Archived post from our February 2007 trip
Hello everyone. Robert here. It’s Saturday afternoon.
We’ve done a hundred incredible things since I checked in last, and it’s difficult to capture a sense of it here for you. I’m not sure I’ll have luck uploading the pix, and I wish I could show them to you.
The main thing we did was travel up to Mui Ne. We were up early on Wed. a.m. to catch the “caf� bus.” Tourist cafes are essentially small tour operators that also sell a little coffee on the side while you wait, and they bundle all the tourists - mostly young backpackers - into groups.
It was about 5 hours in the coach up the coast. It was interesting to see something other than the city life. Most of the way it was heavily developed along the highway, and we could see some land in cultivation - a lot like New Jersey.
For some reason I’ll have to research later, there are very distinct microclimates, and the scenery would suddenly switch from jungle to desert.
Mui Ne is a small fishing village, and the highway outside of town is bordered on the ocean side by a long strip of “resorts.” The other side of the street was mostly the homes of people who lived there, which were very humble in the best cases.
Some of hotels seemed very nice, and our place was so-so, but we were able to relax. The weather was beautiful - unforgettable. Mid 80’s, gentle ocean breezes, lots of shade from the palm trees. The sunsets were like in a movie. It’s been years since I’ve seen so many stars so clearly at night.
The food as part of the package sucked, and we pretty soon started exploring roadside canteens and had really great food. There was lots of seafood, which was presumably as fresh as could be. As we walked along the beach, we could watch people sorting it out of the nets next to their boats.
One of the standard activities there is to explore a couple of the microclimates, which we did on Thursday afternoon. One stop was a quick walk through a canyon carved through dark red sand and rock. It looked like we were on Mars. The other stop was the white sand dunes. It’s a few square miles that all of a sudden looks like a scene from the English Patient. Children meet you at the bus to walk you to the top of the highest dunes and rent you a plastic sled to slide down on. It’s hard to describe how unearthly it all felt. With the way the wind blows and the way we were covered in sunscreen, by the time it was over we basically looked like walking sand sculptures.
It was a long ride back yesterday and some recuperating today. I booked us for a one-day trip Monday to Mekong Delta villages that includes about 15 miles of bike riding. Tomorrow we’re scheduled to have Sunday dinner at the home of a friend of Ilene’s out in the suburbs.
Those are the big events, which don’t even really tell what I’m doing. It’s the moment-to-moment stuff that’s hard to capture. One example - today after walking a few hours, I stopped to get a bottle of water from a woman with a cart on the sidewalk. Bottled water, presumably filtered, is everywhere for the benefit of tourists who would get traveler’s tummy from tap water. We agreed on a price of about $.33, which we communicate by counting fingers rather than using words. She opened the cooler to get it, and it was in the ice underneath piles of red bloody meat, which was lying unpackaged on top of a towel, that she had for whatever dish she made for the lunch crowd. So I’m mentally calculating the risk - is the ice shaved (and therefore unfiltered), is the seal on the water bottle legit, could that blood have gotten into the bottle? Meanwhile I’m also calculating the currency and which of the unfamiliar bills to give her. She gives me back far less change than I’m expecting, and I think she’s trying to take advantage. So we discuss some more relying on hand gestures.
And then I cracked the seal on my bottle and continued on my way. At the next step, a cyclo driver is trying to sell me a ride. At the next step, there’s some amazing looking fish dish I want to try. At the next step the sidewalk is blocked with somebody selling second hand shoes. Next a wild west themed restaurant specializing in barbqued crickets. Next a man with a hand-operated press for crushing sugar cane to make cold drinks. Next I’m about to be run down by a motorscooter. Next is an old woman with a machete chopping up a blue plastic stool with a Pepsi logo and putting the pieces in her cart. And so on .
