Distance Traveled: 16,120 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA)
Time Difference: -3 hours (from Brisbane)
Soundtrack: I've been revisiting actual soundtracks lately. The Crow - (How good is it?? I had forgotten.) Queen of the Damned, Dirty Dancing. I gave The Wall another crack, but no improvement on the previous listening experience.
Currently Inspired by: Am not inspired at the moment.
Stacks: A doozy! Trekking through the streets of Nha Trang after dinner one night in the pouring rain, I slipped on some wet tiles on the pavement and landed right on my butt... In the middle of a fairly crowded street and out the front of a restaurant. So embarrassing. Thongs are great in the dry but in the wet they turn into bloody surfboards! I injured my right foot and hobbled around for a couple of days, which was fairly inconvenient. My pride was the most injured out of the experience. And - a quick rant if I may - just about every hotel I've stayed in since I got here employs someone to CONSTANTLY sweep and mop the tiled areas, and as a result, the floors are always wet! It's a friggin floor, how clean does it need to be? At some point during just about every day I'm forced to shuffle the gauntlet over some slippery tiles and pray that I don't go arse over tit. These cleaners are not my friends. Am contemplating mass mop sabotage mission.
Words written: I have hit a rough mental patch and done a large amount of deleting. I won't update this again until I'm out of my slump. Moving right along...Just quickly, I realise that I said in my last blog that my trip down the Mekong was a bit "meh" in terms of the tour itself, however I completely forgot to mention the massive crocodiles! They were awesome. There is a link further down to some photos, they on there if you want to check them out.
I love the bizarre concept of time and distance they have here. Every time I have travelled from one city to another I have asked the person doing the booking "How long will this take?" and the responses, without exception, have borne absolutely no relation to the actual time it has taken. See the chart below:
From To How Long? Answer How Long? Actually
Saigon Ninh Chu Three and a half hours Nine hours
Ninh Chu Nha Trang One hour Two and a half hours
Nha Trang Tuy Hoa One and half hours Three hours
Tuy Hoa Hoi An Five hours Eight hours
Now I have relaxed A LOT since I left, but I mean... come on! That's pretty inefficient. And it's not like I was accosting random strangers on the street for the information - this was from the people who were booking tickets!! I can tell you that it's a bit of a mental readjustment when you are prepared to get on a bus for a three and half hour trip and you find out ON IT, that it's going to be eight hours, and then it ends up being nine. I should probably document this on TripAdvisor / Lonely Planet for the benefit of other travellers.
Originally I intended to do the majority of my overland travel on trains in Vietnam, however the leg between Nha Trang and Tuy Hoa was a train job and it was too awkward with my big heavy suitcase. I couldn't lift it it over my head to the racks (I doubt they would have held the size of it anyway) and it was difficult to maneouvre up and down the aisle. I sat it next to me and hoped that no one had bought that seat (they are numbered and allocated) and thus was tense for most of the trip. For the sake of convenience I shall take buses from hereon. You see I'd love to just take a light backpack like everyone else but when I'm travelling for the amount of time I am through a bunch of different climates I need to be prepared and also I can't die from boredom wearing the same five outfits for a year or a pair of togs and a sarong. Most of the bus experiences I have had since the foot-smelling, suspensionless bus have been comfortable and fine, although I've been the only non-Vietnamese person on them all, and everyone stares at me. On the minibus from Tuy Hoa to Nha Trang there was a really excited guy who knew about thirty English words and spent the entire trip trying unsuccessfully to teach me how to say them all in Vietnamese. I appreciated his efforts, but this language is an absolute jaw cracker! I have to write everything down because I can't even pronounce the names of the towns or the hotels that I'm staying in, and if I try, I just get these blank looks. Thank god they use the same alphabet as we do, cause I'd be screwed if I had to write in script, like Khmer. The people here I have noticed tend to speak less English than people in Cambodia and Thailand, and when they do speak it they are much, much more difficult to understand. I have had many language barrier issues here, and have learnt that just being patient and good humoured about it gets you a fair way. 80% of communication is non verbal anyway, and it's not their responsibility to learn my language, as I'm in their country. I would know more Vietnamese, if it were easier to pronounce and understand!
