Nha Trang, Mui Ne
After grueling shopping of Hoi An we needed some quality RnR, and Nha Trang with Mui Ne were just the answer. Both towns are located on the beaches of the South China sea, and while the beaches are no match to those we saw in Thailand, they are still pretty nice.
Nha Trang was first. We arrived there by night sleeper bus around 6am, and were immediately overrun by locals on motorcycles offering hotels in the area. By then my patience towards pushy people was quickly approaching zero, and my back hurt from the uncomfortable bus ride, so I had nothing good to say to these people.
The approach we've been taking lately regarding finding a place to stay is to walk around the area with high concentration of budget accommodations, and look at the rooms before we commit to them. We did just that, and half an hour later found a place across the road from the beach. After a quick 2 hour nap we were ready to take on the town. We walked down to the beach, and walked on the sand until we saw Lousiana brewery that made very decent beer, had a pool as well as a pool table, cots for laying around the pool, and a massage room. It was perfect for our needs, so we spent most of the day time there for the next two days.
One thing that became apparent as soon as we got out of the bus was that the town caters to Russians. All restaurants have Russian menus, and some waiters even speak Russian. Same goes for the stores; stores that sell leather goods get the most prominent locations, and advertise their wares in Russian. We kept ourselves entertained by finding funny translations.
Second day brought Julie's birthday. Yey, congratulations baby!!! So naturally Julie decided to get a cold. But we still spent the day at the brewery speaking only English to avoid being detected by the scores of Russians that looked and sometimes behaved like the characters of "Nasha Russia" (Tagil !!!) At night we went to a restaurant with some Italian dishes, and a French name. Julie got to blow out a candle on a tiramisu, which I had to draw on a piece of paper along with a cake to explain to the waiter what I needed from him.
The next morning we were supposed to take a bus to Mui Ne, but the idiot travel agent messed up, and we missed our bus. After some yelling at the wrong people (the travel agent at fault failed to show up, or pick up the phone) we decided to stay one more day and night. Luckily the guest house where we booked the bus is owned by a nice lady that was very accommodating, gave us back our money, arranged for the bus the next morning. We decided to spend the night right there rather than attempt an evening bus that would arrive to Mui Ne around 2am, making the guesthouse search very difficult.
Surprisingly this day was very nice despite the morning misadventures. We had the best breakfast ever at Le Petit Cafe. They had (in the order of importance) good, non-Lipton tea, the best Croque Madame that I had since France, yummy crepes, and good cappuccino.
After breakfast we went to the brewery where Julie, still a bit sick, went to sleep by the pool, and I went running on the beach. Later in the evening we returned to Le Petit Cafe for their selection of cheeses and pate. As you might have guessed, we are by now all riced out. It proved to be another great meal.
The next morning we successfuly boarded a bus to Mui Ne. The bus turned out to be a sleeper bus again, which is strange when you ride it during the day, but it was a decent bus otherwise, and we arrived to Mui Ne without issues. Once there we set out to look for a guesthouse, and at the very first one we ran into Lena and David, the Canadians we befrended in Hue. We interrupted our search to have lunch with them, then dropped our heavy bags in their room, and went to look at the cheap but nice guesthouse recommended by their new friend. In another 15 minutes we were all situated in our new room, ready for more beach time. We spent a couple more days on the beach (Mui Ne is essentially one street along the beach), and on the third day rented a scooter to visit the only attraction nearby - the sand dunes. One set of dunes is white, and the other is red.
At both locations kids offer to rent the makeshift sleds to slide down the dunes. At the white dunes I found a half a sled, and tried to give it a go:
We stayed at a quieter end of town. While we had the scooter we decided to check out the other, touristy end. It turned out even more Russians-oriented than Nha Trang.
At one store the clerk could not understand English at all, however when 3 Russian ladies walked in, and asked him in Russian whether he remembered them because they were there the day before, he responded in a very good Russian. At the same store Julie was trying tea, and some dry fruit, and asked the clerk whether they had black tea, and when the clerk could not understand her, another Russian lady took upon herself to translate for us, and explained to him what Julie wanted. Not to embarrass ourselves, and the lady we maintained the character, and continued to speak English, so the next thing the lady had to translate for Julie was the name of 'guava', which sounds the same in both languages, to the amusement of the lady's husband who commented on how good of a job she did in that translation. We did not feel too bad pretending, after all she got to practise her English, and it will likely make a good conversation piece. Julie says it reminded her of my stories when I was "translating" back in Russia at the 1994 Goodwill games.
The next day we caught a bus to our last destination of Vietnam, Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh city.
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| 2011.12.05 Mui Ne |
