Nha Trang sites & the mud baths

After Saigon and the Mekong Delta we flew up to Nha Trang. I remember hearing about it while we were at war with the Vietnamese and also, my brother-in-law was stationed there so, of course, I was really interested to see what we would find there.

Our flight was uneventful and quick, an hour. When we had originally made our plans we were going to take a train and then soon found out that is would be a 12 hour trip and the cost would

be the same as flying so, considering we have such a strong grasp of the obvious, we flew.

The airport is about 20 miles from the center of the city so it was nice that a driver was waiting at the airport to take us to our hotel which, is across the street from the beach so that means we had a 'beach view' from our room.

The city of Nha Trang is really nice and the layout is primarily along the beach.

Our driver dropped us at our hotel so we could check in and have some breakfast and then he returned to take us to the Cham Towers and then to 'mud baths'. The only thing I regret is

that we only took a couple of photos at the mud baths and none of us sitting in the tubs, etc. (back to the mud baths a little later).

We walked to the top of the hill where the Cham Towers are located and toured the grounds and looked down on the harbor. I was thinking how this area probably was the same in the 60's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po_Nagar to learn more click on this link and see it from the harbor.

After that we went to the mud baths. This is one of the places you say to yourself that you would want to return to. The grounds are wonderful and the choice is to either share a tub or have an individual one. So you get into a wooden tub of warm mud and stay there until

someone comes and tells you it is time to get out then it is off to lay on chaise lounges so the mud dries - we couldn't figure out why we needed to let the mud dry but then they are the experts and so we followed the rules. After that we showered off and the herded - if you can imagine Angie and me being herded - to an area

up a small arroyo/canyon to a private hot tub and I mean hot - secluded from other hot tub goers. We figured that we could have boiled eggs in this hot tub. No matter how hard we tried we never really were able to submerge ourselves and our skin that touched the water still hasn't recovered. We then waited on chaise lounges for the massage ladies. The massages were really wonderful and while they were going on the ladies continually reminded us how hard they were working and we could give them a large tip if we wanted.

Now we are back with our driver - who speaks almost no english - and we are wanting to buy a bottle of wine, you can only imagine how interesting that was to get the point across but we prevailed and he took us to a wine shop - see photo of the guys doing a wine tasting.

Back to our hotel we enjoyed a glass of wine on the veranda and then off to walk on the beach.

The hotel people suggested a restaurant for us just a few blocks from where we were

staying. A bit of a challenge to get there considering street lights are not really prevalent on the side streets and the sidewalks are also challenging but we made it and had a wonderful dinner.

Again back at our hotel to see people arriving for a wedding reception - on their motor bikes. At the reception they were enjoying Karaoke, really enjoying Karaoke - I guess it is an Asian thing.

Now it was time to get some sleep as we had an early flight to Da Nang the next morning.

Thinking of Viet Nam

The last time I wrote @ my trip to Viet Nam I thought it would be my last time because I was thinking these posts would be boring to anyone but me but I then I decided if no one else wants to read this it would be just fine because what I really need to do is record my trip to this amazing place and how fortunate I was to be able to feel it, smell it, experience it, eat its food and just simply live it. If you are interested in these blog posts, enjoy. If they are not it might be because of my writing style and I am going to work on that during this post( I read the previous ones and some parts are a little boring).When Angie & I planned our trip I really didn't care if I went or not, actually I really wasn't interested in going at

all. So what happened? What changed my mind? Nothing really! I just got caught up in the planning and then all of a sudden it was time for us to go. I guess I thought Angie wanted to go considering she had been talking about this for 4 years, Yes, 4 Years but then if you know Angie, not being able to make decisions is part of her charm.

Well August '10 came along and we bought our tickets. We found someone in Viet Nam to help us with our reservations and I have to say at that point I became more interested in

going but really, I didn't care so much. It was just something to do and some place to go.

Even the night we left I wasn't that excited about the trip. I wasn't sure about going considering it was so far and I really didn't have the passion for it but as it turne

d out what this trip did

for me was to give me the passion for traveling to places off the 'beaten path'. Places where only adventurous travelers would go. I figure that I only have a certain amount of time to travel this way - throw my sh.. in

a carry on bag, only use public transportation or walk when we get to where

we are going an

d never, ever

travel with a group of old white people ( at least at this point in my life).

With all of this in mind we had a wonderful time and are now talking about going

to Thailand or Egypt in the Fall.

So what are some of the highlights in my trip?

Actually standing in

the line(s) at the international terminal in L.A. I know that sound

s weird but it was a

real awakening into the numbrs of peo

ple we would be traveling with from L.A to Taipei and some of them on to

Saigon.

