DEAR GOBO

Our Weekend at the Beach

Steven and I left to Mui Ne on Saturday from the Sinh Cafe Office in Pham Ngu Lao. The bus was a long distance bus with comfortable seats, but lacking an on-board toilet or television, both of which could be pros or cons depending on your experience with smelly on-board toilets and raucously loud Chinese movies. Soon after we started off, at 7:29 a.m., we were handed a Sinh Cafe bag with a bag of peanuts, bottled water and a wet towelette, the kind served at many local restaurants to wipe your hands before you eat. I was very much looking forward to seeing the countryside with its brilliant green rice fields, free range livestock and quaint little houses, so for first two and a half hours, I was somewhat disappointed at the seemingly endless scene of city streets passing by my window. Rows upon rows of shop fronts backed by houses of varying height and design eventually transformed into fields of young trees planted in straight rows, plots of banana trees surrounding small block one-room houses and increasingly larger squares of bright green rice seedlings.

When we turned on a road leading closer to the beach, I recognized the fields of dragon fruit trees that had struck me as so strange on my last ride down this strip except this time they were not as spectacular out of season without their bright pink blossoms of dragon fruit. High hills appeared and disappeared, as did gray storm clouds, as we traveled closer to the beach.

During our bus ride, a man from Sinh Cafe came around with a clip board asking us to write down the hotel where we would like to be dropped off. Since we hadn't yet decided on a place, Steven wrote down, Small Garden, one of the three places we had looked into and we decided that if we didn't want to stay there we could walk to the other two. When we arrived in Mui Ne, the bus began intermittent stops, dropping passengers at various hotels and resorts along the main street. The third or fourth stop was ours and as the bus rolled away, we walked up the drive of the Small Garden Hotel into a small courtyard with steps leading up to a reservation desk in a newly built/renovated wooden cottage. We inquired as to the availably of rooms and were quoted three prices, $25, $27 and $30, a little higher than the $10 we had found on a traveler's website, but not incredibly expensive either, so we asked to see a room on the beach.

We were led down a path through a beautifully maintained little garden, past a koi pond and identical wooden cottages with wooden recliners set on small front porches. When we came to the cottage at the end, we were shown inside a room well worth the $30 price tag, with attractive decorations, air-conditioning, and a large bathroom with hot water. Not wanting to make a decision until I had seen the beach, I walked down the path a little further to the beach, past a raised restaurant with low tables and two inviting hammocks. The path ended with a view of a long, white sandy beach and a brilliant blue sky above crystal clear water. Just steps from the end of the path, wooden beach recliners sat under a thatch umbrella, with a clear view of the water.

We decided to stay.

After changing into our bathing suites, we headed straight out to the beach. The water was warm, but with pockets of colder currents, and the view was great. Mui Ne is a long stretch of beach ending in two pointed jetties at each end, too far for us to make out without a day of exploring. The street is not visible from the beach because the hotels, resorts and restaurants take up all of the land between the road and the beach, but the hotels and resorts are small and attractive, none over four stories high, the majority only one story of attractively designed huts set back from the beach and d0 nothing to detract from the natural beauty of the area.

After an hour or so at the beach, we decided to walk up the beach to find something for lunch. We stopped at a family run Vietnamese restaurant, passing by the restaurants in the hotels and resorts, figuring them to be well outside our budget, and had an enjoyable lunch of grilled fish and lemon pepper and chili squid. After lunch we walked down to a tour office and bought our tickets for the bus back to Saigon the following day at 1:30 p.m. and wandered back to our hotel along the street checking out the various shops and restaurants and looking into the price of a motorbike rental for the following day. Afterward, we headed back into the water.

