It’s hard to think about how to recap the last day or two while I am literally expelling all the water in my body through my pours as I write this. It is Monday afternoon and it has to be about 95 degrees outside, with close to 100% humidity. We are on the fourth of four floors in our boxers with the window open trying to take this awful humidity in stride. Oh and I have to mention, there is no power in the city, because we are in the tourist off season, so they turn off the power every other day. We have no fans or AC, just pure sweet breezes that blow into the room every minute or so. It isn’t like we haven’t had this type of misery before. Nick and I have been through weeks of this kind of weather together over the last three years. The saving grace is that this hotel, where we are paying five dollars a night, has a cold, clean indoor pool. We’ll be all right.
Yesterday we were in Nha Trang, the best coastal city in the country, I assume. It is a city with a gorgeous beach with turquoise water and a pretty good nightlife. Because we are in the tourist offseason, the hotels are hurting to fill their rooms. We found a decent place downtown with friendly owners who knew a little English and fixed some amazing fruit smoothies. We had multiple orders of strawberry smoothies and tried Jackfruit, a fruit native to this part of the world. It was amazing. Our adventures started out by renting a couple of scooters and exploring the streets. It was our first taste of scootering through a busy city, and we soon realized that it isn’t so hard to maneuver through the mob of bikes, motorbikes, and automobiles. Everyone sort of looks out for one another. As proof that it isn’t too difficult to survive the traffic, one only has to merge off of the sidewalk and into the lane without even looking towards the on-coming traffic and everyone will kindly avoid hitting you, without even getting upset. It is quite something. So we drove off to see a giant Buddha statue sitting on top of a pagoda and hillside. I don’t know how to describe Buddhist temples very well, but I can say I enjoyed the feeling of being in a house of worship (if I can call it that). It was very calming.
From the temple we headed south to ride along the coast and find a desolate beach we had heard about. We detoured off the main route and eventually found ourselves lost in small fishing neighborhoods and rice-farms as well. I love the motorbike. It can really take you places to explore the area. And if it can take me to the campo, a place that I long to see, where the farmers and farmers’ families live, I will feel right as rain. After getting lost and seeing some beautiful beach, we headed back into town, grabbed our suits and headed to the main beach and spent a good three hours relaxing and bathing, all the while peddlers came selling us silk-canvassed paintings and offering body massages as we laid. We even had some students offer us English-teaching jobs, a tempting proposition. To finish the evening, we drove north up the coast and found a restaurant on the shore. We ordered a beer and watched as the sun began to fall in the sky over the ocean. It was quite the way to end the night before we caught our over-night sleeper bus to Hoi An. After an unfortunate mishap in a roundabout where Nick went straight up a one-way street the wrong way and a gentleman ran into me with his bike which caused him to fall and scrape is scooter up, we headed home and waited for our ride north, wondering if we should have stayed another night in Nha Trang. We both agreed that we should have. Nha Trang is gorgeous.
We are now in Hoi An, the tailoring capital of the country, known for its cheap tailored clothing. Me and Nick have been taking advantage of that business and revamping our professional wardrobe back home. We are no longer travelling light, unfortunately, but when silk tailored shirts cost 14 dollars apiece, one must partake. We are in our room waiting to go collect our merchandise, as the seamstresses are making final adjustments to our garments. Hoi An is also gorgeous. It is on a peninsula surrounded by white-sand beaches and has a quieter atmosphere compared to the last couple of hustle-and-bustle regional hubs we visited. The only complaint we have is the noodle soup here. There is something about it that is turning us off from noodles. It’s strange. We hope our next destination, Hue, will revitalize our love for Vietnamese noodles. Until then, we have discovered Bahm Beo, a Chinese dough ball filled with meat, egg, and peas, which cost a quarter and ore amazingly delicious.
To end, I will mention that it has been uncomfortably humid. Thanks to a huge thunderstorm today things really cooled off. But we certainly understand now why this is the offseason for traveling. You wouldn’t want to come unless you don’t mind sweating through all your clothes just by walking down the corner.
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