Mini Travel Blog Series: #4 Around Vietnam

It's really beautiful here in Nha Trang. I think Nha Trang is my favourite destination out of Vietnam because it has a population of about 1 million and it's a fairly quiet and easy going beach town. Everything is easily accessible. It actually reminds me of Nan in Thailand, only on a larger scale. The weather is really nice here too, but it's a bit too cold in the water to swim.

Kooky Trimmed Trees at Nha Trang

Nha Trang Beach

The experience in Vietnam so far has been pretty good. We get carted around a lot more and the inclusive meals are always at fancy tourist restaurants where we have a set menu. There's a lot of deep fried stuff on the set menu too. Soy E isn't happy about that and said she'll "chuck a tantrum" in order to get local food. Apparently it's all been fixed and we're going to get local Vietnamese food when we reach Dalat tomorrow afternoon. We've also been eating a lot of sea food since we came to Vietnam. Like grilled prawns, deep fried prawns, squid salad, deep fried crabs, etc. It's really nice and I'm not used to eating fresh seafood. The small prawns we ate on the Ha Long Junk were really sweet and crunchy tasting and I was like "I usually hate plain prawns in Canberra because they taste so fishy." Soy E told me that's because they're old and I guess it's because we're 3 hours away from the ocean.

So from the last email I sent you we've done a couple of things. We drove from Hanoi to Halong Bay and got on the Huong Hai junk. The rooms were really nice and the toilet was much cleaner than the ones in the hotel that we had been staying at. The junk was very modern and we were told that it was the "leading lady" of the fleet. You were right about it being very cold in Halong as I was freezing even with my merino shirt and my waterproof jacket. I think the best food we had in Vietnam was on that junk and I don't know what kind of junk Soy Goo went on that made him sea sick because ours was as still as a rock.

Ha Long Junk

The inside of our cabin

The sky was very overcast and gray the entire time we were there and the water was too cold for kayaking. It was pretty relaxing though and I had a really good night's sleep on the boat. The service and food on the boat was excellent and the staff wore these white suit type uniforms and looked very professional. The leading one could speak english really well and they were all really polite and hard working.

Ha Long Bay

Something a bit shifty happened at the end of our stay though. Our tour guide couldn't come on the boat with us because he wasn't associated with the company like the other tour guides who got to stay on the junk. So he organised one of the other guides who was leading his own group of french people to stay with us too. The guy, Kien, never stayed with us and when he did talk to us it was only to repeat the dishes on the menu as they were served. Like "rice, rice", "fish fish", "nice meal, okay?". At the end of our stay there were these tip envelopes and customer feedback slips where Kien came over and told us that the money was for the crew not for him. However, we think he saw Evan put 100,000 dong in the envelope and he came over and stood there in front of us and said "you have to split the tip for me." We were a bit flustered and weren't sure of what he was saying and how to go about it and he took advantage of that by taking the envelope out of our hands and quickly pocketing the 100,000 dong which was in there and leaving the 20,000 I contributed for the entire crew on board. We stood there staring at him and Soy E said "no, we want to give them more." He then reached in to his wallet (which was already full of cash) and pulled out 50,000 dong and put it back in and said "okay, okay?" and then walked off. After that, Soy E couldn't stop thinking about him and how he did "jack shit" for us and how hard working and deserving the crew was. I think his eyes grew bigger when he saw the money and I couldn't believe how greedy he was.

After the cruise on the junk we got back to Hanoi and did our city tour the next day. The major attractions that we wanted to visit were closed though, like the mausoleum where we get to see Ho Chi Minh's body and the museum that displayed information about the 54 different ethnic minorities in Vietnam. Soy E chucked a tantrum at the tour operator and we got the money refunded which we used to tip our tour guide at the end of our stay in Hanoi.

We got to walk around the market district and sit on cyclos for an hour, where we were cycled around the city area slower than walking speed! All our cyclo guys were old men who smoked. Initially, we picked the cyclo to sit in based on whether the old guy was smoking at the time while we were in the process of organising enough for all of us. I thought I picked the best guy out of the bunch until we started cycling and he pulled out this HUGE pipe, as big as a poster holder and lit it while he started pedalling. I exclaimed "what the heck is my guy smoking?!"

My cyclo guy (he had already put away his giant pipe)

It was pretty enjoyable on the cyclo, though I felt very sorry for the old guy who had to cart us around for so long. I tipped mine 40500 dong at the end, I think they were all friends though and shared it amongst themselves evenly which was nice to see.

Cyclos in traffic

We also went to see the water puppet theatre at night which was interesting. The dialogue was in Vietnamese so a lot of the time we weren't too sure what was going on. My favourite parts of the show was the water dragon dance and the end bit when Ho Chi Minh brought wealth to Hanoi by making it the capital. I had no idea that there were so many puppet handlers behind the curtain area and that they had to stay hip deep in the water the entire time and I had a new appreciation for their art.

From Hanoi we drove to Nha Trang which is, like I mentioned before, a beautiful city. Although, it is sad to see so much construction going on in terms of new fancy hotels and resorts all around the bay area. Our guide said that Nha Trang was really only put on the map as a tourist attraction after the Miss Universe 2008 competition was held there. In Nha Trang is where we've done the majority of walking. There's a long path and park area alongside the beach that makes walking really relaxing and nice and there are a lot of young locals playing volleyball and soccer on the sand. A lot of people walk around, jog, or sit with their families on the park benches too. It's a really nice place and I wouldn't mind living here at all.

Yesterday we went on a boat ride with other groups on a large local boat that had many seats in the middle facing one direction and some benches on the side. It was literally jam packed with people and it was kinda hard to find seats. We had the option of going alone or with others and I pushed for others even though we don't get a private boat and a restaurant meal. When we went with the other groups it was like a huge communal experience. For example, when we had lunch all the chair backs folded downwards and became a large table where we all sat around and shared food. After lunch, it was then converted to a stage where the captain and some crew members played music with their makeshift band. One was on the drums which was just like a professional set... only it the drums were empty oil cans and the symbols were scrap metal sheets. They sang traditional Vietnamese songs and then asked people from the audience to come up and sing their national songs. Like for Australia it was Waltzing Matilda, for China it was Liang Shi Lou Hou (the lion song I learnt in Mandarin school) and so on. They didn't do one for New Zealand when there was a NZ couple there because they said it was "same same but different" to Australia.

When we stopped to do some swimming, I went and swam with Chloe even though the water was freezing cold. We shivered while we swam and her face turned blue. We saw some little blond kids in the water and I went up to them and asked "are you cold?" The kids were maybe 3 and 6 years old, and the boy answered "no we are from Sweden! It is under 20 degrees there!" They were very cute and I admired how they just sat in the cold water feeling fine.

In terms of health, it seems that Evan caught the flu off Nethan and last night Chloe got the flu off Evan. So we have two sick people with us. Nethan is doing much better and they're all taking antibiotics. Soy E is waiting for the disease to strike her, and for some reason I still have diarrhea. I got it when we were travelling from Ha Long to Hanoi and have had it since. I'm still eating solid food though and I feel fine. I'm just waiting for it to pass, which I hope it will do soon.

Anyway, hopefully I'll get the chance to write more when we get to Dalat tomorrow.