An entry in the TFS Travel Journal
Another morning of jet fly-overs. Milton rented one of the hotel’s bikes and went to cruise the city. A nice contrast to Saigon, as Nha Trang is still fairly large (250,000) and bustling, but quite manageable and not so much in-your-face. It was also great biking where virtually all other traffic is small motorscooters and other bikes. The beach is truly beautiful, as it goes on for about 5 miles and affords a different view of all the little offshore islands at every spot. Alas, it was then time to leave this tropical resort, so we drove the 5 minutes to the small airport where we waited in the small departure lounge watching a dubbed Marilyn Monroe/Jane Russel movie. Hope that’s what they think all Americans look like. The flight was an hour, and we spent it chatting with Katherine and Christoph, the friendliest and happiest Germans we’ve met. They’d just finished filming a documentary in India about the Holy Day celebration of the Birthday of Krishna and were taking a few weeks of vacation here. We’ll try to see them in Hanoi later in our trip.
We landed in Danang and were met by Thong (”as in flip-flop in your language”), who is very nice but talks a bit too much like Rain Man. His brother was an officer in the S. Vietnamese army and so was in a re-education camp for 10 years (can’t even imagine what that must have been like) before getting out of the country under a U.S. program in 1990 and moving to Pennsylvania where he now works for Hersheys. We were taken to the Fuorama hotel, which is on a part of China Beach, for lunch. It is obviously one of the nicer resorts in the country, but we were just about the only ones there. Lunch was quite good, especially the lemongrass and chicken noodle soup. We then drove to a marble workshop and store. The city is at the base of Marble Mountain, which is actually 5 small steep hills made of quality marble. The workshop was interesting - seeing them chisling, carving and polishing the marble, as well as seeing the many beautiful creations. We then walked the 156 (marble) steps up one of the mountains and got a wonderful view of the lush Central Vietnam countryside and farmlands, as well as the other four mountains and the ocean. We also saw a large, high cave with light coming in from holes in the ceiling in which several huge marble Buddha shrines had been placed, along with the traditional Vietnamese guardian statues along the staircase descending into the cave.
Next stop was the Cham museum. The Cham were a tribe which lived in and dominated this region from around the 6th century until the 12th or 13th. The museum had a nice collection of their stone statues and carvings of both Hindu and Buddha images, many with snarling toothy grins, and some with incredible detail for being over 1200 years old. We then got on the road to Hue.
After getting out of the gross, congested Danang city center, we got onto National Hiway 1, which runs from Saigon to Hanoi. One can not even begin to comprehend how many bicycles and motor cycles populate this road; cars are definitely the minority and are treated with annoyed indifference. Equally amazing are the myriad things we see carried along by their drivers — one guy riding along with two large truck tires around his torso, someone transporting a large piece of wooden furniture on the back, and many people carrying loads much longer and/or wider than their cycles. We stopped at a few places to take pictures, as the views from Cloudy Pass - which is at 1,500 feet - were really something, looking down along the winding mountainous coastline; then on the other side looking at the mountains and the large lagoons - filled with pointy wooden fishing boats - formed by the irregular shaped land masses. Of course, everywhere we stopped we were beseiged by children trying to sell us everything from old American coins (which Thong claimed were fakes) to marble bracelets to cokes. It was then 6:30, and the rest of our drive to Hue was in the darkness, with Thong cheerfully demonstrating his knowledge of ’60s pop music.
We checked into this 1904 hotel, which had been recently renovated (though fortunately they were able to preserve the musty smell in our junior suite), and relaxed for the evening, with the drone of honking motorscooters to keep us company.