Vietnam Day 8 – 9: The Accidental Beach

Day 8 – 16th June 2007

A searing headache consumed me the moment I woke up, with fatigue enveloping me. It’s like having my brain cocooned by silks of pain, and I didn’t have the appetite for a breakfast – left my meagre baguette with butter alone after several small bites, though I drained the orange juice so I wouldn’t leave Dalat on a completely empty stomach.

In fact, the hangover was quite awful – what I really wanted to do was just lie down on my mattress on the floor and sleep, but as the rest of our troupe urged me to wake up and pack my stuffs, I summoned whatever strength I had and packed my things into my trusty backpack.

The entire bus trip from Dalat to Nha Trang had me sleeping – I slept at two different intervals, and after taking 2 pills from Gopi (without knowing what they were in the first place), did I actually feel better. The pounding headache was gone, and I’ve mood to eat again.

We departed at 7.30am, and reached Nha Trang at about 2pm. Complications arose with our bus ticket to Hoi An that was due on that day itself (6pm-6am, a whooping 12-hour ride) as we didn’t want to stay in Nha Trang, a town well known for its long line of beaches, islands, and diving spots. Apparently the staffs at the hotel in Dalat didn’t inform our open bus company, and the bus was completely full. Francis had a space though as he bought his open bus tickets in Dalat, and we had to go our different ways from there.

I wanted to hitch a different bus to Hoi An as I didn’t really like the idea of going to the beach AGAIN (Malaysia tak ada meh), it’ll cost only USD$6 or so, but Gopi didn’t want to waste additional money on principle, since it wasn’t our fault that we didn’t book the tickets when we informed the hotel staffs clearly. We walked around Nha Trang for a bit – a quaint little town with beautiful beaches and crystal clear sea (supposedly), and after sipping tea at a café near the beach, we bade Francis goodbye, and hoped to see him in Hoi An while keeping in touch via e-mails.

So so blue.

On the way to Nha Trang, the moment coconut trees came into view, we knew we were near a beach.

The 4 of us started looking around for a hotel to stay in, but every single one we went to was fully booked (due to it being a weekend, and the hotels were near the beach and all), until we stumbled onto the Sunflower Guesthouse, where Kazz, the bloody womaniser that he is, charmed the hotel lady and managed to get a room for us for USD$10 or 12.

We played badminton with some locals next door, and at one point, Siew Kiat played against a grandma who smashes about constantly wtf.

The shuttlecock fell on the roof, and Kazz caused a small commotion when he offered to climb atop it like a monkey. He faced some difficulty when coming down, and after some persuasion by us to NOT jump down from the roof wtf, he managed to get down safely by stepping onto some side wall.

We walked around later in the evening in search of food (as usual), we stumbled onto Francis, teman him eat, and went on for our food quest. There was an unspeakable heat that permeated through Nha Trang, but that was to be expected after the cool temperature of Dalat.

Kazz’s and my dinner at a roadside stall, which consisted of chicken + glutinous rice was just alright, but cheap nonetheless at about 15,000 dong (about USD$1). After tiring ourselves out with the walk, we headed back to the hotel, and went on about our own activities. Kazz and Gopi were out in search of a nightclub, Siew watched a B-grade movie on HBO with the hotel staffs, and I logged on to the Internet before joining him.

The people here are friendly, especially the guesthouse staffs – we played cards together, and I learned some Vietnamese from Loan (far left).

Gopi and Kazz returned shortly after to relate to us about their failure in finding a nightclub that was still open. There wasn’t much to do for the rest of the night, so we turned to bed early at about 10 or 11pm. Living in Vietnam was the beginning of a healthier lifestyle for once. >_>

Day 9 – 17th June 2007
Today marked one of the best and worst days in this entire backpacking trip – and thank god we actually tried to make the best of our accidental stay here, as I had one of the best times of my life. The best being renting 3 motorcycles (more like 3 scooters for only 50,000 dong each! Standard price was supposed to be 80,000-100,000 dong) (the worst would be told later) – Gopi didn’t want to join us as he dreamt the night before that he died in a motorbike crash wtf, quite understandably he may have suffered trauma from our accident in Dalat. The three of us left him wandering around town in solace with a hardcover book, and we went on our own mini-road trip in a relatively unknown town, armed with only a photocopied Lonely Planet Vietnam book which we bought in Phnom Penh for USD$3.50 (after bargaining incessantly from USD$5 wtf).

