Family Vacation to Vietnam
On our last day with the Jeep, we drove south and back toward the coast, but aiming this time at Mui Ne, further south than Nha Trang. The weather was getting warmer and warmer all of the day, as we descended in altitude, and we all got a little sun-kissed in the Jeep on that day.
We passed a bunch of dragonfruit farms, and our guide cut a couple fruits off the distinctive-looking plants.
In Mui Ne we went to the Thuy Tu (whale) Temple, where the largest whale skeleton found in Vietnam is set up for viewing. To Vietnamese fishermen, especially, we were told, the whale is sacred, and can aid them if their boats are ever in trouble. Our guide said that Vietnamese people eat everything, all animals, all parts of all animals, but not ever a whale. Instead, when a dead whale is found washed up on the beach, it's brought to the whale temple grounds and buried in the yard until a few years have passed and it can be exhumed and have its bones added to the temple. Under those two mounds is the body of a baby whale that was found a year ago.
We had lunch in Mui Ne and then everyone dropped Helen and me off at our hotel, the Pandanus Resort, so they could go to slightly more active pursuits and I could rest my ankle again. This time, Marcus finally took our guide up on his offer of a ride on the back of his motorcycle. "I liked it, and I didn't like it," Marcus said. No more details were forthcoming.
They went to the Fairy Stream, a streambed you can walk down for a ways (how long of a ways? Robert doesn't know. "Why does the metric system make people completely unable to estimate distances?" he demanded. "Someone tells us something is 200 meters down the stream--nope, no, it's not!") while looking at the red sand and the erosion around you. The kids had a ball.
From there they went to the top of the red sand dunes, where local kids wait with cheap plastic sleds you can rent to go sledding down the dunes. A family of tourists from elsewhere in Vietnam really wanted to go sledding with Marcus and Samantha, apparently.
They all returned to the hotel room happy and incredibly sandy. Thank goodness our hotel room had a straw broom in it! We got to sweep many piles of sand out into the hall. For dinner, we went to Dong Vui Square, a food-court type place where we had juicy grilled baby octopus, lovely grilled scallops, a super refreshing lemon smoothie, grill-at-your-table Vietnamese beef and eggplant with a dipping sauce, and some Filipino ribs. We finished with ice cream--coffee for Samantha, coconut for Marcus, and some of the tartest, freshed passionfruit (more a sorbet-style) for us. The place was set up so that you could sit at tables and look at menus for all the different stalls, and order everything at once from waiters; then the waiters would relay your orders to the proper stalls, and someone from the different stands would bring over specific dishes as they were ready. That all worked fine, but we were a bit taken aback when the first person brought a dish over to us and barked, "You pay now!" By the time the second stand delivered more of our food, saying, "Pay now!" Robert was ready. "Of course," he muttered, shaking his head.
The next day was a rest day for us, our last day at a resort with a beach or big pool, so we spent a lot of time in the water or just around it. Lunch was at a local seafood place across the street from the hotel, just down from a fish-sauce processing plant (aromatic), and near a tattoo parlor featuring a beautiful hawk (?).
The kids played ping pong and pool with Robert in the hotel game room, fed some more fish, swam some more, and had a lovely afternoon, and then we went to the hotel Sunday night barbeque near the pool. This was more expensive, and less good, than the Juliet Villas barbeque, but it was fun in a surreal way: we were sitting at tables next to Russian and German tourists, after all, in Vietnam, listening to a Filipino cover band singing American music from the 60s and 70s. Wild! The highlight of the buffet was the grilling station, where you'd choose your skewers, bring them over to be freshly grilled, and mix a dipping sauce for yourself to taste. The kids also loved the endless jar of shrimp crackers. At one point, two of the singers in the band found me at the buffet and cornered me. Up close, they were clearly in their 60s themselves, two cheerful Filipina grandmas with heavy makeup who adored Helen. How old is she, where are we from, how old am I, how long will we be here, can they see her again tomorrow, does she drink my milk only. . . the questions came thick and fast, and, by now, familiar.
The next morning, however, was our last morning in Mui Ne. After a lot of confusion, we finally got a taxi to take us to the Mui Ne fishing village, the little early-morning fish market set up on the beach remarkably close to our hotel. It, too, was aromatic--the kids were not happy, to say the least, though we were really impressed by it. How often do you see an entire pickup truck full of baby squids, after all? How many baby squids can you even fit in a pickup truck, and why do I not know the answer to that? We stayed just a few minutes and then headed back to the hotel for more ping pong and fish-feeding before heading to the train station.
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Created: 9/3/16. Last Modified: 9/3/16.