Mui Ne, Nha Trang, and Hoi Ann

After Saigon and the Mekong Delta trip, I took a bus to Mui Ne which is a small beach town. Basically Mui Ne just consists of one long road along the beach with a bunch of resorts/guest houses and restaurants on it. A lot of the restaurants and resorts had signs in Russian because there are a large number of Russian tourists and also workers in oil. Mui Ne is also a world famous kite boarding destination, the best place in all of Asia. I met some of them and they are like a small cult, they live to kite. I considered taking a five hour class but the cost was a steep $200 and even after 5 hours you can't really do much, couple that with the fact that I don't know when I'll be in a place that I can kite-surf again so I decided it wasn't worth it. The first day I rented a bike for $1 a day and rode up the coast to some sand dunes that Mui Ne is also known for. I arrived at the sand dunes and there was an entourage of kids offering their services to me. The kids let you use a plastic sheet they give you and help you pack the sand on it. I picked a boy that had shown me how to get to the dunes and with him another girl about 13 came along with a younger girl and boy both about 10. I had my own personal crew of 4 kids that would get the sheet ready for me after each slide down the dunes. I went feet first, head first, and I tried to stand on it like a snowboard but every time I got down to a particular point the sheet would stop moving and I would fall over. I also got sand everywhere, in my shoes, all over my clothes, in my hair, in my underwear. Sand was absolutely everywhere. The dunes were fun for a little while but they weren't that big and it was scorching hot out and I had sand all over my body so I left after about half an hour. I paid the kids the agreed upon price but they kept haggling me to give them more, they asked for a tip. They did really help me a lot but we agreed on a price so thats what I gave them. On the way back the thing that holds the chain on the bike broke and I had to walk the bike back to my guest house which was about 7km away. It wasn't fun but I got to walk through the town and the local fishing village which was really cool. At the fishing village you can see hundreds of boats out in the ocean and local fisherman with nets bringing in the days catch. It was a beautiful spot to watch the sunset. I met an Israeli and Australian guy at the guest house and have been traveling with them ever since. There was a poker tournament at a local bar that night so we went to that and had a pretty good time. I should have made the last table but got beat on the river when I was all in. The next day I rented a motorbike to drive to another set of sand dunes which were farther away and were supposed to be bigger and better than the first. It was a spectacular ride along the coast about 25km long. When I got near the dunes I wasn't sure exactly where I was supposed to go but luckily there was a jeep tour heading there so I just followed the jeep over a dirt road for about 500m and reached the dunes. Again I "rented" a plastic sheet from a local kid and went out to try it. Unfortunately these dunes weren't that much better than the first so I didn't stay very long. The scenery there was very beautiful though. There was a kind of lake next to the dunes and you could also see the ocean in the distance. On the way back I picked up an old local woman who needed a ride and dropped her off a few km down the road. It was pretty cool being able to help someone after all when you are traveling you are constantly relying on the help of other people. I made it back to town in one piece and met up with Omer the Israeli and Luc the Australian for some drinks. My last night in Mui Ne was quite interesting but inappropriate material for this blog so you will have to ask me about that personally. Omer and I caught a night bus at 1:00am to Nha Trang, our next destination. I was able to sleep most of the way and we arrived in Nha Trang at about 7:00am.

After walking around for a while we bargained our way into a really nice room for $7. Overall accommodation has been a little bit more expensive in Vietnam than Thailand or Malaysia but when you are traveling with two people it makes it a lot cheaper. We really didn't do much our first day in Nha Trang, we just kind of walked around and explored the city a bit and walked down to the beach which was nice but nothing compared to the beaches in Thailand or even Malaysia. The next day we rented a motorbike and explored some of the sites of the city. We went to the Cham Towers. The Cham were the local indigenous people in parts of Vietnam many years ago. We also checked up the local market which was enormous. Just about anything you can imagine can be found at this market. Then we went to a Pagoda overlooking the whole town which was really nice. The most interesting part though was driving the motorbike, somehow I got nominated to drive and it was my first experience driving a motorbike in pretty heavy traffic. It is as crazy as it looks, now Nha Trang was nothing compared to Saigon but there were roundabouts and traffic going in all different direction and I was in the middle of it all. I pretty much only made right turns because I was afraid of turning left. As we were leaving the Pagoda it was getting dark out and it was rush hour but I got us home in one piece. Our nights in Nha Trang consisted of walking around for an hour or so deciding on where we were going to eat. Most of the restaurants catered to tourists and had Italian or Western menus along with Vietnamese food. One night I had a craving for pizza and pasta but was sorely disappointed with what I got. Western food, especially Italian food was just not the same so I vowed to stick with the local food. On our final full day in Nha Trang we went on a boat trip to some of the islands around Nha Trang which pretty much turned into a booze cruise. The crew drank more than any of the passengers and we ran out of beer pretty fast. I tried snorkeling for about five minutes but the masks and snorkels they provided sucked and there wasn't much to see anyway so the rest of the trip we just relaxed and talked with other travelers on the boat. They set up a little "floating bar" at one of the stops which basically