We followed the map provided in the book and headed north all the way on a very straight road, at first to see the Hon Chong Promontory (wtf is a promontory anyway, we thought, since we didn’t have a dictionary on hand and dictionary.com was obviously out of the question) which was really rather disappointing – various rocks that branched out into the sea.

Stopped by at a random beach to snap photos.

We continued on the road all the way straight, detouring a little on the way to a sidetracked part of the town. We eventually ended up on the main road, headed straight, and stumbled onto what looked like a dead end.

Our little dead end had another village nearby, which apparently would allow access to a beach to fish if we were to hike by foot wtf. There was a drinks stall here which Kazz ordered, and a few hammock-like chairs which were so DARNED comfortable to place our tired arses in.

There was absolutely no one else at that particular area, so when we sat there lazying about and immerse ourselves in the undisturbed, unperturbed silence, the tranquility of the place had us collective agreeing that “we wish to stay here forever”. The background of the above pic shows various buildings under construction, and it looked like we were there at the right time, as this peaceful embrace may just about be broken in a few months’ time – shattered by unnecessary development.

After we decided to finally move on, we went on across the road on a short distance before stumbling onto a semi-finished tar road. Curiosity got the better of us, so we rode on before reaching the largest expanse of tar road in Vietnam that was completely empty. The perfect place to perform any mat rempit stunts should we actually know any – and yes, there wasn’t a single soul around still.

We went to a little sandy detour downwards that was riddled with hard rocks that made me worry as to how to back up the same lane later, but that was for later to worry. We parked our bikes, hiked down very steep rocks that actually frightened me (was careful not to injure myself at the same spot as I sustained in Dalat), and finally reached the cleanest and clearest sea we’ve ever seen in Nha Trang.

It was bloody fun, I’ll have you know, to discover a hidden treasure trove like that when you least expect it. We enjoyed the scenery as long as we could stand the stinging heat, and we finally went back up.

Me on said beach.

Kazz went down again later to join the locals spear-fishing and drank what tasted like rice wine, as he related to us (Siew and I didn’t join as we were too lazy to hike all the way down to the beach again). He told us that the locals were incredibly kind to him, as they understood neither of each other’s languages, and communicated merely with gestures and kind offers. That’s where the pure human heart lies, in a relatively untouched part of Nha Trang, and it’s people like these that made backpacking very much worth it – to see that there are still pure, generous kindness abound amidst a dying world of vile.

The view of the beach from the top.

I managed to accelerate my bike across the terribly bumpy and rocky terrain to the top, and helped two locals on a manual motorcycle to push their machine to the top. I didn’t think I managed to help much as notably my strength wasn’t my strongest point, but after stumbling on the motorcycle occasionally, did we succeed in getting the bike to the top of the tar road. One of the two local guys looked so incredibly grateful for my seemingly useless help, he put his arm around me and made small chat in the best English that he could muster, and finally said goodbye.

Despite the local sea breeze blowing at our faces when we rode our motorbikes later on, it was painfully blistering to have the sun radiating on our skins. Soon it got to an unbearable point when the 3 of us rode around topless – not that there was anyone around anyway, save for a few locals.

We stopped by one of the seafood restaurants after visiting one, not knowing it sold exclusively seafood – Kazz disliked seafood, especially fish tremendously, in a phobia-like distaste. It was funny to us to be Japanese and not eating fish (sushi, etc), but back to my tale, I was pushing my motorbike up a curb when the stand of the motorbike knocked against the curb, making it lose its balance, and SMASHHHHH it went on top of a BMW 3 series. WTF.

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It would’ve been really heart-stopping had I been less tired, but at that point when the sun drained whatever energy left of me, smashing a BMW didn’t seem like a huge event that I stared at it cluelessly. The handlebar of my machine had smashed below the BMW’s bonnet (near the headlights), and most surprisingly, there wasn’t a single dent. Two Vietnamese men rushed out of the restaurant instantly, glared at me, and inspected their luxurious car for damage. I apologised to them in English, and they appeared to either not understand me or decided to ignore me completely.

