Can't remember the last note I sent you. Have had several letters from classmates but no one chomping at the bit to join me over here! Oh well!
Have been riding the motorbike I bought for Nhung and it reminds me of my pre-drivers license days in New Castle without the hills. I think it may be causing my back to act up a litte too, but I'm not sure if that's it or just I'm not as young as I have come to think I am.
Nha Trang is on a beautiful bay, not far from Cam Ran Bay of Viet/American war fame. There are all kinds of islands with tourist accommodations and a lot of scuba diving. They have decided to develop Cam Ran Bay as a new tourist area, in part because of the natural beauty there and also because the military left a huge airfield. In fact, as of last week we can't fly into Nha Trang as before. We have to fly into Cam Ran and take a 60 kilometer bus ride up to Nha Trang. I am going down to Saigon soon for some paperwork so I'll find out how it works.
The weather is hot but balmy with a lot of breeze off the South-China Sea. Walking or riding along the beach road in the evening is lovely. There are new tourist resorts going up everywhere which is a mixed blessing. I just hope they can fill up the rooms. Some of them look like something from Las Vegas.
Have met some more interesting people. A young Belgian with tattoos and piercing all over who is married to a Viet and they run a bar together. Also, a Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur named Quinn Louie who along with his partners has all kinds of deals going. He is 34! One of his businesses is a bar and restaurant that is very tasteful and serves good food. Speaking of food, Nhung, her friend Thuy and I ate at an upscale seafood restaurant last night. The shrimp were huge and delicious, everything with beer for the girls and pina-colada for me was $18.
Well, good to talk with you.
Dick.
Number of visitors since May 27, 2004
2nd Postcard
May 29, 2004
Hi Bob,
Well another week has gone by and we still haven't made it down to Saigon. No hurry though, time flies when you are having fun!
Several interesting experiences recently. Nhung and I were driving home from her family's houses and in the middle of a busy round-about the engine quit. This is a brand new bike, so??? Anyway we were only a couple of blocks from Mama's so we push it back there with a stop at a shop nearby where two young men checked it out but couldn't fix it. (This is 10 p.m. remember.) We left it at the family's place and took one of their motorbikes to our hotel/apartment.
Next morning, Nhung says she is taking the sister's bike home and getting ours. (This is about 9 a.m.) Thirty minutes later she's back with the bike and the spark-plug wire with a condenser attached. "No good" she says, "bike OK now, 60,000 Dong" (About $4 parts and labor. I couldn't get the hood opened on the Jaguar for $4. Nor could I have pushed it three blocks, nor had it worked on so quickly.)
I have become pretty good friends with the two young Canadians who own the Guava Cafe and I wanted to get my own mobile phone so I asked Quinn, the Chinese-Canadian, if he knew a mobile phone store where they spoke English. He said that wasn't important, they were easy to figure out, but he'd go with me and we'd find a place. Nhung also wanted to come along. At the first place we stopped (and there are dozens of mobile stores everywhere) they weren't too interested in helping us so we decided to check a bigger store that specialized in Nokia. Turned out that was where Nhung had gotten her phone so they knew her. In Vietnam, there are no free phones with a two-year contract; in fact, there are no contracts. You buy the phone -- mine was about $200-- and then you buy a time card that is depleted as you call. Local calls are cheap, text messages are the cheapest and calls elsewhere vary as to distance. I can even call the U.S. on it but it is cheaper to use the State operated service in the Post Office for that.
Anyway, I am now mobile and mobile! If anyone is interested my number from the States is 011.84.0905221904.
I also had my first experience with renting a DVD. The street our place is on doesn't have cable service yet, so all we get on the TV is three Vietnamese channels which even Nhung finds totally boring. The laptop I brought has a DVD player and the fellows at the Guava are always trading pirated copies of films around. They sell for less than a dollar. I asked them if there was anyplace to rent one and they said why would anyone rent when they can buy so cheap. Well, I was walking along a new street the other day and a young woman offered me a flyer on a rental store. I checked it out and found that they were renting professional quality DVD's like you have there for about 65 cents, so I tried one and it was great. So now I can rent movies if I want to. I still haven't borrowed or bought one of the pirated films, but I'm told some are shot in a theatre with a hand-held camera and are pretty shaky.
