symbol on it, and walks around the crowd to showcase it. If you happen to have the symbol he is showing you raise your hand and are given a yellow flag.This is repeated 3 times. In the end the man walks with the 3 boards and if you have them all you get a red flag and win the game. Which I just happened to do! I rarely win anything so this was quite monumental for me! I won a Vietnamese lamp shade of sorts and a cd, probably of the music sung by the man and woman all night; guess we'll find out when we get home.
This just happened to be one of the funniest/quirkiest experiences thus far. Sitting on tiny stools, listening to very interesting Vietnamese singers, trying to match your wooden paddle symbols to those shown by an elderly man dressed in colourful clothing...it was incredible!
The next day we rented bicycles and cycled through
town then into the countryside to the beach. This was titillating as we haven't seen a proper beach since Thailand! We missed the sand and salty air and of course the warm ocean water. We spent the day at the beach, tanning, reading, swimming, eating. Glorious day.
After Hoi An we took a sleeper bus to the coastal resort town of Nha Trang. This place is interesting...the airport in Nha Trang operates non-stop flights from Russia and even signed a contract with an airline to bring 80-120 Russian tourists a day from 9 Russian cities. So it has become the Samui and Phuket (in terms of Russian tourists) of Vietnam, times 10! Everything is in Russian. From signs to menus to locals having picked up enough of the language to hold a conversation. Quite funny for me to point out funny signs or hear what people around us were saying. Dave found this most amusing!
Nha Trang is a nice beach town and we definitely took advantage of our 24 hours there. We arrived a little shy of 6am and this place was happening! Soo many locals were out on the esplanade and at the beach. Swimming, running,
groups of women doing Tai Chi. Very active bunch that's for sure. We rented a couple chairs under an umbrella and spent the day on the beach. We even got up at 6am the next morning and squeezed in a run on the beach and a morning swim before our next bus to Da Lat.
Da Lat is a farmer's city perched at 4000 feet above sea level in the mountains. With very narrow, pastel coloured buildings set upon this hilly town and a small lake in the midst of it...this was an enchanting place. There were hardly any other foreigners and so the authenticity was remarkable. We stayed in the middle of the town center close to the night market and lake.
Da Lat is also home to The Crazy House or Hang Nga. This is a house (actually a hotel now) that was built in 1990 by Dang Viet Nga who is the daughter of Ho Chi Minh's third successor.
It's a building that resembles something that Salvatore Dali on acid mixed with the stylings of what Walt Disney and the Mad Hatter would create. Filled with cave shaped stairways and organically furnished rooms that
are similar to a Hobbit hole. This place is like a fairy tale! We spent a good hour just walking around from room to room, walkway to walkway.. exploring all the madness it had to offer. Definitely a funky place in a small town!
During our 2 days in Dalat we had yet another great authentic local experience. This one trumps them all! We were walking home by the lake one evening after dinner, and came across a group of about 10 sitting on tiny stools/ground on a small grassy patch. We said hello and they invited us to sit down with them...We're not ones to decline an offer to hang with locals, and so we did. They proceeded to pour us shots of a sort of corn-moonshine-liquor followed by fruits and corn to eat to counter the after-taste.
They had a vocabulary of about 3 words in English..combined with our 3 word Vietnamese vocab, this was an interesting night! We had so much fun with this group. They kept saying "Love Canada!" and we would say "Love Vietnam" and then we would all drink! We managed to exchange names and one of the guys, 'Tan' kept calling
Dave "Davis". He would say "Davis! happy?" Dave would reply "Yes, happy", the two would shake hands, cheers and again we would all drink. They wanted our phone numbers and emails just so they could correspond with us to learn better English. With this eclectic mixture of young, old, male and female group it made for an entertaining evening.
We stumbled home slightly tipsy from the corn-moonshine but elated having been able to hang with the locals. It's really amazing how people of such immensely different backgrounds can still have "conversations" using only a few basic words. We all understood each other and enjoyed each other's company. The power of humanity prevails yet again.
Now it was time for the capital city! AKA Saigon, AKA Ho Chi Minh! The mother of all cities. With the population of a cool 9 million peeps and about 2 million motorbikes on the road, this was going to be good!
Ho Chi Minh was HOT! After the cool mountain temps of Dalat we were back in the blazing 35+ temps. We stayed in the backpacker area of Pham Ngu Lao in District 1. We only had 2 days to spend in
HCM and boy did we cram a lot into it! We walked around our hood and went to a couple museums, saw 2 movies, a water puppet show, visited the Independence Palace..and spent a few hours in a huge park! Fabulous 2 days.
The water puppet show is exactly what is sounds like. People using puppets to put on a show in a small pool. This is the oldest of Vietnamese art forms and since we didn't get to see the most famous one in Hanoi, we thought why not see it here. It was quirky and colourful. With a full band singing in Vietnamese. We enjoyed it. As for the movies we saw We've been wanting to check out a cinema in SE Asia and on our first super hot day here we thought, what better way to cool down than to sit in an AC'd dark room for two hours! We saw G.I. Joe and it was great! The second day we had to check out of our room at noon but wait around for our 3rd sleeper bus this week, which was scheduled to leave at midnight. So we had time to kill. After walking the
city we needed a refresher. Since HCM has over 100 cinemas, it wasn't hard to find one. We watched Dark Skies for this matinee. Not as entertaining but as much a relief.
There's a large park right smack in the middle of the city and was next door to the cinema. We still had a few hours to kill and so decided on a stroll. We were very impressed by the amount of Vietnamese (and expats) that went to this park to exercise. We've seen this in other places around Vietnam and yet still found it astounding to see they lead such healthy lifestyles. They were running, walking, doing squats and sit-ups on the grass. Some held aerobics classes, attended by many women. It seemed like half the city was out in the park exercising! Most of which were over 40. An awe-inspiring sight. We meandered and just watched. Also vowing to each other to spend more time exercising and being healthier.
We were sad but excited to leave HMC. This is a huge city and we felt like we only barely touched the tip of the iceberg. But at least we saw it!
We are now
on Phu Quoc island and this will be our last stop in Vietnam. We will spend a few days lazing on the beach and exploring the island.
Love,
D & A
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Sveta
non-member comment
What a cool place!!!!! and you look AMAZING! Alinka molodec! u probably gonna come back in the best shape of your life and with a beautiful tan ))))))))))))