The restaurant’s boss gestured to us to let the men be, and directed us to the restaurant inside. We realised our complete mistake when we discovered it to be yet another seafood restaurant, and it was even harder to communicate with the waitresses as they barely spoke any word of English. There was another table nearby that was occupied by the two men, a woman, and a child, and when Kazz exchanged greetings with the woman amicably, discovered that she used to stay in Tokyo as well and could speak Japanese. wtf damn coincidental.

So the two started an exchange that left me and Siew Keat trying to comprehend what they were saying, when finally Kazz apologised to her on my behalf for the BMW accident (though there wasn’t a noticeable dent nor scratch, for some really odd reason). We later discovered that one of the men speaks Japanese as well as he always had business to do in Saitama, Tokyo, and both Kazz and he rambled on while laughing, setting my heart at peace (the worst treatment someone could give you when you did something wrong was the silent treatment).

We eventually got the Vietnamese woman to inform the waitresses that we don’t eat seafood (or really, it was only Kazz), and after drinking some can drinks, left the place while the boss displayed an entirely black and sour face – understandable, though.

We went off again back to town finally, but not before my scooter broke down due to lack of petrol wtf. Luck was on my side yet again, as one of the illegal petrol stations was just right around the corner, so I went up to the lady and had her fill 1 more litre of petrol at nearly 15,000 dong or so.

We had our incredibly late lunch/early dinner at 4pm at one of the restaurants after some aimless searching, and gobbled my fried rice with seafood (squids and shrimps) hungrily. At one point, Kazz, in all his philosophical demeanour, talked to us about life – what to do with our dreams, his travels and how he enjoyed being with locals and meeting other people, and to do the things we want to do before we die.

He told us too that when we were in our primary school and high school, time seemed to pass by slowly – which was quite true to me – but as we grow older, time slips by so quickly that before you know it, you arrive on your next birthday and the next. 20-25 would pass by, and once you start working and start the dreary 9 to 5 routine, time would zip by even faster. 30 would soon be 40, then 50, and then you’ll see if we’re still alive then and the world hasn’t collapsed under its own disease.

It was all quite depressing to hear the facts of life laid down just like that in the middle of a happy backpacking trip, but wasn’t it all quite true? – death waits around the corner at the end of your route. Which was why exactly Kazz started his travels 4 months ago, to see the world and do as much good as he could to the world before succumbing to our natural demise.

Which all the more inspired me to backpack more before I start a permanent full-time job in the future.

We hung around at TM Brothers’, aka our bus station. We met up with Gopi there as planned, and bus arrived at 7pm, already laden full with people, so much so we had to take the back seats. Turns out that that was the biggest mistake as the seats were incredibly hard, that sitting on it more than 20 minutes without movin would have our asses aching.

If we couldn’t stand said 20 minutes, what more 12 hours worth of journey through the night? It was the worst torture really, trying to sit in the most painless way possible in various positions that I eventually gave up – and could barely sleep. It wasn’t exactly comfortable either to be sitting in between 2 sweating guys (Gopi and a Vietnamese dude), and what irked me further was when an additional 4-5 people got on the bus and sat in the middle of the aisle with PLASTIC CHAIRS wtfwtf.

Stare at the middle of this picture properly and spot the people sitting in the middle with plastic chairs wtf.

I was originally sitting in the middle of the back seats (there were 5 in all), and I was even more taken aback when one of the Vietnamese guys casually amble by and tried to sit next to me when all 5 seats were taken wtf. Kazz went “NONONO” and we pushed him off – we were bloody indignant as we paid for these seats, and got some very uncomfortable ones at that, and we weren’t about to squeeze 6 people into 5 seats. He eventually sat between my legs on the floor WTF and at this point, Gopi was laughing incredulously.

Finally the Vietnamese guy sitting next to me offered to exchange seats with him to the floor, and like. wtf. He was eventually given a pillow to sit on more comfortably, and later on at night, slept on the floor – head, body and all on the ground wtf. I exchanged seats with the Vietnamese dude to sit next to Gopi to get some light to read my book, but gave up when the lights were quite dim.

All in all the worst bus ride ever, and when we finally reached Hoi An at 7am, we were all too consumed with mental and physical fatigue (for me at least) to enjoy the sunrise earlier and the scenery that succeeds it. But heck, once we actually sat through this atrocious bus ride, no other bus rides can be more worse.