August 20 to 21—Nha Trang Beach Days

Dear Family and Friends,

Monday, August 20, our early morning was a bit of a later rise than we had hoped, giving us just enough time to get up, finish packing, and get down for a taste of the amazing breakfast offered at Dreams Hotel. We highly recommend this hotel, folks, as the beds gave us the best night’s sleep in weeks and the breakfast was a wonderful mix of baguette, fried egg, and an amazing assortment of pre-cut fruit and yogurt for us to enjoy. And we got a giggle from their tag line of 'Stay at Another Cozy Place'. (Why? What's wrong with this cozy place?) We were sorry to have so little time to lounge among the breakfast offerings before heading upstairs to finish packing, making us ‘very late’ according to the bus driver from Sinh … even though we had been told we would be picked up at 7:15 AM and were right on time for once!

The bus ride from Dalat brought us back down the mountainside and along the dunes to Nha Trang by 12:30 PM. The ride was enjoyable, again littered with the air of French travelers in conversation, but this time tickled with the coaxing of one Jeanette from California, whose mother is Vietnamese … she had returned alone to the country of her heritage for the first time to share in the burial ritual of her great grandmother, enjoying a month of travel where she was cared for by one cousin or uncle or another. We took a short break at an overlook before heading down out of the mountains and into the valley below. Women and children offered corn, bags of chips, and fresh pineapple. Dani commented on how each of them sold the exact same items and wondered why they didn't diversify more. Martha thought it might be a community sales tool to where they all sold the same thing and shared the funds received from the tourists and other bus travelers.

Along the bus ride, we caught great glimpses of Vietnamese life: workers in the fields, rice and other produce spread in the street and along the sidewalk to bake and dry in the sun, children playing on or peeing off the front porch, and lots of workers in action repairing the streets or putting up new property. Progress and development are alive and well in VietNam, and we witnessed much of it as we passed from Dalat to Nha Trang.

Hours into our journey from greenery to the tan landscapes of the shoreline, we rounded the bend to finally see the South China Sea, it was one of those WOW moments that we’d been missing for a couple of weeks. The coastline initially was breeched by open space that looked like it contained salt-water rice patties (perhaps fish or other seafood plantations?) and stilted homes overlooking the occupied lands. Then, dunes came between us and the open sea, giving us the occasional teasing glimpse of our destination. Finally, cliffs stretched out below the curvy road as we hung onto our seats; the bus driver knew this route and took no precaution around the curves that crawled above the cliff sides, throwing us and anything unsecured in the bus from side to side. Finally, the landscape opened to city once more, the seaside disappeared for the time being, and we came to the town of Nha Trang.

Dani and Martha got their baggage and walked around the block from the Sinh Café station to the AP Hotel, which we had found online touting to offer free Internet access, including some WiFi access on the first couple of floors. We secured Room #103 with the intent of working online to continue our blog postings as possible for the 13 USD per night fee. Not bad for a big bed, a table with two chairs, a closet, cable television, a mini-fridge, a BATHTUB, and hot water. We opted for the room without a balcony or windows, as we've heard tales of theft in Nha Treng that include scaling hotel walls onto the balcony and into the room of unsuspecting tourists!

We got settled and headed out into town for lunch, to put our toes in the water, and to learn what we could about the scuba certification offerings in town. A big part of Dani’s trip concentration has been around scuba … we had considered certification in Costa Rica during our visit there five years before. This was our second opportunity at three- or four-day courses at pretty cheap prices, so we wanted to begin to research our options and check our bank account to see what we could manage.

Before we even made it to touch our toes to the sand, however, our new friend, Kevin, whom we’d last seen in SaiGon and whom we knew was also supposed to be in town … was right there. We had not rounded the corner towards the beach 100 full meters before we ran into him for the third time since the Vietnamese embassy at Phnom Penh! We joined him at the common décor of plastic red table and chairs as he finished his midday meal among this ‘family’ from his two-years of living here in the past. We all three walked to the beach together.