Arriving in Saigon - the trip to our hotel(notice the Buddhist icon on the dash of the taxi?) and seeing not only the motor bikes but the way people live now and how this has not

changed for years, Hurray.

We were able to visit the largest Buddhist temple in Saigon - it is amazing, See photos.

Well, it is time for me to go to bed

but I will write more tomorrow, enjoy!

Thinking of Viet Nam

Viet Nam and what it means to me

More thoughts of Vietnam

Hi there;
I have decided that I should give you the itinerary of my/our trip before I tell you more about where we were and what we did. ( When I refer to 'we' I mean my friend Angie and I )

Our 1st day in Vietnam was in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City ). Our 2nd day in was in the Mekong Delta. Our 3rd day was in Nha Trang. Our 4th day was in DaNang. The 5th day was in Ancient City of Hue. The 6th day was in Hanoi. The 7th and 8th days in Ha Long bay. The 9th and final day was back in Hanoi.

To get from Saigon to Nha Trang, from Nha Trang to DaNang from Hue to Hanoi we flew Viet Nam Airlines. From DaNang to Hue we took a 'sleeping' bus, which I will tell you about a little later in the blog post

Now you have an understanding of the trip.

We always stayed in 3 star hotels which means we had 2 twin beds, wi-fi, television (once we even had english speaking t.v. and HBO) and mini bar and always a tea pot with tea bags. The accessories in the bathroom always included: toothbrush & tooth paste and comb along with the normal supplies that are found in hotel bathrooms almost everywhere.

Our rooms were adequate actually, they were rather nice and in most cases the beds were quite comfortable except our room in DaNang. This room was the largest one of them all which really surprised us so, when we opened the door we thought - This is great! I excitedly sat down on the bed only to discover how hard it was. Holy Shit - what is this? It turned out that we were going to be sleeping on box springs. You say to yourself - I'll call the front desk and have them bring up mattresses well, it is not quite that simple. The only person at the front desk who speaks English (sort of) certainly will never understand what a mattress is and why we need one. So we slept on our box spring beds.

Food is always important when talking about going to exotic places actually any place for that matter. How was the food? We loved it, as a matter of fact, we only ate Vietnamese food and it was wonderful. Breakfast was included in the price of our hotel rooms and it included:

baguettes - probably from the French occupation of VietNam along with food that you would normally see at dinner - sliced canned ham (well not at my house but maybe at some houses), rice soup (really tastes like nothing even loaded with salt), beef with vegetables, shrimp, cold noodle salad & hot noodle salad and french fried onion rings, of all things, there is always an omelet station and pho - something like hot broth with 'stuff' in it. Of course there were many more things on the buffet then this, oh yes, canned peaches. I included a photo of the buffet in our hotel in Saigon so you could see what the food looks like.

I thought I would loose weight on this trip but it is obvious I didn't, which, I blame on the food, it certainly couldn't be my lack of will power.

See you soon.

More 1st Impressions of Vietnam

1st impressions of Viet Nam

I am finally ready to tell you about my trip to Viet Nam. Got my laundry done and put away [not too difficult considering I took a carry on] Got my photos organized. Got my cold under control, that was huge

I went to Viet Nam without any pre-conceived ideas about the people, the food, the lodging and the transportation.

Just to give you a brief background of why we went to Viet Nam rather than any where else in the world. My friend and traveling companion, Angie works at a company that has an office in Viet Nam as well as other places in Asia. She has been talking about going their for 4 years so finally I said let's go. While we were planning this trip we learned that a friend of a friend is a travel agent in Saigon [Ho Chi Minh City]. This woman made our planning much easier. She helped us with our hotel reservations in the cities we wanted to go to and the flight arrangements within Viet Nam. She was really wonderful and she also wanted to spend the day with us when we arrived which gave us some insight into what we would expect once we left Saigon including navigating through the motorbikes as we crossed the street.

Keep in mind, we could have done this by ourselves but she made it much simpler and easier and a lot more fun.

We had a driver pick us up at the airport and it wasn't long before we came face to face with the traffic - holy sh.. i thought this is madness, absolute chaos but for the people who live here, it all makes sense. We would find out, as we traveled throughout the country, this is NORMAL!!!!!

Keep in mind there are 35 million motor bikes and 80 million people.

Looking at these photos you will see that people are the same there as here. Look at the girl talking on her mobile while driving her motorbike.

I am going to make a post every few days and I share with you my thoughts and photos of my experiences of this trip. I hope you will enjoy this and think about going to this wonderful almost untouched place

Enjoy