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Nha Trang
13/12/07 - 15/12/07
Another bus journey another town… this time only a short hop of six hours, but again a pretty decent coach and apart from the winding roads getting over the mountains and some good views of beaches and rice paddies, it was a pretty uneventful journey.
We arrived at Nha Trang at about lunch time and were, as usual, dropped off outside a hotel tied in with the coach company. I assume this must be by agreement, but unlike the place in Dalat the hotel we stopped at here was not that nice so we decided to hunt around. After they made us walk the long way round to get out, we did find a couple of places but they were full. Before we had gone far we found a nice place with a sea view and free breakfast… sounds ideal, but the downside was that it was up five floors and had no lift. After a brief discussion on the merits of a sea view over the downsides of the stairs we agreed on the view being the stronger so accepted the climb.
Nha Trang was supposed to be a relaxed coastal resort but after the time we spent in Sihanoukville in Cambodia this felt positively hectic. It was basically a pretty built up resort with quite a bustling town behind the sea front. The beach was nice but was overlooked by a number of big hotels and not the stretches of deserted sand we had experienced before. It did feel relaxed, but in the manner of a Spanish resort, rather being dotted with idyllic isolated beach shacks.
We walked into the town past numerous roadside stalls selling what appeared to be rolls of sticky-backed plastic in various colours and found our way to the Long Thahn Gallery. This was a photography gallery that was recommended to us by Caroline and Fleming when we met up with them again in Phnom Pehn.It wasn't a big gallery, just two rooms, but they were all black and white pictures of local people and really seemed to capture the emotion of the moment.There was no admission charge to get in, and we couldn't find any prints or postcards to buy so neither of us can understand how he makes any money from the pictures.
The walk back to the guest house was via the cathedral which was built by the French in the 1920's. It was quite nice even though it was built primarily using cement blocks, and had the added Vietnamese touch of the red neon on the cross and the white neon halo over the statue of Mary.It also involved dodging moped taxi riders, and cyclo drivers who all see you and shout "Ok Cyclo!" or "Ok Moto!" as if you have agreed with them already.We Just employed the 'No Thanks' with a smile technique which has served us well so far.
In between lazy starts, long breakfasts and nice meals we did get around to visiting most of the main attractions of Nha Trang.These were:
·The Oceanographic museum: tanks of sharks and fish such as puffer fish and the deadly stone fish.There were also the added bonuses of a display on fishing and investigation techniques with all the labels in Vietnamese only, and a room that contained about 15,000 pickled samples of fish species in jars.
·The Harbour: apart from the hassle of one particular moped taxi who decided that if he constantly rode and stopped directly in front of us we would have to get on the back of his bike, this was a combination of an industrial sea port on one side and a harbor full of vividly painted fishing and tourist boats on the other. We did see the round reed fishing boats although they mainly tied to other boats so not that exciting.
·Long Son Pagoda: a Chinese style pagoda with a huge reclining Buddha half way up the hill behind it and an even larger sitting Buddha on the top. The sitting Buddha was perched on a lotus flower and had the images of seven monks who died by self immolation (setting themselves on fire), in protest to the American involvement in the war around the base. It is also described as "visible from everywhere in Nha Trang" although neither of us spotted it until we reached the top of the stairs. This was also the worst place for beggars that we had been for some time… obviously a lot of tourists visit here and the locals knew what to say and sell.
We did have one day longer in Nha Trang than we expected, thanks to none of the previously available morning buses to Hoi An existing anymore.We had asked at the Sinh Café the day before and decided to book the next day, but by the time the next day came apparently there were no more morning buses.An evening bus it was, and we used or extra time wisely and invested it in a long lunch, ice cream, time playing with a local kitten who obviously thought my shoulder was a good vantage point, and dipped our toes in the South China Sea.
We were both excited by the evening bus because this was the first sleeper bus we had been on. We had been on sleeper trains and loads of bus and coach rides but none on a sleeper bus. We were also a bit worried because this was booked with a company who we didn't know. Whilst sitting out our mix of excited nervousness waiting for aforementioned bus, we did watch a dog scratching its back by rolling around upside down waving his legs around for about 30 minutes, and tried to have a conversation with a man who only spoke French and Vietnamese. He seemed very nice and obviously really wanted to tell us something by the way he kept repeating things we didn't understand. Unfortunately the bus arrived at this point and we were forced to leave the scratching dog and friendly man fun for some other lucky tourist. We were headed to Hoi An…
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