Vietnam (pt 2)

The full slide show can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/achakra/Vietnam

We then left Mui Ne to go to Nha Trang which is a popular beach resort for the rich folks of Saigon. It kind of had a bit of Vegas feel except no casinos, but on the beach. Just everyone ready to throw money away for the weekend. We finally found

Above are sand dunes we stopped at on the way. These little kids were trying to sell us rides on their foam mats. Below Saumil tried to 'carve' up the slopes, it didn't work that well.



At this point, we were getting hungry. I wasn't very hungry when we passed what looked like an ok place to eat, so me and Tooong overruled Saumil and Rajiv. Well mostly Tooong had made up his mind not to stop. So we went to Hung Phat 2, no joke. This place was prob the size of half a football field. There was at least 60 tour buses outside, and it was packed. Now, we sat down, and looked at the menu, and the first thing we see is pictures of frogs and snakes. We asked for chicken, Toong barely translated but said no we dont have any. Finally he says, ok, go over there (buffet line) grab some stuff. There was a soup (flies in it). There was a bunch of other food, I think some fishes, some other meats, I dont konw what they were, also with flies in them. The eggs looked edible until I noticed some other sort of crazy meat in there. Anyway, Saumil and I got rice, and they give some steamed veggies on the side (we didn't know what they were, but at least they were bland steam veggies). We proceeded to eat this with tons of hot sauce basically. Rajiv was bold and tried a bit of everything. We predicted he had 24 hours to live.





The road up the coast of Vietnam is beautiful. I would say more beautiful than Highway 1 in CAlifornia. Interesting, back in the cold war days, the soviets maintained a submarine base here. Its closed down now, but you could see it in the distance.



Small Vietnamese guy holding our bags heh. We were starving and immediately found food since Saumil and I didn't want to die at the restaurant on the road. We got some solid American food, pizza, followed by solid deep fried Indian Samosas heh. Then we hit happy hour. The night proceeded with some more libations. There's a very funny story here, but once again you'll have to get permission from Rajiv to hear it.



We then hit the road again, took to the mountains to go up to Dalat. Dalat reminded me alot of Darjeeling, classic colonial hill station. The French actually wanted to make this the capital back in the colonial days (their wussy selves couldn't deal with the hot humid climate down at the lower elevations :-) just kidding, or am I?). But it was gorgeous, and the temperature was quite nice. We found a place to stay and went over to a place called Cafe V. Really good fusion food.

The following day, we found an outdoor adventures placed called Phat Tire. We wanted to give mountain biking a shot. First, no one was willing to help us, but finally, the owner (turned out to be an American named Brian) said, dont listen to these guys I'll take you, but I can't take you until later in the day. So we come up with a time, and take off. To pass the time, we find these guys called Easy Riders. Apparently since so many tourists speaking so many western languages have been coming to Dalat for SO many years, there are these 'legendary' bike riders that have picked up all the Romance languages. We find a couple that speak English, and hop onto their bikes and they take us on a small precanned tour. Saumil being the bold one again (and not blacklisted in this town) rents his own bike and follows us.

The first place we stopped was a temple. I found this little sign to be precious heh.



There's Saumil following on his bike.



Im not sure what this place was. There was a hanging rope, a nice waterfall, I think it was just a nice little area to visit in general. Cool little rickety looking tree house we went up into.





The next stop was this special spinning table. They said that if you all stood around it would start mystically spin on its own. It was of course a load of bull as it was clear the guy was slowly pushing it when he thought we weren't looking.





The next stop was called crazy house, literally. Some Vietnamese went to Moscow and got her phd in architecture and made this CRAZY house literally. Loox like something out of Disney while tripping on acid.. wait, the people at Disney are probably already tripping on acid.











Below are our two EZ Rider drivers.



Now, here's another funny story which we unfortunately dont have any footage of. So if you remember, I mentioned to Brian that we would be coming back to mountain bike. We arrive there, and start biking down the road to the bike paths out in the woods. Interesting, there is a Vietnamese minority that primarily live out in the woods and actually commute via these small mountain trails. Also it turns out that, they dont look like the typical Vietnamese people that we had been around, and in fact also supported the United States during the war. However, even though we lost the war, the people here have all but forgotten the war. Obviously an entire new generation is alive now, its been many years, but the real thing to remember, is that the people aren't stuck on this issue in their history. There are some other groups throughout the world that I wish would take this model of forgetting the past because there is nothing you can do about it and moving forward. I also noticed that even though Vietnam got the hell bombed out of them only 40 years ago, their roads and general infrastructure was really really good. I compare it to India where they were never bombed, have been independent for over 60 years, and still the infrastructure is in shambles. Granted, they have a much bigger population problem, but , there's something to be said for the fighting spirit of the people of this country.

