Wanderlust Heaven!

Vietnamese trains show American cartoons, in English. The locals seem to love Tom & Jerry – a show which I outgrew at the age of 6, but hey, it’s probably a fun way to learn English. So I withhold all judgement and say bring it on.

The train pulled into Nha Trang an hour late. And it was raining hard…I suppose I shouldn’t have been cranky, given that until a few weeks before I’d never heard of this place, and was now getting the chance to expand my horizons. But I was in a black sort of mood – 10-hour train ride, crappy weather, hungry, and had been slowly sweating in the ‘aircon’ train car for the better part of the day.

Got to my hotel, which wasn’t too bad. Went out for a bite and stumbled across a Tex-Mex place called El Coyote. Mediocre stuff…later I learned that the owner is French, which may explain things. I do love the French, don’t get me wrong – without them there might not be a USA today. And their own cuisine is exceptional…but Mexican food should be in the hands of actual Mexicans or Americans from border states.

Went diving the next day, with Vietnam’s biggest shop, Rainbow. Turned out to be ‘pickup the trash day’ and we went to some sites which were just so-so…but which did feature large amounts of rubbish. I wondered precisely who took the time to wind several kilometers of string around large rocks and corals? It certainly took us a long time to unwind them…I could have used a dive-knife to simplify the task. Then it rained on the way back to shore. Start of the rainy season around here…oh well.

All that said, Rainbow seemed to me to be the best-run dive operation in the region, and perhaps anywhere. Rainbow has all the usual certifications, and then some (never knew that National Geographic had anything to do with scuba). It’s also a bar/café, an equipment sales/repair shop (and does the critical Suunto battery replacements – a real godsend), and seems to train dozens of foreigners in Divemaster and other courses. Nha Trang would not be a bad place to do more training – it’s a real medium-sized city, right on the ocean, with a nice beach and good night scene, and apparently there are loads of dive sites better than the two I visited.

[read on]

Hue, the old imperial capital, was a pleasant enough place – except for the touts who wouldn’t leave me alone for a minute, even while on the middle of the bridge taking a picture of the river. The potential profitability of cadging a foreigner out of his cash must be unimaginable….there seemed to be more xe om (motorbike cab) drivers around than the rest of the employed population combined. Why grow rice and do little more than fill your belly, when you can move into town and perhaps get 1-2 decent scores a day?

Hue’s sights are spread out such that it makes sense to take an organized tour of them. I heard about a good operation run by a local woman named Thu – called Café on Thu Wheels. And she employs most of her 10 or so siblings, making it a very Vietnamese family affair. Thu’s tours are, as the name suggests, on motorbike – so there’s a bit more adventure than the usual stuff ’em in the bus deal.

I got my own bike – the rest of the 5-6 foreigners rode on the back of a bike, with a local driver. The Honda Wave was fun enough…but seemed like a toy compared with the 160cc version I drove around the North just a few days before. Our tour leader, Minh (one of Thu’s many brothers) was a real joker – at the tomb of Emperor Tu Duc, a man who had 104 wives, countless concubines, but no children, Minh told us that Tu Duc must have been ‘shooting blanks.’ His random English – peppered with dated expressions that he emphasized to prove his language skills – reminded me of the Moustache Brothers in Mandalay. The lead brother in that act had told us that his brother (or perhaps cousin, I forget) had been ‘sent up the river’ by the junta…

[read on]

Returned in one shiny happy piece from my 5-day motorbike tour of northwest Vietnam. The initial outlook was not auspicious – getting out of Hanoi proved to be the trickiest part of the entire journey, and Offroad Vietnam's manager ... [Continue reading this entry]

My father served in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War. He wasn't a soldier, mind you – that would have been far too risky. No, he was on the medical staff at March Air Force Base ... [Continue reading this entry]

I left Vientiane in a hurry and under a cloud of suspicion...again. Of course I had read about and laughed at the prohibition of foreigners sleeping with locals...initially to my benefit. For the past few days I'd be ... [Continue reading this entry]