Nha Trang is a typical seaside resort town: lots of restaurants offering a wide range of cuisines targeted at tourists, extended happy hours, some late-night party venues, a wide range of hotels, and an extensive promenade bordering a long stretch of beach.
It was off-season, we were told, but there were plenty of Caucasian tourists wandering about in beachy gear. There were a lot of Russians among them. Indeed, many of the restaurants displayed menus in Russian.
I couldn’t help but notice quite a few hoary old fart Westerners strutting along hand in hand with Asian girls in their teens or a bit older – proportionally more than we had seen in Saigon or elsewhere. Dunno whether the girls were locals or imports. Whatever, they didn’t look terribly enthused, and who could blame them. Hopefully, Nha Trang is not in the process of establishing itself as an alternative to Patong specialising in servicing creepy geriatrics.
The bay is gorgeous, straight out of a tropical dream.
evening settling on Nha Trang Bay
sunset approaching
Unfortunately, contrary to the widespread promo claims of the sea being ‘pristine’, it is littered with plastic bags, bits of paper and other rubbish. This didn’t seem to bother some of the Euros, but swimming in a soup of refuse didn’t hold any appeal for me.
nice scene – shame about the crap littering the shore
Nha Trang is one of Vietnam’s prime tourist locations. Apparently, there isn’t a spare hotel room to be found during the peak season (July and August, when the Vietnamese take their holidays). It’s set up to thrive, with the big hotel chains having staked their claims in the best vantage points overlooking the beachfront, as is evidenced by the high rise construction currently underway. The climate is beach-friendly most of the year. The place has everything going for it.
Why, then, do the Vietnamese treat Nha Trang Bay as a dump, rather than recognising it as the outstanding natural asset it most certainly is? Environmental vandalism is always short-sighted, but in this case it is commercial self-sabotage. Bewildering.
We caught a 7.30am bus from Saigon to Dalat the morning after returning to Saigon from the Mekong Delta. The last 1.5 hours of the journey took us through some mountainous highland country and coffee plantations. Very different from anything we had seen in the south. When we arrived in Dalat, it was mid-afternoon…and COOL! This was a welcome change from the muggy tropical conditions we had sweated through in Saigon and the Delta. The hotel immediately adjacent to the Singh bus terminal was clean and cheap ($13 per night with breakfast), so we didn’t bother investigating further afield.
Once we had unpacked, we joined some great folk (hi Anne and Shai) we had met on the Delta tour for a walk uptown in search of a laundry. We passed some scrumptious-looking street food – marinated chicken grilled over coals – which I determined to sample during our stay (unfortunately, this was not to be). Closer to where we eventually located the laundry, I bought some fried chillie-infused banana from a street vendor, then a sugary doughnut-like fried treat. Greasy but nice.
We were amused to note that the locals were all wearing coats or jumpers. It was temperate, but not cold – we were still comfortable in the summer gear we had worn down south.
Later, we wandered down some steps towards the central market. There were few other tourists about – in fact, I don’t think we saw any. Street food vendors were out in force. We paused to have a closer look at the mysterious (to us) food items they were selling, and were quite shocked when one of the vendors, a middle-aged woman, shouted “Go!” and flung her pointed finger at us in an unmistakably hostile gesture. We went!
None of us had encountered anything like this in Vietnam. I reasoned that the woman was probably sick of curious tourists lingering over her stall and obstructing locals who might otherwise have bought food from her. The female contingent of our foursome was unconvinced, and less forgiving.
As we drifted around the market and adjoining streets, we observed that the locals looked physically different from the Vietnamese in the south. They tended to be darker, and their features vaguely reminiscent of American Indians, or Mongolians. We postulated that this may have been due to genetic pooling with the indigenous people of the region (or ‘minority people’ as they are known in Vietnam). They also seemed less affable, generally speaking, than the Vietnamese we had encountered in the south.
Outside our hotel, we were approached by the Easy Riders. These guys are legendary among travellers to Vietnam for their private motorbike tours, which venture far from the well-worn tourist track. My partner was into it, but I had decided I would not be getting on the back of any damned motorbike. Too dangerous on these mountain passes, and my back and knees would seize up after hours on the back of a bike, and…
By the time we had talked it through with these affable and knowledgeable guys, I was in. You only live once etc etc. Anne and Shai elected to take a 3 day Easy Rider tour down to Nha Trang, while we decided on a day tour around the Dalat region, taking in a minority villlage. I couldn’t believe I had acceded to this Easy Rider thang, but was excited at the prospect. We arranged to meet the Easy Rider crew late the following afternoon to finalise the deal.
That night, we ate at a nearby restaurant raved about in our guide book, The Rough Guide To Vietnam. It was a major disappointment all round. Bland, boring, and relatively expensive by Vietnamese standards. I’ve never had any faith in guide book restaurant recommendations. Why should travel writers have a clue about food, particularly unfamiliar cuisines? Well, in my experience, they don’t, and this was another case in point.
