China Beach, Vietnam

China Beach, just outside of Danang, was my last stop my tour through Vietnam. One would think that 6 1/2 weeks would be enough to cover just about everything, but one thing I've learned about myself over the last few months is that I'm a slow traveler... when I find a place I like, I tend to stay longer than I initially intended. Unfortunately, that meant I had to cut some other things out of my trip through Vietnam. I skipped over the mountainous region of Dalat, only saw Danang for one night, and had to completely skip Hue and everything north of Danang. I've been to Vietnam once before on a previous trip to SE Asia, but during that trip I only visited Hanoi. I've yet to see Halong Bay and Sapa, or anything else other than Hanoi in N. Vietnam.... Oh well, ideas for another trip in the future I guess. Or maybe I'll pass back through that way somewhere later on in this trip. Who knows...
I chose to visit China Beach purely on the recommendation of two guys from Finland that I had met during the very beginning of my trip through Vietnam. I'd only been in Vietnam for a few days, staying on the island of Phu Quoc, and Pirkka and Tony insisted that China Beach was the best place they'd been so far in Vietnam. Considering they had traveled all the way down the coast (and I was just begining my trip going north), I found this to be both intriguing and disconcerting. First, I was intrigued by what they found so appealing about China Beach, and second, I was concerned that everything else in between would basically suck. Well, as I've said before in other posts... never believe everything that you hear or read, find out for yourself.
I stayed at a place recommended by Pirkka and Tony called Hoa's Place, and almost immediately realized why they enjoyed China Beach so much. Hoa's Place is the kind of place that makes you feel instantly at home. Before I even had a chance to take my bags to my room and get settled, a group of people staying there invited me to sit down and play cards with them and proceeded to teach me a game called "shithead". China beach itself is beautiful, but it was the camaraderie of the people staying at Hoa's that made the visit so special. Unfortunately I only had a couple of nights to spend here, but they were great nights and it was the people that made it so great. Everyone has dinner together at Hoa's, family style, and during the day people hang out and play cards, go to the beach, or go off and do their own thing. But whatever it was, something about the place just worked.
One night the whole group took a trip to Danang to play pool. Another time a group of us took a trip to the nearby Marble Mountains, which were absolute beautiful... One of the most amazing places I've seen in Vietnam. Unfortunately the pictures didn't turn out so well since we visited in the evening, trying to catch the sunset. The mountains are exactly what they sound like - mountains made completely of marble. One of which has many elaborate temples and caves carved right into the mountain itself. Quite amazing, but being dark and smokey (from the burning of incense inside the temples) made for not so good picture taking. The view from the top was quite spectacular. But again, being that it was dusk made it difficult to take a decent picture.
The following morning I finally had the chance to meet Hoa (he was away on business when I first arrived), and said my goodbye's to everyone else and left for the airport in Danang to fly back to Ho Chi Minh City where I would be catching an evening flight to Kuala Lumpur. Goodbye Vietnam...

Hoi An, Vietnam

Hoi An, my second to last stop on my tour through Vietnam, was quite a pleasant surprise after the torturous bus ride from Nha Trang. The bus ride was supposed to be about 11 hours so I decided that I would take an overnight sleeper bus so that I could sleep through most of the journey. I was to be picked up from my hotel to be taken to the bus at around 7pm, but once again nobody showed. This was the second time I hadn't been picked up from my hotel in Nha Trang, maybe because my hotel was in a somewhat obscure location, but I have a feeling its more likely just the way business is handled with tourism in Vietnam. Unfortunately the tourism industry is fairly new to Vietnam and the bugs haven't quite been worked out like they have in places like Thailand, where things run like a finely tuned BMW.
Anyway, back to the bus... Luckily I was able to contact the booking company and they immediately sent a motorbike to come get me. The bus was running late so I was still able to go. But as I got on the bus, I immediately had the feeling that maybe taking the bus wasn't such a good idea. I suggest to anyone who may be making the trip from Nha Trang to Hoi An or Hue to definitely take the train (or fly), you're body will thank you for it. The bus was completely packed, and the sleeper seats were so small that anyone over 5'8" almost wouldn't fit. The arrangements of the seats reminded me of fallen dominoes, all stacked on top of each other with your legs cramped underneath the seat in front of you. We finally got on our way, but less than an hour later the air-con on the bus stopped working. We stopped, there was some fiddling with the fuse box, fuses replaced, and we were quickly on our way... until about fifteen minutes later when it happened again, then again shortly after that. We finally pulled over at a rest stop and sat there for hours while we waited for somebody to come out and make the required repairs. We eventually got on our way, but that wasn't even the worst of it. The sleeper bus is supposed to have a toilet on board, which it did, to make the journey shorter as they wouldn't need to make as many stops, but it was pad-locked so that nobody could use it. Apparently to keep the smell down. So everybody was at the complete mercy of the drivers who would only stop when THEY needed to go, and this generally meant somewhere along the side of the road along the way. Not so bad for the guys, but I definitely felt sorry for the girls. All in all the journey took over 17 hours!
After the rough journey, I took my time trying to find a comfortable place to stay and found a nice little hotel in the center of Old Town Hoi An, balcony and swimming pool included. I relaxed for a while, grabbed a bite to eat, and spent the evening strolling the streets of Old Town amongst the glow of all the busy restaurants and cafes. Hoi An is also an excellent place to get affordable custom-made clothing. In this town of only 80,000 residents there are over 500 tailors!
Worth checking out in Hoi An is the Japanese Covered Bridge. The bridge has a temple built into one side of it, and a roof over it for shelter. It was constructed in 1593 and could use a fresh coat of paint once again. But according to legend, construction began on the year of the monkey and finished in the year of the dog, which would explain the monkeys guarding one side of the bridge and the other side by dogs... statues, not real ones of course.
Hoi An is situated on the Thu Bon River and is an excellent example of Vietnam's yester-year as it was left relatively untouched by the damage from the Vietnam war that took its toll on so much of the rest of the country. And although Hoi An is situated riverside, beautiful Cua Dai beach is only a short 5km ride away, and bikes are available everywhere for about $1/day.
Hoi An is a beautiful and charming town, and a must stop for any itinerary on a trip through Vietnam!

