Nha Trang
Met
a fellow American backpacker on the night bus to Nha Trang and arriving early
in the city we wandered around aimlessly and lost before finally finding the
backpacker street and accommodation. A nice little cul-de-sac of hostels
featuring multiple nearby bars and a monkey chained to a tree. Ta da. Met up
with Patrick my Aussie mate who I’d first met in Hanoi and then again in Hoi An
and we took a nice twin room. Always feels like a luxury to have a private room
rather than a dorm. Nha Trang is apparently the beach capital of Vietnam and
this was reflected in the multiple high-end resorts that dominated the beach
strip. Also, it’s apparently one of the two destination spots for the hordes of
Russian tourists who come to Vietnam. Who knew? I guess the Russkies most often
come on organized/package type tours (similar to Chinese/Japanese/S. Koreans)
but then spend their entire month or whatever just hanging out in speedos in
either Nha Trang or the the nearby beach city of Mui Ne. For some reason or
another both the locals and other backpackers don’t seem especially enamored of
their presence. Think it has to do with the package tours not spreading the
money around to the locals. Or maybe it’s the speedos. A common complaint heard
about Nha Trang from other backpackers, “Too many Russians.” We went to a “spa”
one day with swimming pools and mud baths and it was full of big-bellied
Russian oligarch types, smelling of new money and accompanied by suspiciously
hot wives and girlfriends. *shrug*
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| Pre-gaming with the crew |
Linked
up with a nice Dutch couple (Rob and Maaike who Patrick and I, my Australian
travel buddy, would subsequently end up traveling with for 2+ months) and along
with a German fellow and a Norwegian and Lithuanian girl we rented motorbikes
and took off in search of a nearby waterfall. I had the Lithuanian on the back
of my bike and while I’d given people short rides before I hadn’t done so for
long distances. So that took a bit of getting used to and some initially extra
careful driving as I didn’t want to kill her (well either of us really). The ride ended up mostly being a beautiful
drive on great and uncrowded roads winding along the coast past fishing
villages. This was followed by the brief but usual terror of a crowded and narrow
highway filled with homicidal trucks and then finally a fun off-road track
through mud and over rocks to finally get to the waterfall. Very pretty and the
water was refreshingly cool.
Nha
Trang’s reputation as a party town seemed well earned and several nights were
spent in the usual debauchery and revelry. Hopping from bar to bar taking
advantage of free shots and chatting up promising backpackers. Good times all
around though one night the Dutch girl was apparently snuck something
unpleasant in a shot or bucket and drugged had to be drug home by her boyfriend
where she spent the night violently sick and uncomprehending. Yikes. We also
met a guy on the beach who had apparently been “roofied” and as a side effect
had some weird paralysis in his right hand (supposedly not an atypical side-effect
of GHB) which left it limp and non-responsive. Scary, although he assured us
that internet research suggested it would clear itself up in a week or two.
Luckily I had nothing but good drinking experiences there, with the possible
exception of the night Patrick got a bottle of “snake/scorpion” wine and we
decided we might as well drink it all. Not a pleasant taste I assure you. We
had gone out for a “quiet” night and so were at the bowling alley at the time.
The locals employed there all gathered around with curious, slightly disgusted
looks on their face to watch us drink the disgusting concoction.
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| Dead snake from the whiskey bottle gets a kiss |
Let’s
see, what else? Had a few really great seafood meals with our big crew,
barbequing our own meat on grills at the table or cooking it up as a soup in a
hotpot over a centrally placed burner. Yum. Going on a “booze cruise” to some
surrounding islands and little attractions with a bit of swimming and
snorkeling thrown in was a nice day. Plenty of fun times generally but after a
few days we decided to head onwards to Dalat for some detox and soothing
culture and scenery before we expired of too much drinking.
