Rice is Nice

In Pham Ngu Lao, eating my last meal, an Aussie girl asked to sit with me while I ate. She was nice enough, and was planning on doing some work in a women's health clinic of some sort, before progressing north. The shocking thing is that she was only nineteen and thought she could make it all the way to Hanoi on about $300. I told her it was possible, but that would literally mean just going, eating rice, and sleeping a bit, but mainly on buses and trains. There would be no guides to take her to rural Vietnam, no splurges on indulgent dinners, no snake wine. I hope she made it there. But so many travelers, especially those on "gap year", choose Vietnam because they can jet from one end to the other cheaply. But there's a lot to see in the middle, and off the path that hugs the coastline. Most don't stop between Hue and Hoi An, or between Hoi An and Nha Trang. I'm glad that this it took me a week to get from Hoi An to Nha Trang. I could have taken longer, but my visa ran out, and that's how I scheduled my return ticket.

On my way to the airport, I texted Bi, and told her that I hoped she'd gotten better. She responded right away. She said that even though I had a girlfriend (which I didn't), she'd wait for me. I think she'll change her mind, and hopefully not for another tourist passing through American Beach.

In killing 10 hours at Narita Airport, I used the observation deck a lot

I've been to HCM City before, but that was a year ago, and it already seems to have changed. There are more cars on the road, more high rises, and more brightly-lit marquees. As we entered town, we passed a large high-rise called The Manor, which looked suspiciously like the Paris casino in Las Vegas, and featured a gym, restaurants, condos, and office space. On some streets, HCM City looks typically Vietnamese, but at times it looks like the pictures I've seen of Tokyo.

I was dropped off near Pham Ngu Lao, in the "backpackers' district," which is where I chose to stay. It's an awful area. The hotels are all similarly dreary, and there are few good restaurants. But if you want to quaff cold beers and meet other foreigners, I guess it's not so bad. I stayed there because I was in town just one night, it's where they put me, and I planned on taking a tour the next day that would undoubtedly start and end in that area. The hotel I checked into was the second one I saw, and only the second most depressing. My room had now window, and like many of the budget hotels, featured one flickering, fluorescent light, the kind that always seems to say "you're traveling alone, staying in a windowless hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City, and you've paid for this privilege; clearly you've hit rock bottom."

It was all too depressing, so I made for Dong Khoi, which is the Fifth Avenue of HCM City. The motorbike ride over there was far scarier than any thus far in Vietnam, because the streets were much more crowded and featured more cars than anywhere else in the country. After getting a bite to eat near Dong Khoi, I strolled up the street, which I had visited just 14 months earlier. The stores were almost all quite high-end, much to high-end for me, at least on this trip. This area is such a far cry from most of what I've seen in Vietnam. The clothes were at least as stylishly, and interestingly displayed, as anything we see in American shopping streets. And prices were generally displayed in dollars, a sure sign that there are few bargains to be had. Most places seemed to get "it," with "it" being the sense of style and luxury that a high-spending Western tourist expects of such a store. It was not too long ago that this was hard for most store proprietors to understand, I think. One bar that I passed looked to only be a few years old, but clearly opened before they understood what to offer; the sign advertised "Cigars-Noodles-Wine."

On my last day in Vietnam, I took a tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Holy See. This is the quintessential day trip that most tourists in HCM City take, but I did not do this last year. The Cao Dai Holy See was pretty interesting, as the cathedral is set in a large compound. They're clearly not lacking for money. The cathedral itself is a confection of pink, blue, yellow and red, with dragons, lotuses, and their trademark all-seeing eye everywhere. Paintings and carvings depict Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, Victor Hugo, and Sun Yat-Sen, as they believe that all of these figures were, in their own way, messengers from the one true god. The service itself mostly considted of robed old people chanting, with a bell chiming in at seemingly random intervals. There was no sermon of any sort.