Nha Trang is home to the Pasteur Institute which was founded here by a Dr. Yersin, in the 1920's to work on tropical diseases and to inoculate against common problems of the time. The Lonely Planet Guidebook mentions that the Institute takes some regular medical patients so I decided to check it out. The standard practice among expatriates with medical problems is to fly down to Saigon where they have several excellent European run clinics. But, I want to know what I can get in Nha Trang in an emergency. I found a very cordial English speaking Vietnamese doctor who said he would be pleased to be my local physician so I feel have that covered. (Hopefully, I won't have to find out!)
It is hot here and things slow to a crawl, including closing the shops from about 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The tourists are all at the beach and there is usually a nice breeze off the South China Sea. I turn on my air conditioning and read a book!
See you later, Dick
3rd Postcard
June 22, 2004
Hi Bob:
I guess it's been about a month since I wrote last. I've been too busy living a soap-opera life to write about it, but I'm back from some traveling and have a bit of time.
One thing about Vietnam outside of Saigon, the type of entertainment is pretty limited, and, among the Vietnamese karaoke singing is a big deal. There are dozens of places all over the cities where a group or a couple rents a karaoke room which has a lounge around a glass topped table on which is served beer and soft drinks and snacks. I'm also told if it is an all-male group, prostitutes are also on the menu, but I was always with mixed groups. There is usually a tacky Asian decor with fish tanks etc. for atmosphere and a medium-sized TV. The amplifier and microphones carry through a reverberating sound that makes it hard to tell if anybody can sing or not, but they all have a great time. There is an elaborate choice of Vietnamese and Western music.
Navigating by motorbike is an experience not to be missed. No one obeys any road rules you would be familiar with. The most common hair-raisers (if I had any) occur at night. Many vehicles have no lights or even reflectors. They frequently go the wrong way on your side of the street and frequently at a rapid speed. There is nothing quite so startling as to come around a corner at night and realize that you are about to collide head-on with a driver with no lights coming on your side. I unfortunately rode into the back wheel of a girl on a bicycle who cut directly across in front of me. Thankfully, no one was hurt and the damage to her bike was easily paid for, but it was scary.
We have had some very bad accidents because the bigger vehicles ignore the smaller ones and bicycles and cyclos are at the bottom. One man, waiting to make a turn with his bike, was hit from behind by a truck that just ran into him. Buses, trucks and cars are typically very arrogant.
I have been doing some traveling, most recently to Hoi An, which is an historic city on the UN list of heritage sites. Picture-postcard material. A friend of mine is opening a cafe there and I went up to see how it was coming. He opens Friday night and I am sure it will be a winner. A friend and I went on the bus which cost $5 and took 9 hours. We came back by plane in 45 minutes for $39.
My hotel was a beautiful Vietnamese architecture with a courtyard pool outside my door. Including breakfast, $10. While I was up there, I went out to one of the exclusive hotels on the main beach, $95 a night and lots of fat white people lying about, and availed myself of their boat-pulled para-sailing rig. It was far easier to get up than I expected and was great fun. Twenty minutes or so cost about $23 and was well worth it
I have severed my relationship with Nhugn, the woman who attracted me in the first place. It is a difficult adjustment for a traditional Vietnamese woman who speaks little English to change her ways so dramatically, and I was foolish to think it was a possibility. We are both disappointed but it is for the best. There is a sizeable community of English-oriented Vietnamese and I have a large circle of friends of which they are a part.
Tomorrow I am sitting in on some English classes for street children to see what it would involve to teach some, and Saturday, I accompany a Vietnamese friend to a children's school at a leper colony to see what they need for next year. You all may hear from me on some of these!
One of these days I will send you some more pictues.