Kite-surfing in Mui Ne and Scuba Diving in Nha Trang

The last two weeks have been all about water-sports for me. Kite-surfing in Mui Ne, Vietnam and Scuba Diving in Nha Trang, Vietnam.
After leaving Ho Chi Minh City, my next stop was in Mui Ne, Vietnam, about a five hour bus ride away. I took a late afternoon bus out of HCM, so by the time I arrived in Mui Ne it was already late. It's not much fun searching around for the perfect place to stay in the middle of the night, so I just picked a place that sounded good from what I had read in Lonely Planet. It was a beautiful room with a balcony that hung over the water and I spent a good couple of hours just sitting out there listening to the waves crash upon the shore. Very peaceful. Mui Ne is a beatiful little beachtown, very well set up for tourism with accomodations ranging from budget to very high-end. I was there during the low-season so the place was somewhat quiet, but this just made the beautiful beaches all that more enjoyable. Mui Ne is also the premier water-sport destination in Vietnam with the weather and location making in ideal for wind sports such as kite-surfing and windsurfing.
The following morning I took a nice long walk for my never ending search for a good cup of coffee and came across a place called "Fly Kite-surfing school". I was intrigued. Kite-surfng is something that always appealed to me, so I thought I would stop in and take a look at what was going on. Wasn't much wind that morning so I wasn't able to watch anybody kite-surf, but Liz, one of the owners/instructors of "Fly" came over and started giving me the sales pitch. At this point I was only curious and had no real intentions of signing up for lessons right away, so I told her I would think it over and get back to her. I continued on my walk thinking about how cool it would be to learn how to kite-surf and within 20 minutes had convinced myself that if I didn't do it now, then when? I turned around and went back to Fly and signed up. Liz told me to come back in about an hour as there was somebody else who was thinking about taking lessons as well and it would be nice to get us started at the same time. She also told me where I could get a good cup of coffee - about a half kilo. up the road at a place called Joe's Art Cafe. Great coffee and a very friendly staff with whom I became good friends with over the following week and a half.
I returned an hour later for my first lesson. I had signed up for a 5 hour package and the first hour was spent just on learning about wind conditions, kite set up, and self-rescue. No actual water time involved at this point. The following day, when the wind was cooperating, we practiced flying the kites on the beach, then later took them out into the water to "body-drag", which is basically flying the kite while in the water, tacking back and forth while the kite drags you through it. It was quite fun actually, but at this point I had realized that kite-surfing wasn't something I was going to master in just a five hour course. This was going to take some practice!
I spent the next week hoping the wind and weather would cooperate so that I could continue my lessons, but after being in Mui Ne for about ten days I realized that I could spend the next month waiting for that to happen. My visa was about to expire in a few days and I still had places I wanted to visit. It was time to move on. I did manage to complete 4 of the 5 hours I signed up for and got a real good taste for what kite-surfing is all about. Definitely something I will continue to persue.
Mui Ne was great. The place is beautiful, but often times its the people you meet along the way that make a place what it is. Bruce, the fellow Canadian taking lessons with me; Jeff and Liz our instructors who told us about the poker tournaments we played in and later took our money; Twee and John, the owners of Vietnam-Austria House (a place I moved to later to be closer to where I was taking lessons) with whom I had dinner and beers with on many nights; and Nhieu from the coffee shop, who also worked at the restaurant next door from me where we played many a game of pool. All these people helped make my stay in Mui Ne just that much better! I will be back to visit you all one day.

Nha Trang was nice too. Also a beach town, but more of a city-like atmosphere and all the tourists to go with it. The beach was ok, but the sand is very coarse and there is the constant flow of people trying to sell you books, fruit, gum, cotton-swabs, or whatever. I quickly learned that the best way to enjoy the beach in Nha Trang was to dish out a little cash for one of the comfy lounge cairs offered by the many bar/huts along the beach. The hawkers aren't allowed to bother the customers there so it makes hanging out at the beach much more peaceful.
After a couple of days lounging on the beach, I decided I would do some diving. I had heard that Nha Trang has some of the best diving in all of Vietnam so I wanted to check it out. I went to Amigos Divers and signed up for a dive trip the next day. They were to pick me up at my hotel the following morning at 7:15 am, but by 8 am nobody had showed up. Turns out they couldn't find my hotel (to their credit, it was a little hard to find), so I re-scheduled for the following day. The diving that day was quite nice, so I decided to stay another day and go out diving again. I convinced the owner to let me go the second day for half-price. The second day there were only two of us diving (a russian guy that was with us the day before), so we went out to a more remote dive site. Day two turned out to be even better than the first - definitely worth hanging around for. And certainly cant beat the price - two days of diving for only $60.
After diving I hung out on the beach for a bit, then went back to my hotel to pack up. I had booked an overnight sleeper bus for the trip to Hoi An and it was time to go. The bus trip turned out to be a nightmare... more on that later.