consisted of a tire in the ocean with a board over it and one of the crew pouring out cups of wine. At the end of the trip the crew member who had clearly been the drunkest just hopped on his motorbike and drove him. At first I was appalled but then I realize that it is just a normal part of life here so I guess I had to be ok with it. On our final day in Nha Trang the weather turned sour. It was windy and rainy all day, the annoying kind of rain that just drizzles all day and doesn't go away. We walked around some more and stopped at a roadside barber for a shave and trim. There are barbers that just set up a chair on the street with all of their tools. They use manual clippers and no water during the shave and after about a weeks worth of facial hair it felt like I had each small hair being ripped from my face but I toughed it out and had a nice clean shave when it was all done. We took a night bus to Hoi Ann which was about 12 hours of trying to sleep but waking up every few minutes after hitting another pothole or crack in the road. Not only that but the bus was absolutely freezing so I only managed a couple of hours of sleep at best. Tired and disheveled Omer and I walked around for an hour before we finally found a hotel that was reasonably priced $8. Hoi Ann is a charming little town with a lot of history and character. It was like a breath of fresh air, gone were the sounds of motorbikes zooming everywhere. The whole town can be walked in 30 minutes but I liked it so much I stayed 3 days. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and there are many old buildings and temples all over the town. The Japanese and Chinese both had a heavy influence in Hoi Ann. Now it is best known as a tailors town. There are over 200 different tailors there and it is a great place to get shirts, suits, and jackets made but I skipped on that this time. I already had 3 suits made in Saigon 3 years ago. The part I liked about Hoi Ann the best though was the food. It was absolutely amazing. In fact I would say most of my time there revolved around food. Where was I going to eat, what was I going to eat? These were the most important questions of my day. I ate and ate and ate and ate until I couldn't eat any more and then I still ate more. There was fried wontons and wonton soup and co lau which is a noodle dish served with croutons, lettuce, and pork or shrimp. The noodles can only be made in Hoi Ann and are delicious. The bad weather followed us to Hoi Ann so it was rainy every day. Because of the weather I also ate a lot of Pho which was delicious. Also because of the rain it was like an excuse not to go out and do much so I could just eat more. Another specialty of Hoi Ann is white rose which is kind of like a shrimp dumpling but smaller. It was delicious. Hoi Ann itself is dissected by a river with the charming old town and all the restaurants all within a few blocks of the river. At night when it rained the river would flood and the street overlooking the river was impassable. Another highlight of Hoi Ann was the local market which again has to do with food. On one of the few occasions I wasn't eating I bought ten knock off polo shirts for about $3 each and went to the post office to mail home. The shipping charge was about $20, not too bad. The other best part about Hoi Ann was the nightlife. For an old quite town I wasn't expecting much of a nightlife and I guess with the exception of a few places there wasn't really but Omer and I had a bit of a unique experience. The first night we were in Hoi Ann we were just walking around when we ran into a Swedish guy who was going to a bar that he said had free rum and cokes from 9-12. We thought that sounds pretty sweet so we went along. This bar is the perfect definition of dive bar. There was markers for people to write all over the walls and a pool table in the middle and sure enough there was free rum and cokes from 9-12, the whole night I paid for one drink and it was less than a dollar. The next night Omer and I went back obviously and saw a sign on the wall that said: "Wanted 2 Westerners to help with the bar," or something like that so naturally we inquired about it. After talking with the owner he said if we passed out flyers and helped play music and dj we could have free drinks all night and free something else as well. So we said great we started right then and there. The owner drove us to his house gave us some flyers to pass out showed us where we could get free food the next day if we wanted and then drove us back to the bar. From there he gave us his motorbike to use and we went driving off passing out a flyer to any Westerner we saw. I made the mistake of walking into a competitor bar and passing out flyers there before quickly getting a talking to by the manager or something. We managed to convince a group of middle aged men and women to come and it turned out to be a really fun night. We got a ride back to our hotel by one of the employees at the bar and got up at noon the next day nursing hangovers. That day we went out to pass out some more flyers, we had a mission to fill up King Kong Local Bar as it was called. The problem was it was out of the backpacker area and kind of hard to find. You had to pass a bridge to get to the other side of the river which few tourists ventured to. But passing out flyers gave us a great reason to talk with other tourists and we developed a bit of a reputation amongst the locals as well who all knew who we were by the end of the day. That night we got a decent turnout although not as great as we would have hoped and actually went back to the hotel pretty early around 1:00AM. We said goodbye to the owner and other people at the bar as we were leaving the next day and once again one of the employees/motorbike drivers drove us back to the hotel. It was pretty damn cold out and raining and although it was only a 20 minute walk or so it would have sucked to make it. We were hungry though and our driver took us to probably the only place that was open at 1:00AM, which happened to be a pho place. Our driver waited as we gulped down our food were overcharged because we were tourists but it was so good we didn't care and drove us home. It was a great 3 days in Hoi Ann. I will miss the food but if I stayed there any longer I might have left obese.