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Published: November 17th 2008
Hoa & Family
Hoa is the one on Matt's left-Matt whooped him at backgammon! This was our family for our few days at China Beach. Hello again! Almost a month after our last blog we finally sit down to start writing again. The internet in Vietnam was slow at best, and after fighting with it for hours to e-mail our moms and let them know we are still alive and paying our credit card bills, we couldn't convince ourselves to spend another few hours uploading pictures and writing a blog. So, now that we have found decent internet we will begin to recount the stories of the past few weeks. We'll start from where we last left off and write a couple blogs to catch up both for the sake of your attention spans and ours.
In our last blog we had just arrived at China Beach and were desperately waiting for the rains to subside (we later learned that these rains caused historic flooding in Hanoi-where we had departed from just days earlier!). During our four days at China Beach, and the wonderful Hoa's Place Guesthouse, the rain cleared for just one of them. We enjoyed that day to the max, surfing, relaxing in our lounge chairs on the beach and working out at sunset on the hard packed sands of low tide (Chris-there
View from top of Marble Mountains
A short walk from China Beach. Hoa's place is towards the ocean and the right side of the picture. were even banana pancakes for breakfast!). On our other days we spent a few soggy hours climbing to the top of Marble Mountain and to Matt's delight, riding our motorbike on the beach. We also played about a 100 games of backgammon and began a three week long Crazy 8's competiton (that only ended 3 days ago when we left our playing cards at our last guesthouse). Despite the rain, China Beach tops our list as one of our favorite Vietnam spots. Our host, Hoa, and his brother, Bao, were some of the most genuine and friendly locals we have yet to meet and went out of their way to make us feel at home. We also enjoyed nightly "Family Dinners," where you can eat as much as you want-and where everyone watched astonished as Matt devoured every last dish on the table. The surf also deserves special mention, for Matt's sake. It was his first waves of the trip, and the only place we've seen surf yet. At perfect tide and perfect wind, the waves were "rideable." Matt spent at least 3 hours each day in the water, and even got one small barrel before it closed out (check
Better View from Marble Mountain
A "Crackin' View" pic 'for our British mates. Plus...the comments are dwindling on our blog so we're hoping this gets us a few! out the picture!)
We finally decided it was time to move on and hopped on yet another overnight open tour bus down to Nha Trang. The town was nothing special (it had none of the charm of Hoi An) and it rained (of course) almost the whole time we were there. However, the beach was quite pretty and we found ourselves our own little palapa to hide from the rain. We also chartered our own boat (after a six kilometer walk to find the port, where upon arrival we were told that foreigners are not allowed to ride the ferry), and toured the islands off the coast. Our captain brought us to an awesome little spot to snorkel and we got our first glimpse of the marine life in this part of the world-and we were quite pleased! The colors are much more vivid than the Caribbean and the corals were in great condition. We also indulged, with a little embarassment, in some Mexican food at one of the "Western" restaurants. The food was surprisingly good, despite the extremely seedy atmoshphere.
After Nha Trang came Mui Ne (there isn't much of a choice to your route once you
Palapa at Nha Trang
beachy paradise...and all to ourselves cuz of the rain purchase a bus ticket in Hanoi). The tourist area is out of the town, along a gorgeous white sandy bay. We found one of our most awesome guesthouses yet, the Hiep Hoa Tourist Resort. For $14 a night we got a comfortable mattress, 4 poster bed with mosquito net, a balcony overlooking the ocean, and our own private little section of beach complete with lounge chairs and an outdoor shower. The thing to do in Mui Ne is kite surf...however, as most of you know Matt's history with this sport, we weren't to eager to give it a go-plus it was ridicuously out of our budget! Instead, after our fill of lounging on the beach, we rented a motorbike and headed inland to the sand dunes. The Red Dunes are closest, and despite what the guidebook said, equally as fun and gorgeous as the White ones. When you arrive you are bombarded by a group of children eagerly begging for you to choose them as your guide/plastic sheet renter for the dunes. We of course couldn't choose and ended up with 3 tagging along as we set off to climb them. The kids insisted on doing everything from preparing our
Nha Trang boat trip
These are the converted fishing boats we chartered for our jaunt around the Nha Trang islands. take-off spot for rides down the dunes on their sheets to carrying our shoes and taking pictures of us. Although we were very dissapointed to learn that the kids don't attend school, and instead work at the dunes to make money for their families, we really enjoyed their company and our basic conversations (they spoke surprisingly good English).
Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is called by the locals, was the last stop on our bus ticket. We arrived into town late in the evening, and after climbing into one old lady's attic via two sets of ladders to check out what she claimed was a "room for rent,"we finally found ourselves a decent room. Matt and I have found ourselves enjoying the cities we visit much more than we expected. Although slightly more nerve-wrecking to arrive in than a small, quaint town, they are awesome places for eating plentifully and cheaply-and for some great people watching. Slightly dissapointed with the lack of Vietnam war era history that we had seen throughout the rest of Vietnam, we focused our stay here on catching up with some history. Our first full day we visited the War Remnants Museum
motorbike taxi
My new boyfriend's giving me a ride! where we saw horrific images of the massacres that occured during the war and of the resulting deformities from Agent Orange and other warfare techniques. The next day we took a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a massive network of underground tunnels that the Vietcong built to hide from American soldiers. We were shown a ridiculous/fascinating Vietnamese wartime propoganda "documentary" that referred to the American soldiers as ''crazy batch of devils that shot at everything from women and children to chickens and even pots and pans." They then proceeded to show 10 and 12 year old girls getting prizes for having shot the most American soldiers. An interesting perspective to say the least. (I just began, and Matt is looking forward to reading, the book, called "In Retrospect" by Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense, to hopefully better understand this part of our history.) The tunnels themselves were tiny-made for the average Vietnamese soldier who is about 5'4"and about 100 pounds. In some places we were barely able to squeeze through, despite them having already been slightly widened to accomodate the McDonald's generation of Western tourists.
I'm tired of writing and am sure you are tired of
reading by now. Hope everyone had a great Halloween-we were in Saigon and jealously thinking of the street parties in Coconut Grove-and the costume show at RSMAS! Happy Thanksgiving as well in case we don't write again before then-though most likely we will. We are going to be searching for some turkey and mashed potatoes in the Thailand Islands. We miss you all a lot. We're off to Bangkok tomorrow to complete our mainland SE Asia circuit. It has been 2 months and 2 days since we left...we're still enjoying ourselves for those of you wondering! And from here on out...it's almost all beaches-yea!
Love, Matt and Megan
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Erin
non-member comment
Mom says
I hope he wasn't mooning the camera in a religious place or in front of other people..."the indecent American!" We miss you guys and are glad you are having fun but want you to come home soon. Makena started walking on Halloween and is talking up a storm. Love you guys