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| View to the left from my Nha Trang hotel |
There are photos of a couple of the little towns you can see by clicking here, but I'm afraid the ones of Nha Trang don't do it justice. It's also funky and quite touristy, and as a result you get your fair share of hustlers. I was given to understand, the day after I arrived, that it's one of the hot spots for tourists getting robbed on the streets, or ripped off by tax drivers (I understand that Hanoi is also quite bad). It made my previous night's solo street walkabout seem quite ill advised and I actually started to feel a little bit agoraphobic for the first time in the trip. It had been building: Lots of people in Saigon were giving warnings all the time about not wearing shoulder bags and I met someone who was robbed by a taxi driver and left on the side of the road, and there were these annoying teenage boys surrounding me holding their hands out and they really ambush and corner you if they can. They're older so they can seem a bit threatening, particularly in a gang. One of them, pretending he was just holding his hand out for money, grabbed my breast which made me furious. I pushed him away from me quite roughly (onto the road, accidentally, thank god he didn't get hit!) and gave him a death stare, and it was the first time I have been rude to a beggar or a tout since I got here no matter how pushy they are, but really. In a couple of years if he did that it would be sexual assault, not that the police here would do anything about it. So I didn't go out much more in Nha Trang, partly because I didn't feel comfortable there and partly because I couldn't walk properly and didn't fancy taking another spill in the rain. The place I did go was very cool however, and I do recommend it to anyone who goes there, it's called Crazy Kim's and they have a slogan "Hands Off the Kids!" Some of the profits from her bar and travel agency go towards the fight against peodophilia and sex trafficking of children so I was more than happy to support her place. It was huge and had pool tables, dance floors, the works. I presume that the younger travellers were out there partying on til the wee hours, unlike Nanna here who was home in bed by ten :D
After Nha Trang I headed to a very surreal little place called Tuy Hoa (I'm still not sure on the pronounciation but I think it's Twee Howah) also on the coast. The only thing it boasted was a supposedly stunning stretch of beach that can be viewed from a high vantage point / lookout somewhere in the town, after a short climb. I thought it sounded like a nice enough place to break up my trip north for a night or two and headed there, however the rain kinda wrecked things again. Trip Advisor recommended this cafe that was supposedly to die for so I grabbed a map and my poncho and went for a walk, only to discover that it didn't exist anymore, in fact no cafe or restaurant or anything at all existed. It's just not a tourist town at all, and I was definitely the only white person that I saw for the entire time I was there. It seemed like I was also the most exciting thing to happen to Tuy Hoa in a while, because while walking the streets I was constantly tooted and shouted at by passing motorcyclists (in a friendly fashion, they were saying HELLO!) and when I passed a school, the madness had to be seen to be believed. Every student in the school ran to the windows frantically shouting and smiling and waving at me, and when I waved back they absolutely screamed hysterically, jumped up and down, grabbed each other etc. It was like being famous! I just laughed and shook my head. As nowhere in the town was open I had to go and order food from the hotel, which proved to be a task and a half. I went to the restaurant and said I would like to eat in my room (I hate eating by myself in big empty restaurants, and the several staff members there would just openly stare and stare at me the entire time which made me super uncomfortable). Apparently the guy who takes orders wasn't there, so they asked me, largely through gestures and scribbles, to go to my room and call back down in a few minutes. So I went up, waited, rang down, the guy who answered couldn't understand a word I was saying so he just hung up on me, so I went back downstairs again and finally ordered something from the manager, one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen and the only one there who spoke even a few words of English. They were, however, all very sweet, and it made for an interesting experience. I do like these glimpses of "real" life in other countries, where it isn't all about tourists and tourism.
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| White Rose |
If I had to describe Hoi An in one word, it would be "quaint". I'm staying in the ancient town, about a twenty minute walk from the current town centre and every minute of it an absolute pleasure. The footpaths are relatively clear, the roads are reasonably easy to cross within a couple of minutes, it's safe and clean, the buildings are sweet and interesting to look at, the motorcyclists and taxis seem to follow some semblance of road rules... well, most of them do. Let's say three fifths of them do ;) It all adds up to it being about 95% more pedestrian friendly than Ho Chi Minh City, at any rate. There is also draught beer being sold at a local cafe for 15 cents per glass, so... I'm moving in, basically. I have extended my stay here until Friday because I feel like settling somewhere for a minute. The constant packing and repacking is getting on my nerves. Also, on Thursday they close off the min city centre streets to traffic and set up food stalls and lanterns and all sorts of stuff for a street / food festival type thing, so I don't want to miss that! They do it every month apparently.
I've got two coats being made for me, one off a Burberry design and one off an Asos design, so I'm very excited, and in fact I just got back from my third fitting. They should be ready tomorrow, and then I am armed and ready to take on England! Look out London, I'm there in eleven days... eeeeek!
Til Next We Speak
*LOVE*
N
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