Vietnam Trip Day 2: Around Nha Trang

I woke up Sunday morning, my first full day in Vietnam, to the sounds of school children shouting and squealing in glee across the street from my hostel.  Nothing like hundreds of screaming school children to make me feel at home!  Why were they in school on a Sunday morning?  I asked my landlady, Mrs. Rose, later and she said they don't have school on Sundays so it must have been some kind of exercise or sports class.

I had signed up for the breakfasts at the hostel for my first two mornings (for about $1.50 per) so I sat down in the lobby to a nice french baguette, two eggs, and a cup of Vietnamese coffee, which I had black instead of in the Vietnamese style (with milk and lots of sugar) so it ended up being more like an espresso for me.

After breakfast I took a walk to the beach, which was only about a half kilometer away.  The road was crowded with school kids who were apparently out of their activity now.  I was a little paranoid due to some things I'd heard about people who would grab your phone out of your hand (and I presumed your wallet from your pocket) so I was a bit suspicious of the school kids who were trailing me down the sidewalk but then I noticed more of them off in the side streets and eventually determined I didn't in fact have a 'tail'.

The beach was wide and clean enough for the most part, and there was a fair number of tourists and even a few locals in the water so I went for a little swim after hiding my phone and wallet in my shirt under my flip flops near other obvious tourists, and keeping an eye on them the whole time I was in the water.  The water was nice and warm and shallow with a sandy bottom (in one section marked by buoys) most of the way out.  Before I figured out why all the bathers were clustered in one area (marked by the buoys) I strayed out of that area and there were some pretty rough rocks under the water which I managed to scrape one knee on slightly.  After drying off back on the beach I realized it was still only about 8:00 a.m. (the sun comes up and sets fairly early there because they're in the same timezone as Bankok but considerably further east) so I decided to explore a little and I walked further down the beach and then inland into the town trying to figure out how to circle around and come back to my hostel from the opposite direction I'd left it.

This is a roundabout where the road my hostel was in a side street off of met the main road running N/S along the beach.

Looking south before my swim.

I eventually made it to the end of the sandy beach you can see down there in the distance and was trying to work my way out to the point where there were some large rocks with people standing on them but it wasn't easy to get to on the shore.  I might have been able to wade or swim, but instead I cut inland just a bit to a road heading in that direction which eventually took me to a place where there were lots of buses parked and what I think was a restaurant or maybe some sort of country club and the parking attendants let me know I should keep on moving rather than going in.

The new construction in this picture reminded me of Korea, but it wasn't as ubiquitous there as it is here.  Apparently pulling your shirt up under your armpits is a thing in Vietnam when the day is hot.

Looking back north in the direction from which I'd come.

The clouds gave some nice relief from the sun.

Also looking back to the north.

This is where I'm leaving the coast, which was rocky, to try to work my way out onto the point.

There's the rocky coast I was avoiding (in the foreground).

At this point I've headed inland after being turned away from the point.  The road I was on had circled around as it climbed and then it headed back across the the main beach highway on this bridge.  Those are te same highrises under construction from the earlier picture but I'm past them now, looking back to the north, the direction from which I'd come.

And this is what was in front of me heading inland across the bridge.

And this is still from the bridge but looking south in the direction I'd been walking.  At this point I should note that my whole 'section' of Nha Trang was actually the smaller northern section of the city and beach to the north of the river which flows through the heart of the city and is just out of view around the corner in this picture.  There is a much larger, longer, glitzier, more crowded, touristy stretch of beach and city on the other side of the river in the direction this picture was taken but I never made it there.

Just random street scenes on my walk away from the beach into the town.

Eventually my road T-ed into this road, which seemed like a pretty hip area.  To the left I was able to read the sign "Nha Trang University" (in English) so I went to the right, which was what I needed to do anyway to head back to the north where my hostel was.

Heading to the north the road started going downhill.  I remember a bunch of coffee shops here (as well as everywhere else), some phone stores, and other random businesses like tire shops.

Eventually at the bottom of the hill the road I was on T-ed into another more major road and I took another right hoping this was the major road my driver had taken me down the night before on the way to the hostel and that I'd recognize the turn that would put me on the street heading toward the beach which my hostel was just off.  Which in fact it did and I did and everything worked out fine.