Robes' colors signify Catholicism (red), Buddhism (yellow), and Confucianism (blue)

The Cu Chi Tunnels, which most people rave about, were a let-down. This was more of an American War theme park, even with Viet Cong mannequins sitting at the ready with their grenade launchers. Many vicious-looking traps have been reconstructed, so tourists can ooh and aah over how painful it would be to step on one. You can pay over $1 per bullet to fire an M16, but nobody in our group wanted to do this. And then you can crawl through 40 meters of the tunnels themselves at the end. They are shockingly small, much smaller than their sister tunnels in the DMZ. I hated it. I was impressed with how awful it must have been, which I think is the point. So I took the optional exit to the left about half way through the distance.

Mannequin Cong

I have bittersweet feelings about leaving Vietnam. I really like this country, on account of its natural beauty, diversity, and the friendliness of the people. Of course, travel itself gets a little bit old. I don't know how people travel for 6 to 12 months non-stop, and I've met many who are doing just that. I'm looking forward to going home, but I know that I'll miss this place. I'm confident that I'll be back. I'm guilty of worrying that it'll be different, much more developed and busier, the next time I get here. Most tourists worry about that. But for the Vietnamese, I guess it's mostly a good thing, so I wish them the best.

Nha Trang wasn't really what I had in mind for relaxation before the end of the trip, so I only stayed two nights and then caught a bus to Mui Ne. Again, this took much longer than it should. But at the very least, I was dividing the trip to Ho Chi Minh City into two stages.

Mui Ne is not exactly isolated, or undiscovered. There are hotels all along the beach. But these hotels are relatively small, and many cannot even be seen behind the fringe of palm trees that lines the beach. There are no high-rises, and the road is set adequately back from the beach. There is just not much to do in Mui Ne (which is really part of Phan Thiet). And that's why I liked it so much. The first night that I had a walk along the road in Mui Ne looking for dinner, I had a bit of a scare, when I noticed that much of the signage was in Russian. Christ, I figured, the restaurants will be overpriced, feature disco balls, and people who talk in such a manner that nothing is aspirated, no excess air passes through their lips, all being conserved for the loudest, most aggressive tone that can be mustered with whatever is left. (OK, it's unfair, but it's how it sounds to the American ear.) It turned out that yes, there are many Russian tourists, but these ones have impeccable taste and have not, as far as I can tell, had any adverse effect. The ones at my hotel were perfectly pleasant.

Hotels along the beach in Mui Ne are relatively hidden

Many Mui Ne fishermen go to sea in these awkward bathtub boats

Mui Ne is a small fishing town, and in the town, and along the beach road, you can experience the production of the local product: nuoc mam, or fish sauce. This is made, apparently, by putting little chopped-up fish and parts into an earthenware container with salt, and letting the concoction sit in the sun for some number of days. Then you get a tar-like substance, which is diluted down and sold as fish sauce. When used, it is again diluted down. I didn't actually watch them make it, but I did smell it. The smell is thick enough that it lingers around the particular establishment, rather than infuse the air of the town, which is a good thing. But it means that periodically, when you pass these places on a motorbike, you get a whiff. It stinks, but it's not all bad. If you like anchovies on your pizza and gorgonzola cheese (and I do), then you might kind of like this smell for a brief second.

I had splurged in Mui Ne on a nice hotel, as I have been way under-budget for this trip. So I checked into the Cham Villas, which are made up to look like grass huts, but are actually quite modern, nice little villas. The grounds are amazing, and it's all done up with Cham statues which are dramatically lit at night. The pool is nice, but I never really used it, as the beach is peaceful and fairly clean.

Path between villas at Cham Villas hotel

There is one sight, which is a range of remarkable sand dunes close to the town. I took a motorbike up there at sunset, and saw a gaggle of young boys holding sheets of hard plastic. As the motorbike slowed, they all came running up and grabbed my arms. "You slide?!" they all cried. They didn't speak much English other than that, except for one who claimed that he was from California, but couldn't remember the town. I declined the offer, as I didn't feel like it, and the few people I saw "sliding" were either kind of shuffling down the dunes or were being pulled down by the slide-owners, like the slide itself was some sort of stubborn mule.