Dalat
Pretty
much the whole crew ended up in Dalat. The Norwegian girl Mathilde, American
John, Aussie Patrick, and the Dutchies Rob and Maaike were all there. Dalat is
an inland city, centrally located and with a bit of elevation that keeps it
pleasantly cool at night. It’s known, a bit optimistically probably, as the
‘little Paris’ of Vietnam and even has a mini Eiffel tower (which I think
doubles as a cell phone tower). I guess the French colonialists kind of started
the whole thing as a little resort getaway from the Saigon heat. Anyway, we
decided to organize a motorcycle tour for the next day with an early start and
that was that. The boys all had their own motorbikes and the girls rode on back
of two of them, the couple together and Mathilde with our Vietnamese guide.
After somehow escaping the morning city traffic alive we were off into the
countryside to check out the area. Apparently they grow and export a bunch of
flowers in Dalat, along with some fruits and vegetables that because of climate
don’t grow elsewhere in Vietnam, giving rise to local specialties such as
artichoke tea. Yum. There are also local wineries but for some reason no wine tours
as, per our guide, they’re government controlled and completely secret and off
limits. Ohhhkay. I’m sadly ignorant of a lot of the local history but my
general impression is the Central Highland region is home to a lot of ethnic
tribes which have some serious tensions with the government and there are
allegations of mistreatment and displacement; aggravated by the fact that some
of the previous grievances were exploited by the U.S. who recruited members of
these tribes in their anti-Communist efforts. So maybe the whole, you can’t go
to this region thing is somehow related? Just speculating. Our guide had been a
child living in a village only a few kilometers from My Lai (site of the
infamous American massacre of civilians during the war) but managed to get out
and get taken to Dalat which was a relatively safer place to be during the war.
All interesting stuff. So, lots of driving around windy mountain roads, a bit
of hill hiking, some nice temples and pagodas complete with chanting monk and a
giant waterfall were among the highlights. We also stopped upon randomly seeing
a little cock-fight sparring match in progress. Apparently it’s only legal to
fight them and gamble 3 days of the year around the Chinese New Year which is
coming up soon so they were getting their cocks all ready and prepared. Weird
but interesting sight. Oh yeah, almost forgot the region has a lot of coffee
plantations and a new little related sub-industry of that is weasel farming.
It’s some special Vietnamese weasel that eats the coffee beans, does some
digestive magic in there and then shits out the beans which are turned into
pricey weasel coffee. Ta da. Tasted pretty good but was a bit sad seeing them
in their cages. Also saw how they make and distill rice wine, complete with extremely
potent sample. Finally we went to some weird little tourist attraction called
“Crazy House” which consisted of strange, psychedelic Alice in Wonderland style
architecture and room decorations.
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| Not sure who this guy is supposed to be but you see him EVERYWHERE in Asia |
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| Fight! |
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| Can't believe they were sleeping considering their diet... |
Post-fight cock-cleaning
The
rest of the crew took off the day after but Patrick, John and I decided to
stick around for another day to do a canyoning tour. This involves
rappelling/abseiling down cliff faces and waterfalls. Fucking awesome
basically. A couple of them were seriously scary, my brain trusted the guide’s
knowledge and the rope’s strength on one level but still seemed to think
walking backwards over a vertical drop-off was a crazy and suicidal thing to
do. Ended up being a lot of fun with plenty of thrills. The tour was great too.
We were the only three in our group and while the other groups got rushed
through our guides let us do each cliff face twice. Not to mention the funny
story we got about Bear Grylls of Man Vs. Wild fame. Apparently he’d been
through the area at some earlier date to film an episode and our guide was also
hired to help out with leading the film crew and everyone through the area. So
he talked about how Bear was staying in a 5 star resort between filming and had
special (vegetarian) food requests when he wasn’t on screen biting into raw
fish. Also mentioned how the fish spearing scene involved two fish bought from
the market, let one go upstream and film it, show spear raised and ready to
strike, put second fish on end of spear and ta da! Finally they got the
government to open up the dam upstream so they could get a big rush of water
and comment on how you never know what’s going to happen in the jungle with the
heavy rains. Ha ha. That said, he also mentioned how Bear seemed like a really
great guy and taught and talked a lot about conservation and ecology without
being a condescending douche. So that’s good too. I mean, it is TV right?