That evening, we decided to go for a walk down the beach before stopping somewhere for a pre-dinner cocktail. We walked down the beach away from the fishing village of Mui Ne to the Coastal City of Phan Thiet where the resorts got bigger and fancier, yet still not overbearingly so. After some time, we turned back and stopped in for a cocktail at the SunSea Resort next to our hotel, lured in by the beer menu, which, unlike most bars in Saigon, offered more than Heineken, Saigon, Tiger and 333. We had a few drinks and then walked out to the road where we found a restaurant that looked like a glorified tree house with a boat filled with various types of seafood on ice displayed out front. I picked out a dozen mussels and an oyster and Steven chose a whole Red Snapper, before walking up the wooden staircase to our table on the second floor overlooking the main road. We had a enjoyable dinner and then walked back to our hotel where, not used to late nights on the town, we crashed in the hammocks by the beach.

The next morning we got up and headed straight to the beach. After some time, our growling stomaches pulled us in to the restaurant at our hotel, where Steven had a flavorful banana pancake and I had a traditional Vietnamese breakfast of Pho Tom or Shrimp Soup. After breakfast we decided to see if we could rent a motorbike for a few hours to get to see a little more of Mui Ne and to get out to the sand dunes for which the area is famous.

We inquired at the front desk and the woman at reception began a conversation in Vietnamese with a man in the parking lot on a motorbike. Steven soon arranged for us to rent the man's bike for 40,000d or about $2.50 for an hour, which would give us time for another swim before we had to pack up and check out to catch our bus back to Saigon.

It has been over three years since I have driven a motor-scooter and just as much time for Steven. I was a little nervous about getting on both as a passenger and a driver, but convinced myself that if anywhere, Mui Ne, was the perfect place to get back on the horse, given that it is only one straight road with little traffic. Steven drove first and I asked him to take a test drive before speeding off down the street with me in tow. He took off smoothly and I watched him disappear into the distance thinking that I would be able to hear the commotion in this sleepy town if anything happened, even if I couldn't hear it. But soon, he came roaring back down the street, looking quite comfortable in the driver's seat, so I fastened my helmet and climbed aboard.

The trip from Mui Ne to the sand dunes is one I became intimately familiar with in 2005 having, unaware of the total distance and annoyed by the ceaseless hawking by the xe om guys, spurned all offers of a taxi and walked the some 5 - 8 kilometers (we estimated the distance as we rode) to the dunes. This time, on the back of a bike with Steven as my driver, it was much more pleasant and I remembered the few turns that took us straight past the dunes. Knowing we didn't have the time to dismount and explore, we rode a little further along the road with stunning views of the ocean and coastal islands, before turning back and heading back to our hotel. On the way back, after a quick stop at an ATM, Steven asked if I wanted to drive and so, we switched positions and we were out on the road. My first time on a motorbike in Thailand ended up with me in a tree, but my first time back after all this time was less eventful and I immediately remembered how to pull back on the gas while stepping on the clutch to change the gears and was surprisingly comfortable with Steven's extra weight on the bike. The cars made me a little nervous and turning around and down shifting weren't as smooth as simply driving forward and up-shifting, but it was good to remember how easy it was and gave me enough of a taste to look forward to the freedom of "next time."

We arrived in time for a leisurely swim and a leisurely lunch at our hotel's restaurant where we again found the food delicious and affordable. We were packed and ready for our bus at 1:30 p.m.

The bus ride back wasn't quite as pleasant as our ride there, us having purchased from a competitor company to Sinh Cafe, one of many who sell tickets and put you on any bus heading to your destination, but we made it well enough and in one piece.

Upon our arrival back in Saigon, we treated ourselves to an Indian dinner at Royal India, picked up a few DVDs and then caught a bus back to our apartment on Nguyen Tri Phuong. It was a lovely weekend and we look forward to going back, but we were glad to be home.

The path to our room, Small Garden Hotel, Mui Ne, Vietnam

Koi Pond

Steven on the path

Me on the path

Our neighboring cottage

Our room

Inside of our room

Our foot bath

To the beach

Our chairs on the beach

Mui Nei beach

Fishing boats on the beach

Steven at lunch at a restaurant on the beach

Me at lunch

Who is that masked man?