If it won't slide, he will slide you

There's little to report from these days. The restaurants were good, but mostly empty. I was the only customer eating in any restaurant I went to in Mui Ne at any time. I did make one mistake, by eating at an Indian restaurant on my last night there. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good. I made the same mistake by eating at an Italian restaurant in Nha Trang, as I've heard that Nha Trang has a small Italian community. Again, the food wasn't awful, but I could get a better caprese salad and gnocchi gorgonzola at any Italian restaurant in Chicago. It's best, I guess, to stick to the cuisine of the country you're in. And I like Vietnamese food a lot. But I'm not used to eating any cuisine, even American (which seems anymore to describe a limited range of restaurants) for 28 nights out of 30.

But I would not have that problem much longer, as Mui Ne was my penultimate stop on my Vietnam tour.

From Da Lat, I took the bus to Nha Trang, which involved descending the mountains to the coast and then back-tracking a bit (at least for me), but heading north. The hills and valleys along the descent were beautiful, but the going was slow. I could see why this trip was expected to take five hours. Due to the windy, narrow road, and the traffic on it, the bus rarely exceeded 20 mph until we hit the coastal plain. They have a new road, I kept hearing, that cuts a direct path from Da Lat to Nha Trang, and it's supposedly very beautiful. And it only takes 3 hours. But the buses don't travel that road, because it is too narrow. If you want to go that way, you pay up by taking a motorbike all the way. I've already taken an inter-city motorbike ride, and one is enough.

Anyway, the rolling highlands soon gave way to a hot, scrubby, coastal plain. There were palm trees and cacti, and the fans in the restaurant where we ate lunch just blew hot air around. So I was glad to be in Nha Trang and check into a chilly, air-conditioned hotel.

Nha Trang is pretty much Vietnam's answer to South Beach. The beach is reasonably broad, only moderately clean, and backed by a busy road. Beyond that road lie rows and rows of hotels. And like South Beach, the collection of small hotels offering cramped rooms is being supplemented by new construction of luxury hotels. There is night life in Nha Trang -- quite a lot, actually, by Vietnamese standards. And like South Beach, the clientele is very international. And unfortunately, like one would in South Beach, I saw a man wearing a thong swimsuit in Nha Trang. He was Vietnamese, too, which somehow made it more shocking.

Tourists line the beach in Nha Trang, but there's a promising sailing business, too

I don't like South Beach much, so it's not surprising that I wasn't in love with Nha Trang. The first afternoon and evening there, I just had a food and some drink, and then ate some great grilled seafood. I will say, at least, that the seafood is very good in Nha Trang. The town has a harbor, and a resident fleet of blue fishing boats. You can even get somebody to grill up a lobster for you right on the beach. So those things, and the overall friendliness of the Vietnamese people, make it considerably better than South Beach, in my opinion.

The second day, I was able to see the sights of Nha Trang. Actually, there is about one sight. I took a motorbike up to the Po Nagar Temple, which is a well-preserved Cham temple. Unlike the ones at My Son, these temples were still in use. And they even had real-live Cham people weaving and playing music, which made it a bit theme-park-like. After that, I had the driver take me to the local mud baths. I paid to sit in a wooden tub of slippery mud for 20 minutes. It smelled kind of good, in a medicinal way, and the view across to the mountains was kind of pretty. After soaking, I did as the sign told me and sunbathed, presumably to dry the mud. But the humidity and my own perspiration in the suffocating heat conspired to prevent the mud from drying. Nobody else was even attempting this. Then there's a shower, a mineral water spritz of sorts, and a soak in mineral water. All in all, it was pretty relaxing. But the sign at the entrance promises that the mud is known to relive mental disorders and rheumatism, and I think I still have a bit of both.

