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CHINA 上海 (Shanghai) Small Town 广州 (Guangzhou) 香港 (Hong Kong) VIETNAM Hanoi Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island Hue DMZ Hoi An My Son Temple Nha Trang Nha Trang Boat Trip Ca Na Saigon CAMBODIA Phnom Penh Siem Reap Angkor, Day1 Angkor, Day2 Angkor, Day3
!!WARNING!!
LAO
THAILAND
Spaz's Journal Flowers Study in Contrasts Rough Guide to SE Asia review... !!RANT!! Food! Return to Phongsaly.com |
Nha Trang Monday October 13, 2003 Today was our second full day in Nha Trang, but the first day we actually did something. OK, the first day we left the hotel for more than two hours.... We have been looking for local kayaking tours as promised by the Rough Guide (correction #3), but couldn't find it yesterday. This sounded so much more lovely than the run of the mill boat tour to 4 islands that we've actually signed up for. Anyway, we'll get some snorkeling in and some nice time on the water, so that should be good. Although, after the sun burn I got today, I'm not sure how nuts we are for going out again tomorrow. OK, pretty nuts, but that's what T-Shirts are for, right? Here is the main beach in Nha Trang, where we were able to get beach chairs for 10,000vnd each at the Nha Trang Sailing Club which offers three restaurants, dive facilities, etc. The guy that runs the chairs tries to keep the local touts away, but only to moderate success. Beverage prices are STEEP (15,000vnd for a 5,000vnd bottle of water), but the atmosphere is great. You can get food, drinks, etc. from the restaurant, run into the water, lay about in the chair, or whatever. It's very comfortable. Oh yeah, and as for the touts here, they seem to be particularly plentiful. I'm not sure if it's because of the infestation of foreigners or what, but they are numerous and seemingly more persistent. We were so impressed by the people offering the standards (cyclo, postcard, motorbike, "Where you going?") yesterday that today we decided to count how many times we were approached throughout the day. We got to 83. Yep, 83 times we were approached by somebody trying to sell us something. And I would probably average the number of times that we had to turn someone down at 3 per hit. SO, we probably said some version of "No, thank you" (more or less politely) about 249 times. Now, considering that our day started late (10am) and finished early (8pm), and that we spent 4 hours on the beach in a somewhat 'safe' zone, so probably worth about 2 hours, and 2 hours in the middle at the hotel for showers before dinner, we were probably 'on the street' for an equivalent of 6 hours. I am including time in restaurants as well here, since they are not safe from the various pushers. SO, 249 times in 6 hours is an average of 41.5 "No, thank you's" per hour. One "No, thank you" every 1.447 minutes.... Good thing the beach is nice. Here's some shots of the beach. Spaz had some fun today, and the food was good, too...
We stayed at:
Hu'o'ng Nam Hotel Our room was $8 US with AC, private bath NO hot water. The first night we were woken up at 4am by the folks in the next rooms over. We moved to the top floor and enjoyed quite peaceful rests for the remainder of our stay. There were, however, quite a number of bugs that decided we were yummy. We found a can of spray insect death down the street for 30,000vnd that we used to fumigate our room with, after which it was ok for a day. Wishing we'd listened to bring the Permethrin concentrate....
l
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