It turned into a full afternoon of walking and talking and coffee and learning about each others’ lives before we parted ways finally at dinnertime so we could get our scuba research done before the shops closed. We agreed to meet again before we left to enjoy a bottle of the local Dalat wine together on the beach! As we walked back to the hotel, we marveled at how God uses us to bring calm to his wandering people, as Kevin’s life has not been the easiest, especially in his recent years of family heartache and subsequent wandering, and how we are brought to learn about ideologies, such as the socialism the Kevin identifies with most strongly, as a means for us to better understand the walks of life that are not our own.

We hit four of the local scuba shops to learn about their offerings. The prices ranged a bit, but overall they offered similar experiences, at least according to their sales reps/scuba instructors. So we asked them each who they would or would not recommend around town, reducing our options to three when two of the groups pointed to another and called their instructors 'cowboys' because they were known to damage the coral reef. We wanted an environmentally-conscious group, so brought the option down to two choices by dinnertime. We continued to discussion, including Martha's fear of diving, over a delightful dinner at one of the Truc Linh restaurants. Martha had tofu curry with big vegetables and rice while Dani enjoyed sweet and sour veggies with rice. And we even treated ourselves to ice cream before dinner.

Tuesday, August 21, was an interesting and diverse day of our journey as we celebrated Day 100! We tried to get up at 5 AM for the sunrise, but by 5:20 AM when Dani checked the window in the hallway, the sky was already blue and she knew that she’d missed the best colors, so went back to bed. By 9:00 AM, however, we were on the beach and in the water, enjoying the cool undertones of the tides and the warm top layer still impacted by the previous day’s intense sunlight. The pre-mid-day sunshine was our favorite opportunity to enjoy the sun and still protect our delicate skin!

We swam in the clear water for almost two hours. Dani loved counting her toes while several meters out from the shore. We brought only our flip flops, towels, and t-shirts, and kept a close eye on them regardless since we’ve heard so much about the dangers of this town. Unfortunately, Nha Trang has a reputation for robbery, misleading, and locals taking advantage of tourists (all perpetuated not only by warnings from the Lonely Planet and the sign on the back of our hotel room door, but also by warnings from Kevin), so we were on our tippy toes to good ends. By 11:00 AM, we were safely back at the hotel room, where we took time to shower and dress for the day before heading out around 12:30 PM, lathered in sunscreen, to walk up to the central market about 2 KM to the North to shop and find lunch among the locals.

Having not had breakfast, we stopped to have coffee at a local stand where the dubbed program Alias was showing on the television and the proprietor lounged in a hammock. We paid 10,000 dong (0.66 USD) for the two coffee, served through those neat single filters into a glass pre-prepared with condensed milk. Adding some ice afterwards made for their version of iced coffee!

We kept to the shady side of the road as well as we could, but we were still hot and sweaty by the time we made it to the market place. It’s nice to enter these large market places in quest of a specific item or two. As we walked along, we were shadowed by a lady who knew quite a bit of English, probably someone who got a bit of commission for helping any of the local stands who might now know how to haggle and deal with foreigners in their languages. We found two of our intended items for folks back home on this trip, which was exciting, and walked the grounds for a while otherwise, enjoying the views of dried sea animals (but we didn't so much enjoy the quantity of animals that at this rate might not be around forever at this rate, such as the strings of dried seahorses and bags of large lobsters) and the variety of unusual goods that are usually so readily packaged in our society instead of being in open containers to be sold at just the amount that one might desire. We passed the kitchen wares, so tempting with their many tools to make delightful dishes, and the earthenware pots that are used as bases to cook so many of the dishes common to this part of the world, dried in the heat and prepped to house the coal blocks that burned so slowly for the locals to cook their goods for daily sale. We sat down for some fishy soup at one of the local stalls, paying about a dollar each (20,000 dong) for the yummy soup. Martha tried to see what locals were paying, as we know that we pay a 'skin tax' as obvious tourists, but each local was very good at casually and hiddenly paying for their lunches, so we don't know how high the tax was.

