Nha Trang
12th March 2014: Our second port in Vietnam was Nha Trang, one of Vietnam’s “premier” resorts. Ever to be know be me as “One Dollar” because everything here is One Dollar! Hat; One Dollar! Ice Cream; One Dollar! Genuine Rolex Watch; One Dollar!. Actually I did pay a little more for mine from a nice girl at the Dam market which seemed to be built inside an old round water tower.
She promised me they are genuine and to prove it they even came in a Ray-Ban bags.
Today’s facts from my P&O guide. Vietnam is twice the size of Tunisia. Also Fake Rolex watches are sold in the markets…Do you think??…You don’t mean??…ah Sucks!
Anyway, Nha Trang was a major US Air base during the war and had at its peak 40,000 troops were based here, today the Russians and the French have arrived with their towels. In fact, the island in the bay has been turned into a 6 star French Resort that is serviced from the shore by a alpine style, without the skis, cable car stretching out over the bay on tall pylons to the Island.
Unfortunately, cruise ships can no longer moor at the quayside which is deep enough and big enough because they can’t squeeze under the cable car to get to the quay…..Doooogh!
Like most places in Vietnam everyone goes everywhere on scooters and since everyone here is religious, they all motor with divine right. When crossing any road you just have look left, right, front, back, up and down and then….RUN. It’s all complete madness.
Talking of the Divine Right, we were taken to the Long Son Pagoda (rebuilt 1940) with it huge seated Buddha at the top of the hill and 152 steps.
Luckily for us, who had only half an hour at this stop i.e. from 10.27am to 10.57am (Our guide liked to be exact, but why she never rounded the minutes we never found out) and for those who could not make it all the way up there was another one lying down halfway up who seemed quite happy to see us.
Finally we crossed the Bong Bridge (in the first picture) to the Po Nagar Cham Towers which were built between the 8th and 12th centuries AD to celebrate the goddess Po Nagar who according to our guide had 99 husbands.
And lots of children…anyway she is the mother of the kingdom. The temple ain’t bad either, it was in a great position overlooking the city with cooling winds, and had local brides being photographed. Everything one could want, and an ice cream from one of the stalls…one dollar!
Nha Trang was an unexpected hit with me, at first glace it is a very uninspiring, undistinguished sort of place but during the course of the day it grew on me. I don’t know what it is about the Vietnamese people but I do admire them. They have had a tough time and the effects of the war, which they won remember and don’t really want to talk about, continues to this day but they seem to have put it behind them, put a smile on and got on with life.