Next morning, my partner and I went exploring around the town. I snapped a couple of pics:
We took a break at a restaurant that proudly proclaimed its Lonely Planet recommendation in prominent lettering. We ordered coffee and a pancake, neither of which were anything special. However, the testimonials of travellers who had dined there were impressive – wildly extravagant, in fact – and we decided to give it a try for dinner that night.
When we duly arrived that evening, the place was packed with westerners in evening dress (WTF?), with a queue of others spilling out on to the street waiting to get in. Trying one of Dalat’s many other restaurants was not an option, apparently. I get the sense that many people slavishly follow every glowing recommendation in Lonely Planet, and see restaurants like this as boxes they just have to tick – an Essential cultural experience, without which they wouldn’t have properly ‘done’ Dalat.
How essential a cultural experience is a fucking Western style restaurant serving up food that only Westerners are prepared to pay up for? The locals were evidently eating elsewhere.
Anyway, we gave it a miss, and supped at another restaurant further down the street, which was not listed in Lonely Planet but boasted a book of equally gushing testimonials from past patrons (all Westerners). The food was eccentric – and awful. But the four of us had a fantastic night revelling in each other’s company, and discussing some Big Stuff. We were generations apart, but it felt like we were peers, close friends with much in common. A rare meeting of minds that I cherished, and one of the highlights of the trip for me.
It was all downhill from there. I was bedridden with severe diarrhoea and fever for the next two days and saw nothing more of Dalat. My Easy Rider breakthrough was not to be, and neither was that marinated chicken I had promised myself.
The Easy Rider guys were fine about my having to cancel. One of them gave my partner a couple of antibiotic bombs and some Chinese herbal pills to give me, and wouldn’t hear of taking money for them. My partner gave me a note from Shai and Anne and was lyrical in her description of them taking off over the hill into the morning on the back of the bikes. Maybe next time…
No more pics of Dalat, goddamn it – was intending to go mad with the camera during our Easy Rider tour. Still, travelling is undulating in its emotional highs and lows. It was my turn to cop it, and that’s just the way of things.
We don’t usually take guided tours when we travel, preferring to DIY wherever possible. We had intended to catch a bus to Can Tho and from there meander our way through the Delta for a few days, but after spending longer than planned in Saigon decided to make up for lost time and take a 48 hour tour.
The downside to tours is you’re stuck with someone else’s itinerary; the upside is you don’t waste time seeking out accommodation, working out where to go, and organising how to get there (and back). Also, good tour guides can impart a lot of local knowledge that is not readily accessible to the independent traveller – especially in a place like Vietnam, where so few people outside the hospitality industry speak English.
My posts have been wordy so far, but pics beat textual description of the unique environment of the Mekong Delta, so here ya go:
The Delta is an incredibly fertile area that yields the most glorious produce. I had some fresh-cut pineapple that no superlatives can do justice to. I’ve tasted good pineapple in SE Asia before, but nothing close to this. It was so far superior to the acidic, tongue-ulcer-inducing Aussie variety that it might as well have been a different fruit.
Going by what we saw of the fresh produce sold daily at the street markets of Can Tho and Vinh Long, the quality of the local fruit and veges is outstanding across the range. As it is throughout Vietnam generally…
Concluding comments I had imagined the Delta to be verdant and lush, bursting with jungley fecundity – something like a Rousseau rain forest painting. Another expectation that was way off the mark! The dominant hues of the landscape are browns, greys and dull greens. I enjoyed my time there, though. It was truly exotic, almost otherworldly (and the local tradition of erecting graves of the dead in the middle of the family paddy field, or in the case of deceased business owners, on their work premises, added to the weirdness).
If we’d had more time – much more – I would have liked to have seen more of the region, but looking back, taking the 48 hour tour was the right move. Excellent value @ $35 including transport, overnight accommodation, boat tours and visit to a floating market, English-speaking guide, and return trip to Saigon. Recommended, unless you have a particular interest in exploring the Delta more extensively. We went through Singh Tours.
One gripe: the locals treat their wonderfully bounteous waterways as a drain. The water is naturally murky with mud and silt, which I suspect covers a multitude of littering sins. Rubbish can be seen floating on the surface as you chug along in your tourist boat, and there is lots of discarded crap washing around against the shore. During a trip to a floating market near Can Tho, we saw a guy who was painting the mast of his fishing boat tip half a can of green paint overboard.
This apparent disregard for the environment is not confined to the Mekong Delta, unfortunately. Nha Trang, reputedly one of Vietnam’s most beautiful beaches, is severely compromised by the refuse in the water (I wouldn’t swim there), and I believe the situation is similar in other coastal resort areas. This is something the Vietnamese need to address post haste. Their land serves them up abundant choice produce, and defiling it as they currently do is short-sighted to say the least. They owe their land, their burgeoning tourist industry – and themselves – more respect.
