Another Saturday (Feb. 2/09 - Nha Trang, Vietnam)

With the whole day to kill before catching our overnight bus to Hoi An, we slept in, had a late breakfast,and set out walking to check out the north end of town. Outside of the town centre, the touristy shops and cafes disappeared and local shops selling clothes, cell phones, and motorbike parts took over. Noting that Ken hadn't had a haircut since we arrived in Borneo a month ago, we kept our eyes out for a barber shop and eventually found one that agreed to cut his hair - two others shook their heads when he sign languaged that he wanted a hair cut! The ladies inside ran around for a few minutes, apparently trying to find someone to do the job, but eventually they got down to business after some very clear instructions about how much hair to not cut off. The girl actually did a really good job - very thorough - 20 minutes though! Just when we thought she was done, she started trimming random ear and nose hairs, which turned into a half hour long ordeal that apparently involved multiple six inch long steel instruments, a razor blade, and a lot of poking and prodding. I got bored (and a little grossed out) after a few minutes and sat on the curb outside to read while Ken got his makeover. He emerged a while later all trimmed and purdy, though he apparently even had to insist that he didn't need a massage too!

I've started reading a new book called Catfish and Mandala, by Andrew Pham, on my sister's recommendation. It's about a Vietnamese guy who fled to America with his family after the war as a kid, and later goes back to cycle from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. Anyway, while I was waiting for Mr. Beauty Queen to get his hair did, I read a part of the book that quite accurately depicts the mayhem that is traffic in Saigon, and everywhere else in this part of the world it seems! Seeing as it's a slow news day I thought I would quote an excerpt from it here where they are driving through the city on a motorbike:

The roads are so people-thick I can reach out and touch four other motorists at any moment. Viet works the horn, the brakes, and the gas constantly... Nobody gives way to anybody. Everyone just angles, points, dives directly toward his destination, pretending it is an all-or-nothing gamble. People glare at one another and fight for maneuvering space. All parties are equally determined to get the right-of-way - insist on it. They swerve away at the last possible moment, giving scant inches to spare. The victor goes forward, no time for a victory grin, already engaging in another contest of will. Saigon traffic is Vietnamese life, a continuous charade of posturing, bluffing, fast moves, tenacity, and surrenders... Twice motorbikes grazed my leg. Within fifteen minutes, we see three accidents, one of which is serious, involving a cyclo and a motorcycle... The intersections are the worst, particularly for those who need to make a left. Traffic lights are rare. When there is one, there is never a turn signal. When Viet wants to make a turn, he simply does it, plunges in ahead of the coming traffic, hoping that his timing is right so they don't run us over. He goes into it, blasting his horn, dodging moving obstacles as aggressively as everyone else.

We made our way to the beach and decided over lunch that we should consider flying from Hoi An to Hanoi after reading that it would be an 18 hour bus ride. So we tracked down the Vietnam Airlines office and booked some tickets to get us there after checking out Hoi An tomorrow. We claimed a patch of sand on the beach in the shade of some palm trees to read and people watch for the rest of the day. It was entertaining to watch the locals, as they tend to run straight into the ocean fully dressed, get tossed around in crashing waves, and then walk out drenched and covered with sand, hair plastered across their faces, jeans drenched, and shirts see-through. Swimsuits must be a foreign concept. Besides, who wouldn't want to spend the rest of the day in wet salty jeans?

We were pretty impressed by the mobile dorm that is the "sleeper bus" - from the outside, it looks like a big fancy Greyhound-type bus, but inside are three rows of compact reclining seat-style bunkbeds, one set on the floor and the other about four feet up, one row along each window and one down the middle. It seemed that we were pretty much the last hotel on the cross-town pick-up route, so we didn't have much choice of beds. We learned quickly that the ones in front of the back door are short on leg room, but since I'm short on height that didn't really matter. I have no idea how many hundreds of kilometres lay between Nha Trang and Hoi An, but it was a 12 hour ordeal to get there. Most people seemed to sleep the entire way, including Ken who was the lone snorer at our end of the bus. But despite being comfortable, I just couldn't relax enough to fall asleep with the incessant horn blowing, brake slamming, swerving, and fast cornering that the driver carried on with for hour after hour. It's unnerving to feel the bus going a million miles an hour down the road, then the driver laying on the horn over and over again, then slamming on the brakes desperately, thinking a crash was next, then a swerve left, a fast swerve right, and a huge blaring horn of a truck flying past the window as he nearly ploughs into us. Over and over again. Needless to say, I maybe slept for an hour or two all night, and most of that was during the half hour rest stop and subsequent slow uphill climb over some mountains.