I saw people (men, I guess) playing this game pretty often in the coffee shops.  Is it a small version of 'Go'?  Or could it be Asian chess that I've heard about?  I'm not sure.  When they made their moves they often seemed to slap their pieces down on the board pretty violently, but I don't know if that was just bluster or some more intrinsic part of the game.

Eventually I made it to the right turn I'd noted (in the dark) the night before and took this video before leaving the busy road to try to give a sense of the traffic situation.  Remember though this is a Sunday morning about 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. and it was nothing like the Saturday night, 8:30 p.m. traffic of the night before:

And finally I was back at my "Little Home" hostel.  My room the first two nights was in the back of the building on the far side from this picture and at first I didn't think it had any window at all.  When I woke up the first morning though I realized there were two glass blocks set in the wall high up which were letting in some daylight.  When I returned here following the motorcycle trip I had the room just across the hall which was on the side of the building you see in this photo and I had a real window which I could open like the ones you can sort of see in this picture.  You'll see a photo looking out of that window on a rainy morning later.  Obviously it wasn't raining on this morning!  Eventually when I returned here yet again for my final night before my flight out I had the top floor room with the balcony on the far side of the building which you can see above.  The ground floor room on the right is the reception and "lobby" area where I ate breakfast.  The ground floor room on the left is a garage where they parked all the scooters and motorcycles (it could only hold about five).  The owner's family lived on the ground floor in rooms at the back and the top two floors had the guest rooms.

Okay, so I've breakfast and an adventure walk and it's still only 10:00 in the morning!  I decided to rest in the cool (happily the A/C in the room worked well) and then take another walk later in the afternoon in the opposite direction (along the coast to the north) and find some lunch, and maybe a beer, and hopefully another swim.  I needed to be back here by 6:00 p.m. though because I had offered to take Eddie and his family out for dinner that evening.

After resting I head out on my second walk of the day, this time generally to the north.  But this time I started out cutting though 'town' intending to come back along the coast road.

It was pretty hot and sunny.

 

I kept angling toward this hill, climbing up on smaller and smaller roads, then alleys, then finally circling the mountain to the right (toward the beach) a little way up from the base alongside an irrigation ditch.  It kind of reminded me of the ditch trail at home, except more jungley.  Eventually the path came to an abrupt end at what looked to be a small landslide.  I considered trying to go around that and continue on but there were some nasty stickery weeds which left a bunch of small needles in my hand and leg after I brushed against them so backtracked a bit until I found an even smaller track going back down the hill toward a large condo building I could see not far away through the foliage.  That worked pretty well except that as I approached some small houses at the bottom of the hill a bunch of dogs started barking and I realized I was in somebody's back yard and I was trying to cut between two of these small houses and get to a road and when I came out at the front of the house I realized there was a big metal gate between me and the road.  They had a gate between themselves and the road but nothing to stop people from coming onto the property from the mountainside at the back.  The front door was open and I saw two teenage girls watching t.v. in the living room and I tried to communicate that I had come down from the hill and just wanted to get out to the street and eventually one came out and opened the gate for me (there was a latch but it wasn't locked, and I could have done it myself).  As I reached the 'street' (a winding path between buildings about wide enough for a scooter) I saw a guy in the next yard over watching me and he was friendly enough and showed me which way to go down the alley to get back to a more major road.

 

I walked and walked and walked north quite a way along the beach in the hot sun, keeping my eye out for a shady restaurant where I could get some lunch but before I chose one I'd passed out of the zone where they all were.  This is looking back to the south from where I'd come, and at the beach (in the distance) where I'd been walking earlier that day.

Also, unfortunately, while picturesque, not so good for swimming here because of the lack of a sandy beach.  I decided to press on.