Dani had planned a full walking day tour for us, so we went from the market across the inlet of the sea where many fishing ships had already docked or were coming in from the sea for the day. Oh, what a neat sight to see all of these blue vessels parked until their next excursion out into the ocean. Large rocks jutted up from the water. Homes on stilts showed the dramatic difference between the luxurious hotels along the waterfront and the poverty of some of the local people in this socialist atmosphere.

Across one bridge, we arrived at Thap Ba Ponagar, one of the historic Cham tower collections, where we paid the 10,500 dong each entrance fee to climb up and see the 7th century tri-temple structure. The inside was heavy on the incense. Outside, we saw a troupe of girls showcasing traditional Vietnamese dance, followed by three men adding drums and a guitar-type stringed instrument to enrich the atmosphere of ancient exploration.

We sat down for a refreshment in the shade from the hot day’s sun and spoke with a local gentleman in his 70s whose son lives in California. Was Martha German, he asked? She has gotten this quite a bit in the past week, as German women are big (he expressed). It’s hard not to take it to heart as even most of the people in the market places find it an appropriate sales tactic to say, “We have big size. Come.” But, this man we was so cute, it didn’t matter; he even carried a photo of his son in his pocket. He told us we were smart to have gotten lunch at the local market for just 20,000 dong each and that we could get back to the coast by crossing the far bridge. Oh, and that the food was good around the pagoda, much better than where he lived North of there, if we wanted to get dinner on our walk.

Per his instruction, we took the new bridge back towards home because it was not the route we had taken to get there, past a gorgeous collection of docked ships. The sun was setting and the light was perfect behind the mountains and the docked ships anchored along side each other for the night. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker–type weaved dingies brought people to and from the fishing vessels. Big hotels lined the pathways between us and our budget accommodations. And, as we walked towards home … we encountered Kevin again!! After a few minutes of catching up on our busy days of walking and getting acupuncture (in Kevin’s case for his back pain), we agreed to meet for wine after showers and some down time. We intended to go for a swim, but it took longer at the Octopus scuba training camp than expected to learn about their offerings and to begin the paperwork towards full scuba certification, and we left unsure as to whether Martha would be able to scuba with her asthma, allergies, and migraines. We had to get a doctor’s clearance before she could hit the water with her oxygen intact. With a recommendation on a doctor from Octopus to go to for consultation and a chance to also get some answers on Martha’s leg rash, we will see what tomorrow brings.

From there, we grabbed sandwiches to eat in the room, stopped at the grocer that Kevin pointed us towards for Dalat wine and cheese (and deodorant for Martha), and returned to our room to freshen and eat dinner. We ran into Kevin once again on his way to find ice to keep his white wine cool for our ‘date’.

On the benches among the sculpture garden before the sandy beach, we three enjoyed talking in a wonderful mix of English and Spanish. After less than an hour of just the three of us, we were joined by a young Vietnamese lady who spoke with Dani a bunch, often interrupting our conversation in Spanish to refocus Dani’s attention onto her. Kevin’s paranoia made us question the young 28-year-old’s intentions as she invited Dani to her home to take measurements for a new tailored outfit. Martha spoke only Spanish, trying not to complicate things by adding another English speaker to the mix of conversation when we were trying to bring it back to just us three … but young Hong did not get the message and continued to write and verbalize conversation with Dani.

We were not drunk, being careful not to open ourselves up to trouble, and remained perhaps overly cautious since Hong might or might not be working with the shady characters we had heard frequented the waterfront taking dangerous advantage of the visitors. However, in her favor, Hung brought munchies of mango and rice/coconut flat bread and seemed predominantly to be working on her English skills with Dani. Amazing how those with so little offer so much. In the end, we chose to find our concern about her intentions unfounded … our theory of expecting the best of people and getting it holds true against Kevin’s fear-based life. As we finally departed from Kevin for the night, we agreed to meet again the next day at 7 PM to meet his doctor friend.

Much love,

Martha and Dani