Steven on the bike

Fishing boats off the coast

Fishing boats closer up

Local fisherman walking away from his little boat

Local fisherman in his little boat

Sightseeing in Chinatown

When Steven got home, we decided to do a little sight-seeing in Cholon, which is Saigon's China Town, a neighborhood with an enormous amount of history, of which we live just on the fringe.

We walked down Nguyen Tri Phuong to the next block at Nguyen Trai and took a right. We walked about four blocks before we came to our first temple and then seemed to pass one every other block. I have not yet learned to distinguish one temple in Vietnam from another. Unlike in Thailand where the majority of the temples, or wats, are very distinctly Thai Buddhist, the temples in Vietnam could be Taoist, Cao Dai, Buddhist, Hindu, or a combination of any of the above with traditional animist beliefs, but they are all fascinating to see, both inside and out.

After visiting a few temples, we wandered through Cholon's traditional herb market where storefronts overflowed with burlap sacks filled with various dried herbs, mushrooms and other contents indistinguishable to the untrained eye. As we walked further on, we found shops selling dried snakes, pickled snakes, snake skins, alligators skins, various horns, teeth and other body parts along with entire bodies of animals we could not identify, both in jars and dried.

After we had walked past the herb market, we came upon some more modern shops and markets on the street where we purchased another umbrella for me, since I'd been using Steven's and he'd been getting wet, a map of Vietnam for our wall, batteries for the camera, some coffee and tea and a mosquito zapper shaped like a tennis racket that Steven had been wanting.

We walked back as the sunlight began to fade, tired and hungry, but satisfied with our excursion. We stopped into Ga Ran Kentucky for some soft serve ice cream, which to our delight, and my surprise, was very tasty soft serve ice cream, and walked the rest of the way home munching on our cones.

A village scene carved out of the top of a temple in Cholon, Saigon's China Town.

An ornately carved wooden boat above the entrance.

A nature scene on one of the walls of the temple.

One of the temple's many alters.

A bell inside the temple.

An insane amount of incense hanging from the ceiling.

Buildings in Cholon

A fountain in a park

A fruit stand outside a market in Cholon.

Inside the Market

Vegetables for sale

A Neighborhood Tour

On Friday, I met Steven for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant near his school, where you can order from a variety of dishes, on display on a cart for your viewing pleasure, for less than a dollar. And it was delicious. Vietnam has a leg up on Atlanta in the tasty cheap food department.

After lunch, I walked home from the school taking pictures along the way, thinking again what a good decision it was (Steven's) to live close to the school.

When I got close to the apartment, I decided to continue my walk down through the park we walk to to get to Hung Vuong Plaza where our local movie theater is and see what else the Plaza had to offer.

One of the biggest perks of our location is this park and our proximity to the movie theater, which is one of our favorite pastimes (although since we've been here our movie viewing has decreased substantially due to the sad selection of movies that make it to Vietnam).

Hung Vuong Plaza is a very upscale mixed residential/commercial development to rival any think similar in the states. The first three floors are one huge department store selling everything you'd find in a Macy's at home at similar prices (I saw a dress I liked for over 2 million dong (or $120)). The fourth floor houses a bowling ally/video arcade and the most enticing food court I have ever seen, complete with Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Japanese/Sushi food stalls, along with the requisite "Ga Ran Kentucky." The entire fifth floor is comprised of the largest fitness facility I have ever seen, "California Wow" a gym based out of Thailand, with what I estimated as at least a hundred stationary bikes, treadmills and elipitical machines. At 1:30 on a Friday afternoon, I saw three people working out, but perhaps over 300 do come at once to use all of those machines around 6:00 p.m...

The next floor consists of a fancy looking Chinese Restaurant, The Royal Garden and the next floor houses the MegaStar movie complex.

During my tour of the Plaza's fancy bathroom facilities, I received a call from my husband informing me that his principal had taken ill and that their afternoon of professional development had been postponed; so I made my way back down through the over-priced merchandise and back through the pretty little park to our apartment, where Steven and I planned our next adventure.

The beginning of the park around the corner from our apartment.