And now I'm actually on my way back already.  I'd been quite a way beyond this but struck out on both restaurants (of the small casual variety I was looking for) and places to swim.  Most of the coast along here was fenced off because (as I learned later) it had been bought up for development of resorts.  There were a few restaurants but they were high-end fish places and one Chinese place which I wasn't in the mood for.  I really wanted some more Pho!  However, at this point I was really hot and tired and feeling a bit dizzy so I bought two bottles of cold water from this family that had a little roadside convenience store.  I was just planning to drink it while I kept walking but the father (not in the picture at this point) invited me to sit down with them so I did.  They were eating lunch, I guess.  It looked like some kind of chicken.  They asked if I wanted some (all of this communication is with hand gestures and smiles, by the way) but I declined.  I drank both those waters and got another one for the road.  Then I decided to ask if they could call me a taxi because I'd seen some taxis outside some of the swankier restaurants I'd passed.  "Taxi" was a word the man recognized as I mimed making a phone call and he called one for me.  It was only 7 km back to the roundabout, and I think I'd been about 2 km further down the road before I turned around.  So I guess I'd gone about 11 km, or about 6 miles (not counting in-town/mountainside wanderings) and the taxi ride only turned out to be 52,000 vnd (about $2.50) so that worked out well.

I had the taxi drop me off back at the part of the beach closest to my hostel where I'd first swum the day before, which was actually that same morning, but just felt like the day before.  I took another swim and read my book in the shade of the seawall (since now the sun was getting lower in the west and casting a shadow on the upper part of the beach.  Then, sitting on a bench, up from the beach, on the side of the road, dusting the sand off my feet to put my shoes and socks back on (I'd worn tennis shoes for this hike intending it to be more of a serious walk than the morning, which turned out to be a good decision) a bunch of kids came and started 'talking' to/at/with me.  Everywhere I went in the countryside all the kids liked to wave and say 'hello'.  This city group a little bolder though.  One boy who isn't pictured was even a little verbally aggressive even though he was probably only about 10 yrs old.  I was keeping an eye on all my stuff (phone, wallet, sunglasses in my camera bag 'murse' - "man purse") and I was a little nervous when one of the kids asked to hold my phone to take a groupie of us (fearing she'd run off with it) but it all turned out well and I bid them a firm adieu as soon as I had my shoes on.

Oh, there's the aggressive one, on the right of the frame.  Hey, my phone/camera is getting further away from me!  Seeing the water bottle in the bottom of this picture reminds me that the aggressive one asked if he could have it so I gave it to him, retrieved my phone, and made my escape.

After returning to the hostel I took a shower and rested a bit until Eddie came to get me at 6:00 for dinner as planned.  He had his son and daughter with him.  Apparently he and his wife have some issues.  His son is a senior in high school, like Max, and his daughter is 14 and in 8th grade, just like my students!  On the way to the restaurant I rode on the back of Eddie's bike and his son rode the scooter with the daughter on the back.

Eddie's son.  A senior in HS.  I asked what he was going to do next year and Eddie sort of shrugged and pointed out that they didn't have any money for them to go to university.  The kids' English was not as good as Eddie's, who was quite proficient with spoken English but asked me for help several times typing Facebook messages to customer inquiries.  By the way, Eddie's real name is Khoa, by the way.

This was a different place but the same idea as the night before.  While this restaurant actually had some indoor seating in a building behind us we were sitting out in the parking lot grilling, again.  More beef wrapped around mushrooms, maybe some chicken and octopus?  Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what we ordered.  There were always a few small slices of veggies (sweet potato, okra) included with the meat dishes.  I had thought we were going for seafood, because I thought Eddie/Khoa had asked me "do you like seafood"? And I enthusiastically said yes.  But it turns out (I only realized much later) that he was talking about "street food" not seafood.

And here's a short clip to give the ambiance of dinner.  In the middle of it the son took a call and then got up to go off with some friends.  That had a familiar feel!

After dinner we discussed how to get me back to my hostel and leave the motorcycle there for me ready to start our tour the next day.  It turned out the son had taken the scooter so we only had one motorcycle for the three of us.  So with Eddie driving and his daughter in front of him and me on the back we returned to the hostel and parked the bike inside (they close and lock the gate at night) and Eddie and his daughter took a taxi back to their house.

And thus I finished my first full week (it felt like, though really it was only a day) in Vietnam!