Today we decided to take a tour out to the islands we could see in the distance of the Nha Trang Bay. On our way out the first island I struck up a conversation with the guide.
‘Is the water always this brown?’
‘No’ he shook his head, ‘Normally it’s perfectly clear and blue. There is a lot of underwater construction lately that’s stirring up sediments on the bottom. Also there are very heavy rains lately.’
‘Will the water be clear where we’re snorkeling?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, its forty minutes off the coast. Very clear.’
He asked me where I’d traveled to in Vietnam. I told him all the villages we’d visiting along the coast and that we were headed to Ho Chi Minh that night.
‘Oh, I don’t think you can take train to Ho Chi Minh.’
My heart sunk. I asked him to explain why he thought that. He told me that apparently there was a fairly serious train accident between Danang and Nha Trang and no SE (North-South trains running on the Reunification Express) could pass until they’d cleaned up the wreckage.
Whoah – that had to have happened the day after Stephen and I had made the trip from Danang to Nha Trang. Unlike America, where there are usually two set of train tracks going between destination, in Vietnam there is only one set with occasional offshoot sections that allow trains to pass each other. So I could only imagine that a derailment would mess up the entire train system.
‘But we’re not taking the SE train to Ho Chi Minh.’ I said, ‘We’re taking the STN1 train that only runs between Nha Trang and Ho Cho Minh, so we should be okay, right?’
‘Oh yes, STN1 train will be fine. As long as you aren’t on SE train.’
Talk about dumb luck…Stephen and I had been frustrated when we couldn’t buy the SE trains the day before. If those trains hadn’t been sold out we’d have purchased the ticket and been stuck in Nha Trang. Fortunately our STN1 train was still running and we avoided yet another particularly sticky situation.
Again my travel adage rings true – approach your trip with preparation and a positive mental attitude and somehow, someway, things usually work out.
Anyways, after our conversation I went to the top of the boat and soaked in the scenery. A white butterfly flapping frantically as it sought the shore, the guttural throb of the engine as we pulsed towards the distant islands, the soaring mountains, the small floating fishing villages and the deep blue waters of the bay.
Suddenly – SNAP – the chair I was sitting on broke. That’s my second broken chair and I swear I am too big to visit Vietnam. The three Spanish girls on the top of the boat laughed at me.
‘Guess I need to lose weight?’ I joked.
‘No, I don’t think so.’ One of them laughed, ‘This maybe not the best boat.’
She was right. The boat reminded me of the boat that Chief Martin Brody used in Jaws.
We got our gear and went snorkeling. Fun, pretty standard stuff. There were floating, glass-bottomed boats filled with tourists that didn’t want to scuba dive. Stephen thought it would be funny to swim underneath one of the boats and wave at the people as they floated by. He was doing it when he slammed his back into a huge coral outcrop.
I was swimming about thirty yards away. Stephen paddled over.
‘Did I cut my back?’ He asked as he turned his back to me. His back was pretty badly cut up and oozing blood into the water.
In less than twelve hours Stephen had been hit with a rock and cut with coral.
After snorkeling we drove to another island where we snorkeled again. Then we had lunch, then we went fishing, then went to another island where we could lay on the beach and relax (I got a 60 minute massage on the beach for $10…nice!).
When we got back to Nha Trang we wandered around and got some street food and then headed back to the hotel.
After hanging out in the lobby for a few hours I needed to shower (I was covered in sand, baby oil (massage) and sun block lotion). Only problem is that we’d already checked out of the hotel…so I weaseled my way to the second floor where there was a pool and shower. Nobody was up there since it was cold and rainy. I talked the bartender into giving me a towel and then I took an ice cold shower (the ‘shower’ was actually the hose people used to rinse off sand before going in the pool). Umm, yeah, that was refreshing.
After hanging out in the lobby for hours, with our massive bags spewing things this way and that, and using their internet we left (note: we were happy to exploit the hotel since they almost didn’t let Stephen in the night before when hoodlums were throwing rocks at him).
By the time we caught a cab there were driving monsoon winds and buffeting sheets of rain outside. We had the cab drop us off at an internet café down the block from the train station (we try to spend as little time as possible in those horrible trains stations).
When we had to walk to the train station the rain and winds had picked up even more. The street had four inches of water in it and Stephen and I had to take off our shoes and walk barefoot through the streets to the train station.
‘Can you believe this rain?’ I yelled at Stephen.
‘Well, we are in south east Asia during monsoon season.’
Wise ass J
We must have been a sight arriving at the station – two massive backpacks strapped to our front and back side, covered in a poncho, walking barefoot.
The first train I tried to board was apparently headed in the wrong direction and the conductor yelled at me like I’d just drowned a bag of baby kittens. He yelled me off the train. We finally got the correct train to Ho Chi Minh. It was the oldest train yet – I am guessing it was forty to fifty years old and pretty nasty.
We shared our berth with two Vietnamese guys, pleasant enough, one of them was from Vietnam but lived in Orlando Florida and was home on vacation.
I was asleep in a half our…overall a very pleasant night.
Next stop Ho Chi Minh!
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