After a very rough night with the ship heaving, swaying, shuddering and slewing about, we finally arrived in Nha Trang. The whole two-day crossing from Hong Kong has been quite lively as far as the sea state is concerned and, last night, all the outside was closed off. At one point during dinner the whole ship shuddered as if it had hit something. Our waiter reassured us that it couldn’t be an iceberg as this was the South China Sea, but we wondered if we had hit a small fishing boat. But no, it seems it was just a block of energy in the water.
Nha Trang is situated in a bay and we were at last sheltered from the rough weather. Princess had advised us that there would be a ticketing system for the tenders (memories of MSC loomed large in the memory!) and that those on excursions would get priority to get away. We waited in the dining room where board games had been put out and it all went very smoothly, although getting from ship to tender and from tender to shore was a tricky business as the height differences were quite large and the sea state was lively, even in the bay. One of the Aussie ladies had a mishap getting back on board and ended up in the medical centre with a bandaged ankle.
We stepped ashore in Vietnam. It immediately hits you that you’re in a poor Asian country. Were we extras in the filming of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel?’ It certainly made us feel that this is how India must come across to tourists when they first arrive there. We get on the free shuttle bus offered from the docks – such as they are – to the town centre. The coach is like something out of rural Mexico. Indeed, one’s early impressions of Vietnam at this point remind one of Robert Redford in the film ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ looking around him as they arrive on the run in Bolivia and saying disparagingly: “So this is Bolivia?”
We are also immediately struck by the fact that this is clearly the two-wheeled centre of the universe. Everyone is going round on mopeds, scooters and the occasional motor bike. They appear to drive on the right here – probably originally established by the French when they were colonial masters here in the Victorian period – but driving is an adventure and I immediately start to take some video, realising that I might be able to sell the footage to the DVLA for them to use as a hazard perception sequence in the theory driving tests back home.
It may well seem chaotic and yet everyone on the road jockeys for position in an extremely skilful way. Rather than witness what I might expect to be a never-ending sequence of near-misses, it all comes across as a show of carefully choreographed moves reminiscent of the way the motor bikes used to cross paths in the Royal Tournament! As we get further from the port and nearer to Nha Trang itself, the environment gets tidier and smarter. There are war memorials and party buildings, all easily identifiable by the red flag with the lone yellow star in the centre.
We arrive in the town centre and stop outside a restaurant. Security men are there to manage the shuttle buses as they come and go, but they don’t fend off the gang of hawkers who are clearly waiting to pounce on the masses of unsuspecting tourists. What might we like to buy? Well, the offer s began there and then and continued as we fought our way towards the beach for Elizabeth’s obligatory paddle in the South China Sea. There were fans to buy (manual, not battery-powered), Ralph Lauren polo shirts (one style only) at 2 for $5 US, non-branded T-shirts, baseball caps, coolie hats, jewellery boxes, silk pictures, post cards and even a massage – or an “Err, massage” as the lady with the face mask on put it. The beach was beautiful, with fine beige-coloured sand and a lot of tiny sand-coloured crabs scuttling across the sand into any of a mass of tiny holes in the sand. The water was warm and very inviting, but we had paired up with the couple from Sheffield (he was offered the massage, not me), so time didn’t really allow for more than a paddle.
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| You can just glimpse the ship in the distance |
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| With Ann from High Green in Sheffield |
We turn back towards the shuttle drop-off point and see a smart restaurant on the sea front. Time for a beer as my shirt is soaking wet just from walking along the beach in the heat! Drinks arrive and are reasonably priced. Alan and Ann have dong on them and offer to pay. It’s comical when a beer costs about 100,000 dong or just under £3! How communism has let down the people of Vietnam. When you think of Korea being split in two and the north as a dictatorship and backwater and South Korea as an economic powerhouse. How different the story could have been for Vietnam over the past 40 years since the war ended if they had been organised like such as South Korea. In 1985 the Vietnamese dong was on par with the US dollar. Now there are 20,000 dong to the dollar and they run parallel currencies of dong and US dollar. Ironic when you think how they struggled for years to get the Americans out of their lives. And how inflation can destroy economic prospects.
We go on beyond the shuttle pick up/drop off point. Alan and Ann are keen to visit the Dam Market so we head for that. The streets quickly become very shabby and the number of street vendors picks up again noticeably. We finally spot the market. It looks crowded and we don’t fancy it so we part company with Alan and Ann and make our way back to the bus.
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| Having a beer with Ann and Alan from High Green in Sheffield - Mr LoadsACash, it seems |
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| No, I'm not under that hat - I'm taking the photo! |
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