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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Return to Vietnam (Pt. II: Mui Ne and Nha Trang)

Mui Ne

A small, quiet city with a fishing village nearby, this coastal town is worth a visit. The view of the South China Sea just beyond the rich, clay-like red sand dunes with a Tiger beer in hand was a moment that I won't soon forget from the trip. Mui Ne was easily my favorite stop. Leah and I rented a moto (NOTE: We were both wearing helmets and Vietnam is a non-Peace Corps country), which was extremely fun and nerve-wracking, since we both had never driven one before. So, 1) We had to figure out how to operate this vehicle safely, and 2) We had to try not to put the person behind in life-threatening danger. We succeeded for the most part since we're both still alive. It took a couple of days to get used to, but by the time we turned in our second rented moto in Nha Trang, we felt relatively confident with it. Both nights we drove out to a couple of nice restaurants in the center of town and had fish topped with tomato sauce (yum!), scallops with green onion (uhh), and various other types of seafood.
I forgot to mention that tiger prawns were part of the menu. NOM
The sea.

The beach.

The food.

The small roads navigated.

If I come back to the southern third of Vietnam, I will return here without hesitation.

The stretch of beach behind the hotel
The hotel we stayed at was $25/night (big bucks) and was situated right on its own private stretch of beach. After surveying the area a little, Leah and I realized what luck we had since our resort was on, in our opinion, the most beautiful stretch of beach in the area; shoes were not required to travel from the room to said beach. I also feel the need to mention the breakfast that was included: an omelet, toast, a large plate of various tropical fruit and coffee; it held us both over for awhile.

My favorite photo from the trip

Leah and I had a contest to see who could find the most B.A. sea shells.

The view from the sand dunes


Nha Trang 

We arrived in Nha Trang (pronounced Nyah Chahng) at around 6:00 PM where we bought our train tickets for the following evening (11:54 PM) to Danang (the third largest city in Vietnam and 30 minutes from our actual destination: Hoi An). We immediately grabbed a couple of motos to our hotel where we rented a moto ourselves and explored the city for a couple of hours. When I say "explored," that's being extremely forgiving to myself to cover up the fact that we were looking for a particular vegetarian restaurant only 15 minutes away. We ended up looking all over the central part of Nha Trang to no avail...until we found it...already closed for the evening. Lucky for us, however, a man who worked next door hopped on his moto and led us to another vegetarian restaurant suggested by our guide book. When we found that restaurant to be closing also, he led us to a third option which- miracle of miracles!- happened to be open (and was passable [the fried broccoli {cauliflower} was pretty good]). We tried to give him 20,000đ more than once, which he persistently refused. He told us that he just wanted to assist us; the fact that he was able to locate a restaurant that met our needs was payment enough for him. I have to reiterate (from the previous post) how friendly and helpful a lot of people we met in this country were to us on this trip.

So, a little bit about Nha Trang. With a population of a little under 400,000, this coastal city is a popular vacation spot not just for foreigners but for Vietnamese people too. It is also considered one of the cheapest places in all of Vietnam. I believe I heard that while in Nha Trang, so who knows how true that actually is. Either way, it was not expensive, as was proven by the delicious giant tiger prawns and lobster Leah and I shared for $5/person.

Some women would travel across the beach looking to sell fresh seafood.  They would set their things down in front of you, and when you chose how much of what you wanted, they would grill it (back of photo) right in front of you. One unfortunate thing about this job would simply be the heat. Yes. Working on the beach sounds lovely, but when you're wearing long sleeves and pants in 90+ degree weather, it doesn't sound so lovely anymore.
Prawns on the beach
The majority of the trip consisted of getting much darker (or redder, really). The beach was warm and beautiful and the view over the sea was just as pleasing as it was in Mui Ne. You know what else is pleasing (what a great segue, don't you think?)? Ritter Sport chocolate. It's probably the best chocolate I've ever tasted in my life, and until I traveled to Nha Trang, I thought there were only about half a dozen varieties. I was so wrong. In a convenience store near some of the more "Westernized" restaurants, stood a rack with at least a dozen (probably more) varieties. I won't go into what was purchased, but let's just content ourselves with the fact that it was absolutely delicious. I need to stop talking about this. Next topic: massages. We both wanted to get massages while we were there so we each got one, which were an hour long. They were pretty nice; there were flowers in a bowl of water beneath the hole in the massage table.
Another great thing about Nha Trang is the night market. Apart from the many souvenir shirts and trinkets you can buy, the amount of food stalls and dessert stands seem endless. We shared several dishes between two food stalls: fried crab and shrimp spring rolls, avocado sushi, and scallops with green onion, which we enjoyed with ice cold beers. The last row of stalls served a delicious, goop-y dessert that I mentioned in my previous post:  xôi chè .
Xôi chè!!!
Scallops with green onion and tangy lime sauce
"Asparagus and Crap" at the night market
And so concludes our stay in Nha Trang. A well-deserved nap (you can have those on vacation, right?) was had on the hotel's backroom floor before heading out to the train station for the 10.5 hour train ride to Danang. When I was last in Vietnam, I rode a 16-hour sleeper bus, and it was miserable (painful, uncomfortable, cramped, and smelly). This time, I thought things might be a bit more comfortable on a train (a "hard-sleeper" car with six beds). It immediately impressed me for how opposite the experience was to traveling via sleeper bus. Night trains are superior for one simple reason: I can stretch myself out completely. I fell asleep within 20 minutes and that ride felt much faster and easier than the two five-hour daylight bus rides that preceded it. We arrived in Danang by 10:30 AM the following morning.
Oh! Be sure not stick your plugs in glasses of water or smoke while wearing tight bell-bottoms in bed. 
The beach in Nha Trang

Phở bò is a staple breakfast food in Vietnam. It's a simple noodle dish with beef except it's much much more. You actually feel like you're a part of the whole process since you can choose how much of what kind of greens you want sprinkled over your soup. Toss in some steamed bean sprouts, dab a little chili paste, pour a little garlic sauce and drizzle (douse) in various thick sauces and you're good to go. You might want to add an iced coffee to that, too.

Read on (in a couple of days) the final part of this trilogy: Return to Vietnam Pt. (Pt. III: Hoi An).

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