Nha Trang

After leaving Phan Rang, we arrived late in the evening at Nha Trang, the city of beaches. The hotel we meant to stay at, a 3-star called Hai Yen, was booked and only had a few rooms with twin beds left, and the wedding party doing karaoke at the hotel's restaurant didn't encourage us to stay. A little down the street, we found Ocean Hotel, a 2-star that had rooms with double beds for half the rate. The hotel offers a breakfast buffet for only $25,000 dong, less than $2 US. It also offers free but really crappy internet where common email sites are barred by privacy restrictions, but porn sites are easily accessible. Also available for our viewing pleasure are cockroaches the size of American mice. But all that aside, they do strive for good service; bellhops are ready and waiting to help bring our luggage upstairs without ever expecting a tip, and the concierge personnel are all very helpful. Here's the view of the beach from our hotel room:

Today, I battled the ocean and got a massage from a blind woman. In the morning, we went to Nha Trang's beach and braced ourselves against the waves as they rolled in to meet us. They say the salty ocean water cleanses the body's minor injuries, including the mosquito bites that had been leaving huge, red-purple scars on my legs.



I had reef shoes on for fear of stepping into something I wouldn't want to, but I eventually abandoned them to feel the gritty grains of sand beneath the soles of my feet and between my toes. Even the baby waves reminded me of the ocean's mightiness--they slapped at me and knocked me down until I was submerged in a flurry of sand and salty sea. I went out to meet the rolling waves on their way in, riding them to shore on my belly for an adrenaline rush. I cocooned myself in the waters like an embryo in a womb, letting them deliver me back to land.



It started to rain in Nha Trang shortly after our beach trip, so we found ourselves stranded in the hotel room most of the time. Di Ha wanted to try the massage service, which we had to call for. About 20 minutes later, two young ladies came to our hotel room, one of them blind. It cost $60,000 dong (about $3.50 US) for a full-hour massage, a service offered by the hotel to help the visually-impaired find work. The blind girl ended up giving me the massage.

What must it feel like to see more with the hands than with the eyes? Right away, I sensed the difference in how she'd probe first with her fingers to get a sense of my body's terrain and my position on the bed. She'd tuck her knees close to my side to better orient herself, skipping her fingertips down my spine to see how tall I am. The massage itself was a mixture of relaxation and pain, because sometimes she did press and squeeze really hard.

Nha Trang's main commerce is fishing, and the city is known for its fresh seafood. In the early morning, men would take their tiny tub of a boat out to sea and then come back in with their catch and sell it to the restaurants lining the shore.



We ate lunch at Ngon Hai Dang Restaurant, where the seafood was so fresh that we were asked to come select our choice of crabs and then choose how we'd like them prepared. The restaurant's pricing is considered ritzy by locals, but it's still cheaper than in the US. We ended up ordering 5 crabs, prepared different ways. My favorite was sauteed in tamarind sauce. By the end of that lunch, I had had my fill of crab for the year.






The breakfast buffet at the hotel was one of the best parts. There was a modest selection of food choices, but each dish was freshly made and tasted so much better than a lot of US buffets. The hotel chef cooked sunny-side-up eggs and the main hot dish of the morning on the spot. During our stay, it was "bun bo hue" (spicy beef noodle soup) and "bun cha ca" (vermicelli in fish stock). The chef was curious how his culinary skills compared to the chefs in Saigon, the "big city," and asked our opinion on his dishes.


During our stay at Ocean Hotel, a historic even occurred. Viet Nam beat Thailand 3-2 in soccer in the Southeast Asia Championship game, winning the country's first international title. I'm not a sports person, but it's "the thing" in Viet Nam, and men are more riled up over a game of soccer than US football fans around Thanksgiving--to the point of being zealots. My mom knew an old man whose death wish was for his sons to carry him to the soccer stadium to see one last live game.

Life visibly stopped as the game drew to a close--people gathered around TVs in homes and in public. Anyone's TV could become public property as people magnanimously left open their front doors so complete strangers could mosey in and watch. The flickering blue glare from TV screens could be seen on spectators' hypnotized faces as we drove past; the entire city held its breath for an outcome that would go down into the small country's sports history. Even our taxi driver couldn't wait to park the van back at the hotel after our dinner. He jumped out to join the gathering crowd of fans clustered around the TV in the lobby.


The smell of smoke hung thick in the air as people continually lit cigarettes in nervous anticipation. And when victory was secured, such a collective cheer rolled through the streets that it truly sounded like the Norse gods bowling. Everyone celebrated through the night, riding through the streets and waving Vietnamese flags. It didn't take long for traffic to come to a complete stand-still. The next morning, everyone was hung over from celebrating, and every newspaper in the country ran the story on its cover page.