Vietnam

I spent the afternoon stocking up on bread, jam, cheese and peanutbutter (no vegemite here!) all I needed was the breadrolls.

I´m still not used to the currency, thinking 2000 is a worth a small car, not two breadrolls with pork and salad.
Anyhow, I was on a mission. I was on a mission to go out and get 2 plain breadrolls and knowing they tend to charge westerners more I was determined not to get ripped off (again)

I used by best sign language and asked the lady for 2 breadrolls, no salad. Just plain breadrolls.
She said '2000' showing 2 fingers clearly indicacting 2.
'2000!' I said.
'2000' she said.
'2000!' I said.
'yes', '2000' she said.

Sick off all the rip-off´s lately I was furious, 'What a ripoff' I said and stormed off with a 'don't worry about it' up in the air hand gesture.

I later passed on my proud story to Sam expressing my abiltly to sick up for myself,.... he tells me the lady was really only asking for 20c a breadroll! OOpps!

Its way easy to find a room in Nha Trang for $5 bucks a night, but for $9 you get luxury.
We ended up following a stranger on a moto into an alleyway (as you do) which, I admit, was a little scarey, but at the end we found a nice little hotel called Song Linh.

Today we hired bikes and rode all day and all night. We went on a bike bar crawl. Most places have a happy hour that goes for at least 10 hours and double vodkas for just one buck. This suited us fine.

We ended up maggot at the Sailing club, the beachside resort with the sunchairs and umbrellas. The Sailing Club and the Lousianna are both very nice but tend to be full of 'western' men picking up 'non-western' women. Although tradgically but unconsciously we ended up in the other bars like 'Zippos and Crazy Kims' we had more fun, where you have giant sized cocktails, wear stupid hats and dance on the bar.

We made it back to our hotel that night. In the morning our bikes luckily were chained up together. I have a faint recollection of Sam having a collision with a moto on the highway in the early hours, causing a awkward smash into the gutter,..... but you'll have to ask him about that......

Today is our last day in Mui Ne. We are leaving at 1pm for Nha Trang on a 5 hour bus ride.

This morning I´m keeping in out of the sun, I've been burnt real bad and now look like a diseased patchy dog. My skin has blistered and there was some puss and then eventually it peeled off in big long strips. Nice I know.

So now we are in Nha Trang. I like this place. It has a lot of cheap hotels and heaps of restaurants with fresh seafood, lots of bars and a large stretch of white sandy beach.

The bus was supposed to take 5 hours from Mui Ne. It took 7. It was shit. And I'm not surprised.
I mean,... if the Vietnamese are advanced enough to have roads, buses, cars and bikes...., then you would think they could at least implement some simple road rules.

No,

instead they sit on the horn for 7 hours!!!!!!!, AND I'M NOT KIDDING ONE BIT!

They literally sit on the horn the entire time they drive. It is hell on earth. The most f@#k'd up method of transport on the entire planet and I have never before experienced such mental and physical pain over one long period of time before in my life.

So after being squashed into the Asian sized seats and my earballs being repeatively tortured by the horn, I then have to put up with the Vietnamese way of speed control. No, its not speed cameras, not police or round abouts.....
They flatten out and tar their roads like everybody else in the world, but get this.... they then corrigate them up again! Just like the freaking Nerriga road! Why bother taring them in the first place!
Leave it bumpy if you dont want us going fast, it dont slow anybody down anyhow!...

In the end, its on my 'Never to do again list' Enduring a thumping horn headache, my poor sweating body hating the warm air-conditioner and my painfull bladder almost bursting because I'm being jarred to the point where it jolts everything out of my pockets and grinds my teeth together. I've been driven to the point of insanity and I´m justabout to kill someone with a blunt spoon. Its no way to travel I tell ya. Take the boat if you can. Thank god for those plastic spoons they give you on the airplanes.

Been watching the staff build a little hut all day and been lazing around jumping in and out of the pool, learning Spanish and reading Mr Nice. Today we made our own breakfast of sugar toast with bananas and yogurt orange juice poppers. We`ve been eating lots of bananas, fruit shakes and fresh mangoes.

