Off Nha Trang
Mun, Mot, Tam and Mieu islands

Tuesday October 14, 2003

           
Truly the highlight of the day was snorkeling, not here at Mot island, but at Mun the first island earlier in the day.  Here was about stopping for lunch while the drunks, as we'll refer to everyone else on the trip, scrambled for the tasty bits of food and devoured all in sight.  The amount of lunch was a very small fraction of the spread that the pictures in the TM Brothers booking agency promised.  After lunch the tour guides set up a band with electric guitar, tambourine and drums played on the bottoms of plastic barrels.  It was quite hilarious and fun actually, with everyone dancing and carrying on, but eventually I simply needed to remove myself from the drunks, who by this time (11:30) were well into a solid binge.  Then the floating bar came out, and the quote I heard was "You can't say 'No!', say 'Yo!'" which apparently meant everyone has to drink this crap ass local Vietnamese red wine swill cause it's free.  I swam the other way and went snorkeling, and Kathy came over and joined me... 

Any how, like I mentioned the snorkeling at Mun island was fantastic, with great bunches of huge corals, colorful fish and almost decent visibility, though not great, maybe 10 meters.

   
At the Mieu island fishing village, just off the harbor from Nha Trang, you can hire a Bamboo Bucket Boat for 5,000vnd a head and they'll paddle you around for a bit.  We didn't bother to go at this point because it was more fun to watch and because we were pretty well wiped out from dealing with the drunks by this point.  But the boats were pretty cool.  Kathy managed to get a shot of a woman actually just using a boat for what it's meant for, transportation as opposed to entertaining drunks, and she was really cruising.  You can see that she's facing backwards as she paddles.

       
So here's the drunks partying it up at the Mieu fishing village.  The drunks from our boat swam over to another tour boat because ours ran out of beer and they wanted more.  It actually delayed our departure some as we couldn't get them back to our boat for a bit.  Whitey in the middle thought it was pretty funny to hang on to the Bamboo Bucket Boat while the ladies were trying to get home.  Kath looked on in amazement.

                   
Here's some images of the harbor, life on the fishing boats and of course the requisite live cages for the fish (they're the ones that look like little docks with shacks attached).

   
As evening was setting, I was wondering why all these fishing boats were heading out as opposed to returning home.  As we departed Mieu island ourselves and drew alongside the boats heading out I understood.  They're going out for squid, as you can tell by the arrangement of lamps mounted on the boom.  They shine the light into water at nigh, and the squid swim up the light where they get caught in the fishermen's nets.  I would love to see the ocean with a flotilla of squid boats fully lit at night....

I will never think of Eddy Grant's Electric Avenue the same way again.

As our tour wrapped up, we asked to be dropped directly at the TM Brothers booking office.  We wanted to discuss the arrangements of our trip with the office that had sold it to us.

T.M. Brother's Cafe II
12B Biet Thu St
Nha Trang

tel: 058-811 822
mobile: 0903 576 662
nhutamluu@yahoo.com
Mr. Luu Nhu Tam (goes by Tam, pronounced as Tom would be in English)

rating: 2 of 5 stars, because Tam at least made an effort to right the wrong...

There were a couple of issues concerning differences between what we'd been sold and what was delivered.  Primarily there was an entrance fee to the third island of 5,000vnd each (minimal, really), and there was no coffee on the boat.  I didn't bother to bring up the discussion about how we'd been promised that we would be picked up from our hotel and driven directly to the dock to get on the boat, which of course didn't happen: we spent 40+ minutes on the bus driving around and picking everyone up, as is usually the case.  As you can tell from the pictures the main focus was drinking, and I was happy to find my way around that, but I was glad that there would be coffee available on the boat as well and subsequently didn't bother to pack any.  My goal in mentioning the coffee and the entrance fee to them was not that it wasn't manageable, but that I just want the communication up front about what is going to happen so that I can make an informed choice. 

I guess I am just frustrated with 'hidden' costs always showing up: entrance fees, exorbitant prices for things like water, trips cut shorter than as promised, usually by hours.  I just want to be given the option to purchase what I'm sold.  It happens so often that these details, particularly the financial ones, are overlooked, and one begins to wonder that this is not by design.  So we spoke to the proprietor, Tam, and he blamed the miscommunication on the sales girl who'd helped us, and thanked us for our 'idea'  about not printing false and misleading information in the pamphlets.  I suggested that he may want to talk with the boat operators and make sure that they knew what they were being asked to deliver, like coffee, and that they can improve their service and their business this way.

Tam asked if we wanted our 10,000vnd back for the entrance fee, and I said I thought that would be fair.  He gave me some crap about how it was coming out of his pocket and not from the company.  I said he should write a receipt and get the company to pay for it then, but that maybe they should print the accurate information.  I tried to point out that I'm not mad, just frustrated; a distinction that I believe was probably lost in translation.  I tried to make sure that he understood that the 10,000vnd wasn't the issue: it's the misinformation that is the issue.  Still, I took his money because I wanted to make sure that maybe if he felt it a little he may reflect on his business practices enough to make a change.  I let him know that I didn't drink alcohol, so the coffee being aboard was something promised that I'd looked forward to, and had I known it would not be available I would have made other arrangements.  I got the sense from him that I was an idiot for not being man enough to drink.  I reiterated I was trying to provide valuable feedback for his business, and got a great sense of relief from him when we actually parted. 

I think there is a big practice in Vietnam to take money from tourists by lying.  I've never taken tours before, but it seems to be the best way to get from point A to point B in this country, and other options for exploring a region are very limited.  To do what we did today in the style we wanted to do it would have required hiring a private charter to the tune of hundreds of dollars: not exactly within a backpacker's budget.  Perhaps we're discovering that traveling on a budget is geared towards backpackers, which we're a little older and more sober than most backpackers.

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Copyright 2003, Dana M. Brash. All Rights Reserved.