So, this is journal #13 on Friday the 13th. And I'm the 13th child in my family. And my name has 13 letters. Good thing I'm not superstitious and don't share the Asian belief in numerology.
Sidney is dead. The chihuahua puppy named after me only lived 3 days. Again, good thing I'm not superstitious and don't believe in omens.
When I last wrote, I felt like crap with a bad cold. The next day, things got much better, and have been pretty good, with the exception of a few coughs, ever since. Thien, on the other hand, got sick the day I got better, but not nearly as badly as I did.
Sunday, 6/8/03
Thien and I rented a motorbike and rode north of Nha Trang. Pleasant beaches and green hills. Because we kept having health issues between the two of us, we decided to head north the next day and save the water activities for our stop in Nha Trang on the way back from the north, when we would hopefully be healthier.
Monday, 6/9/03
It was a very scenic bus ride from Nha Trang to Hoi An. We stopped at several beaches along the way--all very nice. At the lunch break, we were informed via mobile phone that my namesake had died.
When we got to Hoi An, we checked in to a hotel, and unpacked our stuff. Later, when we gave our IDs to the front desk (hotels have to hold the passports and Vietnamese ID cards of customers), we had the unpleasant surprise of being told that we could not stay in the same room. Hoi An has a law that says that Vienamese citizens and foreigners cannot share a room. Presumably, this is to thwart prostitution. We ended up renting two rooms for $10 instead of one room for $7. Since we already unpacked, we only stayed in the one room.
Hoi An is a pleasant, old town with a lot of French colonial architecture mixed in with various Asian styles. The city has a history as a port city with a large Chinese, Japanese, and French population as well as Vietnamese. It is very quiet except for the restaurant and shop keepers trying to get you into their places in the tourist parts of town. This isn't too bad, though.
Dinner was in a quiet Vietnamese restaurant housed in a French building in the old part of town. We were the only people in the restaurant and sat on the second floor balcony over the quiet street. Motor traffic is restricted in the old part of town. After dinner, we walked to the old Japanese covered bridge, supposedly built on top of the dead body of a monster whose head and tail are in other countries.
Tuesday, 6/10
We visited a lot of the old buildings in Hoi An. Temples, meeting houses, old residences, and what can only be called museums by straining your imagination. It was all very pleasant, even if some of it was not the most impressive. (The old meeting houses were probably the best of the lot.)
Walking down the street, we ran into someone Thien knows. (This seems to happen everywhere we go.) When we went to see a traditional music performance demonstration later in the day, this guy was doing the singing and dancing in the classic opera portion of the show.
After the performance, we were walking down the street and ran into someone else that Thien knows--a French guy who owns a popular bar/restaurant in town. He invited us in for a drink. His bar is in beautiful old French building.
We had dinner and used the internet, and while walking back to the hotel, ran into Boo--another guy that Thien knows. Boo was having dinner with an Australian guy who was on the bus with us the day before, so while Thien caught up with his friend, I chatted with the Aussie.
Wednesday, 6/11
Thien and I went to the ruins at My Son--a town near Hoi An. These thousand year old ruins are from the ancient kingdom of Champa, whose ruins are scattered throughout Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. (The most famous attraction in Cambodia is one of the Champa ruins--the ancient city of Ankor Wat.) Many of the ruins are still used as places of worship by Buddhists.
The ruins were cool, but it was disappointing that the vast majority of the place was destroyed by bombing during the American War. Several bomb craters were very visible near some of the ruins. They were standing for a thousand years, but I got to them about 30 years too late.
We took a boat from the ruins back to Hoi An. It was a great day for the boat ride--a cool breeze was coming off the river. We passed several fisher-folk in their little canoe-like boats or standing in the shallow river. Our own boat was an old wooden craft with benches placed under the covered roof. An old put-put motor pushed us along. Very relaxing.
When we got back to Hoi An, we had ice cream at the cafe/hotel owned by Boo's family. He suggested some hotels for us that were nicer than our current hotel and not so strict about the "no Vietnamese and foreigners in the same room" rule. We found a new hotel, and Boo took us to a street stall to have "the best cau lau in town". Cau lau is a local food made with thick noodles, meat, and croutons in a clear broth. It was pretty good--much better than the cau lau we had at the fancy restaurant a couple of nights earlier.
Boo then took us to the beach just outside of Hoi An. It was a very good beach, with lots of people, but plenty of room anyway. Boo and Thien bought dried squid and boiled shellfish to eat in the beach chairs while we watched the sun go down behind the mountains beyond the western end of the beach. Even after the sun went down and the fishing boats offshore turned on their lights and went to work, there were still plenty of people on the beach. The moon was mostly full, providing a lot of light which was supplemented by the lights of food and drinks vendors on the beach.
I got my Vietnam visa extension today, so I can stay in Vietnam up to another month.
Thursday, 6/12
Thien and I moved to our new hotel, which was much nicer and did not require us to rent two rooms. We rented a motorbike and drove to the nearby city of Danang. On the way there, we ran out of gas, even though the guage said the tank was full. We stopped at a roadside "gas station"--a little shop with a barrel of gas with a pump attached. When we tried to start the bike back up, the attendant noticed gas squirting out. He took apart the fuel system, showed us the water inside, dumped it out, put everything back together, and things were running as good as new. This took about 10 minutes and cost us about 40 cents.
In Danang, we went to the famous China Beach. We then went to the Marble Mountains, which have a spectacular view of the beach and surrounding countryside as well as a series of caves. Many of the caves are Buddha-ful as well as beautiful-- they have Buddhist shrines in them. Some of them are quite impressive, with buildings inside the caverns next to the statues of Buddha. We were the only people in some of the caves, but there were plenty of bats with us in those. In some, they were making quite a racket. The Marble Mountains were much more impressive than I expected.
I'm writing this while munching on my new favorite snack--peanuts coated with a crunchy, coconut-flavored shell. They taste great and you can get about a pound and half of them for a dollar. Unfortunately, they are really fatty and high in calories. Oh, well.
Until next time.
Sid
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