Yesterday Sam got a really bad haircut from the local Mui Ne barber who sported a very bad haircut himself. At first I really freaked out, it looked as though Sam was going to be running around with an awesome flat top for the rest of the day, but after much fussing and reassurance from the anonymous heads poking through the windowless hole in the wall. ....and after more trimming, more razoring, more brushing, the barber finally tamed down the top and pulled out his scarey looking flip blade. As I heard the razor scrape down on dry skin I flinched slightly at the thought of Sam loosing his head in the flick of a hand movement. At this point we were both thinking we would be happy with the job, no matter what it looks like, just pay the man and get out of there!

So Sam now looks like he is joining the army. We both keep trying to convince ourselves that it looks ok, smoothing it down with some water every now and then...

We have hit the a record level of laziness. We have been so lazy lately, we get out of bed at 3 in the arvo. It´s just so hard to walk out to the pool (right outside our door) and the biggest decisions we have to make are if we should play cards first or go for a swim first. I have slowly been learning to sleep in the middle of the day.
We are so lazy that we get so tired and we are so lazy that last night we were in bed by 7.30. Thats lazy.

Pic taken on our afternoon cruise along Mui Ne beach.

Me using the local kids swing hanging from a coconut tree.

Last night I was rudely awaken by being repeatively biten on my head by an anonymous abusive creature. My eye puffed out to double its normal size and I had an engorged forehead. I franically searched around for giant mozzies or bull ants, whatever it was, it had to be enormous! Then the swelling puffed out to massive proportions and I started to panic (aahhh!!!)... What are the doctors like in Vietnam?, How do I tell them this is not what I really look like, and how far are they from Mui Ne beach?
And then I had thoughts of staying like this forever! What if it never goes down! After desperate attemps, I couldn´t find the bitee and have come to the conclusion that it must be a strange and very rare Vietnamese microscopic bug with great face swelling properties.

............By morning my face was back to normal.

The days are going really slow but it feels like the week here at Mui Ne has gone by quite fast. We are going to Nha Trang not tomarrow, but the next day so we had better make the most of lazing about. Sam does anyway. He spends at least 14 hours out of a 24 hour period sleeping and sometimes up to 18 hours! My god, who would've thought it was humanly possible.

We found another good and cheap local restaurant today, and even though the husband and wife owners have intense screaming matches in the kitchen out back, we still really like it. I call it the 'blue-plastic-chair-place' . It doesn´t mean we are ditching the 'red-plastic-chair-place', we still love the red-plastic-chair-place.

The blue-plastic-chair-place is cheaper than the red-plastic-chair-place, although its pretty much the same except it has blue plastic chairs instead of red ones and it not right on the beach like the red-plactic-chair-place.

The lady that runs it (the blue-plastic-chair-place) waves her hands at everyone getting off the buses across the street going into the resorts. It does no good. She has bad teeth but thats ok, we are going back for dinner tonight. For lunch today it only cost us $5! Five bucks!
Five bucks for fried noodles with veggies and fish in claypot, steamed rice, lemonade, watermelon juice and a very yummy thick and tastey mango shake. How good that eh?

Things that make us smile about Mui Ne

- The beach, its just beautiful here. In the afternoons we wait for the tide to go down to go for a walk otherwise the waves crash right up against the breakwall of our resort.

- Our resort, the umbrellas, the lazy sunbeds and the pool

- The friendly locals at the grocery store down the street

- The NZ gelato, it's everywhere, I haven't had any yet, but I know it will be good. 28 flavours.

- Cheap bananas and mangoes

- No postcard hawlkers in Mui Ne

Things that dont make me smile about Mui Ne

- Overpriced thongs, I mean $42 for reefs! please!

- Our resort restaurant, not only do they serve shit food, but they trick you into thinking you have free breakfasts and then slowly start charging you for them.

- The stinking red brick shack half way down the street. What is it!? It f"@k'n stinks!! What is it!!??

- The moto guys asking you one hundred and seventy two times a day at least, if you would like a ride down to the other side of the beach which looks exactly the same as the side of the beach we are on.

- The padantic Canadian in the room next door who tacks away at his lap top all day and night and orders coconuts and coffee for breakfast and just has to watch the sunset everyday or he will die. Get out of his way.

- The unbelievably stupid TV channels with repeats of the making of American golf courses.