Nha Trang's fishing fleet, at the river's mouth, all painted blue

Columns at the entrance to Po Nagar Cham temple in Nha Trang. This one is Buddhist, not Hindu

The Cham still exist, as an ethnic minority inside Vietnam, now without a kingdom

The bus ride (this time in a lovely, uncrowded van) from BMT to Da Lat was beautiful. Somehow, it seemingly took the sun a long time to set, so the normal oranges and yellows gave way to a bright blue that lingered for an hour or so before the sky went black. This made it possible to see the villages that we passed through, where the houses consisted of mud walls and thatched roofs. They all had electricity, however, so you could see the glows of televisions inside, and people sitting on their porches at the end of the work day. The fields seemed to be mostly corn, and still more coffee. The ride was not equally enjoyable for all. A woman in the front bench, traveling with her husband and two small children, had a visible motion-sickness patch behind her ear. But it didn't work. The road was both windy and bumpy, and it did not take more than 30 minutes for her to be bent over heaving into a plastic bag. This continued, on and off, for about an hour. After that, she was reduced to whimpering. And every so often, she would lift her head and yell at her husband, who would just kind of chuckle. I would guess she was telling him that this is the last time that she comes to Da Lat with the rest of the family.

And a lot of families do come to Da Lat. The city is a maze of winding streets, necessitated by the fact that it is built on hillsides surrounding a man-made lake. This was initially a retreat for French colonialists, and even Bao Dai has a rather unimpressive "palace" there. But now, the place is chock-a-block with hotels. The air is cool at night, but not cold, at least not by American standards. Yet the Vietnamese walk around in winter coats and hats, and many of the street stalls peddle sweaters to Vietnamese women who, I would guess, buy them not primarily to stay warm but so they finally have an excuse to wear a sweater. The soil in the area is rich, and combined with the climate, makes it the fruit and vegetable garden of Vietnam. Local specialties are strawberry, mulberry (and the silk industry that is supports), flowers, cauliflower, carrots, and more coffee. But really, all of this makes Da Lat sound a lot more idyllic than it is.


Da Lat has an orderly, alpine feel, though it is still distinctly Vietnamese

In Da Lat, I saw several homeless people, which I had not noticed before in Vietnam. They are bundled up like many of the Vietnamese tourists, but they are uncharacteristically dirty and just seem to be wandering about. The narrow, crowded streets can be very noisy.

The main attraction in town is the lake, so I took a walk around that, and checked out the golf course on its northern side. There is a museum which is good by Vietnamese standards (meaning not very good) devoted to the minority cultures of the highlands. It is yet more baskets, jars, and textiles. But one of the most striking examples of weaving featured traditional patterns alongside helicopters. Apparently, the people who lived in the hills saw helicopters flying over many times (during the American War), and incorporated them into their weaving. On the way back to town, I walked past many of the French villas, which are, for the most part, standing vacant.

Once upon a time, there were trains and Art Deco style. Now, most of the rail yard is a vegetable garden

You can play golf here, though it was closed when I visited

I had called back the first motorcycle guide who approached me that morning, to do a countryside tour the next day. Da Lat was a bit crowded for me, and this would, at least, be a last jaunt through the highlands. To prepare for the next day, Khien, my driver and guide (whose email I'll post later), took me out for a pitcher of beer and to make decisions about what to visit. Mostly, we ended up trudging through fields and farms, manhandling flowers, coffee, tea, and the like. There was, of course, a waterfall. And the restaurant where we ate an enormous lunch made its own rice wine in the basement. So I saw the process of making Vietnamese moonshine. The left over mash (I'm sure there's a name for that) still has a lot of rice and alcohol left in it, so they feed it to pigs. And in the basement, there are two enormous pigs, the biggest that I've seen in Asia, who live in perpetual drunkenness. I also probably damaged the doorway to that basement with my head. As I did in the Bahnar village, I knocked my head pretty good on the top of the door. This time it was with enough force to knock myself down, and feel dizzy for a bit. It's still pretty sore, but I think no lasting damage was done. Here's Khien's contact information:
thanh_khien@yahoo.com
mobile: 0977 856653

Making silk outside of Da Lat

This pig was fed only the alcoholic mash leftover from distillation of rice wine

The jolly Buddha mocks me

I said goodbye to the highlands by taking a tourist bus to Nha Trang. Most tourists doing the length of Vietnam cover the distance between Nha Trang and Hoi An on one, long bus ride. Instead, I had gone inland and covered the distance in a week. Nha Trang would represent a return to the hordes of Western tourists. But I'm craving beach relaxation right now. I'm just nervous about whether Nha Trang can deliver.