Ok back to the funny story. So we're riding along, almost in the mountains, and Rajiv (who is the most confident of us because he said he did this before) , is tearing down the mountain in front of me, and basically takes an ENORMOUS fall, lands on his back. He tries to get up, and man his back hurts bad. So we have to wait over an hour for a jeep to come, grab the bike and Rajiv and take him back to the shop. Ok, that was actually the funny part, maybe you had to be there. It was funny in a Jackass (mtv show) kinda way.

We went on mountain biking. Brian had some amazing stories. Here's a guy who had backpacked across Africa, India, and countless other underdeveloped countries. And now here he is living in Vietnam.

We got back on the road and headed off for Saigon. We noticed so many restaurants on the way with funny names (to our insensitive American selves). Here are our favorites.

hung phat
hung phat I
hung phat II (we ate there, disgusting food)
hung longh
hung thinh
nhung
we decided , when we name our kids, we're going to name them
hung long, or hung thick, or hung phat, or hung girth (yes we made that one up )

So, for this next picture, you should go and check the video in the slide show at the link on the top. So, Ive forgotten to mention this, but Saumil LOVES fruit. And if he sees fruit anywhere on the side of the road he would force the driver to stop. So one of the things he had been craving but couldn't get yet was sugar cane juice, the real deal. So when he saw this by the side of the road, he forced the driver to stop.
Anyway, you really should go and see the slide show , but there is this contraption which I was sure we would catch many diseases from. Basically u feed in the cane through two rollers which squeeze out the juice, it gets caught in a funnel which goes through a plastic tube and then empties out into a spigot into a glass. Ok, let me tell u, flies all over this thing (of course its all sugar), flies crawling inthe tube. All kinds of dirt looking particles. Anyhow, they finally ran through the machine and out comes our sugar water into the plastic bags that you see. I think it suffices to say that we're still alive, but man, that was some dirty looking stuff.




We finally arrived in Saigon, and we took a picture with our driver Toooong. One side note, we noticed that he was RUSHING to get back to Saigon. Our theory was with that he wanted to get together with his Jimmy since he hadn't seen her for a while :-).



I think this was a friday night, and Vietnam was PACKED. We had to splurge and I think pay a bit more for the hotel, but it was a higher end hotel for sure. I still liked the Empress back in Dalat better. We wanted some serious American food, we found a Cuban cafe and ended up getting pizza. It was like a Pizza rustica or something, but it may hvae been one of the best pizzas Ive ever eaten in my life.

Then it was time for the night's festivities. We went bar hopping, and literally took 75 cent cab rides from bar to bar, gotta love it. We went to an Aussie bar, which, was totally filled with Australians. We heard the bartender talking, and he was a Vietnamese guy with an Australian accent, very odd. then we realized that we couldn't understand a word he was saying, becuase he had an Austrliaan accent transposed on top of a Vietnamese accent heh heh. We asked him for fun bars to go to, but basically all the descriptions he gave us were of 'boom boom' bars which was not our thing. Finally we went to this new hot spot, and it was full of white people. But really good music! u2, pearl jam, etc.

Went to a place called Apocalypse Now (obviously a tourist trap which we didn't see coming). Had an overpriced drink there, and it was clearly a tourists place to pick up Jimmy's for hire. So we quickly tried to get out of there. At some point Rajiv started talking to a busted Jimmy in his inebriated state and we quickly forced him to polish off his drink and get out of there.

Im not sure if it was this night, and I think it was. But let me put it this way, Rajiv wanted to stay out, and me and Saumil were tired. So he says, I'll stay out, and meet you guys back in the room since we were next door to the hotel. Anyway, long story short, you'll need Rajiv's permission to hear it :-).

The next morning, Rajiv finally got diarrhea (remember we predicted he would die in 24 hours). I guess its a slow set in time.

One thing I noticed about Vietnam, is that everything is smaller, the chairs are lower, the shower heads are lower, elevators are more cramped, and we realized, its honestly for the shorter than the avg Westerner Asian man. No one is fat, so you could make everything smaller.