31 December. New Years Eve in Quy Nhon
We had booked a train from near Nha Trang to Near Quy Nhon, but the only space we could get today was leaving about 8pm and getting in after midnight (not good for New Years Eve!)
That was all we could organise from Saigon and we thought local buses might be fully booked due to the holiday rush. We have managed to get a bus no problem and I think the insurance of the train ticket was wasted.
Our hotel today asked if we had cancelled the train booking. We said no and they told us we should still get some of a refund. We gave them our tickets and their eyes lit up!
They had organised a hotel pick-up to get to the bus station and charged us VND90000 for the bus to Nha Trang each. The standard price, bus station to bus station it turns out is VND65000 but we would have had to make a few inquiries and probably organise a taxi to the bus station, so the commission is expected and top-side reasonable - even without our train tickets thrown in!
The bus is another standard diesel 16/17 seater aircon and is just over half filled, so not so squeezy. They don't have a lot of baggage space. Our bags just fit behind the back row of seats and that is only because we have squishy bags. Most travelers on these buses only have hand baggage.
The trip was OK - uneventful and through fairly familiar country - lots of arable land, largely committed to rice cultivation and a nice backdrop of hills in the mist for most of the way.
After about 4 hours(?), we stopped for lunch in a divey cafe and thought we must have at least an hour to go, but after a 25 minute break, it was only about 50 minutes to Quy Nhon bus station.
The bus station was a big place, but not too busy. We were accosted by motorbike riders offering to take us to our hotel, but we opted to walk out onto the street where a cruising taxi spotted us and we were off in a jiffy.
Barbara's Backpackers was our destination for 2 nights. Sea view rooms with Balcony, aircon, TV and ensuite for US$13 per night per room. The kid's room was at the back of the hotel, ours was up the front, but the kid's balcony went alongside the hotel so they had an ocean view balcony too. Lovely.
Barbara has moved into new premises during the last year, so the lonely planet is already out of date. Apparently they had just gone to print when Barbara decided she had to move.
The new place is in a good spot. What looks like a major ocean front road is a good wide road with hardly any traffic. The hotel and the 'Kiwi Cafe' restaurant are related and joined, but run as separate businesses.
It was good to chat to Barbara about her business and experiences setting up herself here. Barbara, a Kiwi, started in Vietnam as an English teacher and seems to have stayed on and morphed. She was very 'hands on', being the only waiter in the restaurant later in the day.
On arrival, we quickly inquired about the possibility of changing our next train out - planned for the night of 2-3 January from midnight to 0530am. We really wanted to travel by day of we could. They reckoned it was no problem. We asked about our tickets already held and the kitchen staff at Barbara's reckoned we could get as much as 90% back. We said if they could get anything back, they could have half so long as we were guaranteed another form of transport out - Day SE4 train or a decent bus.
After dropping our stuff and having a quick meal from the largely western menu, we went for a wander round town and along the beach. We were in the middle of town when a lady on a motorbike stopped us and said we had given her sister the tickets and here was our money. I didn't work it out, but I think it was about 90% - it was well over VND600,000. We gave her a good half and off she went! She also worked at Barbara's. Barbara's Enlish language teaching skills were apparent, with the staff speaking slightly differently and with a bit more confidence and good tone to their English which makes them more readily understandable.
Our walk took us down the main street (off the beach) and to a series of seafood restaurants. Two were recommended in the lonely planet, but didn't look very impressive to us. Barbara later explained that they used to be smaller and more intimate and there were probably about 20 reasonable seafood restaurants in the area.
We came back long the beach, but decided to walk on the roadside 'promenade' due to the number of chockitos on the sand. It seems they came from the extensive, live-on board fishing fleet anchored in the bay.
Well, we had dinner at the Kiwi cafe. Very nice, Rick's washed down with Quy Nhon beer for VND4,000 per stubby (30c). Caroline tried the wine - French red, but it wasn't as good as the Vietnamese Da Lat wine we had earlier in the trip.
The food was good, but staff were a bit short in the kitchen. There was a sign up saying 'New Years Eve Party" on the specials board, but the party never seemed to happen. We went to our room after dinner to watch Mission Impossible 3 on satellite and after checking to see if the party was happening (which it wasn't), we quickly fell asleep to the crashing waves just across the quiet road and missed the turn of the New Year by a couple of hours.
Sleep was good and more crashing waves to wake to.
Breakfast was very good, but not included in the room rate.
Great thin pancakes, banana fritters, best fruit salad, POACHED eggs were all sampled!
We promised a slow start, only to find Sam at our table before we got our breakfast order (about 0730) and Caitlin down 10 mins later (no sleep in when they can and we can't wake them when we have to get up to do something......)
We decided on a charter car to take us to some Cham towers and a nature reserve.
The first towers (the only existing pair), called Chap Doi towers, close to town were locked. New Year's Day is a public holiday. Our driver reckoned the other site, Banh It, would be open so off we went and found a series of structures on top of a hill. They are supposedly about 2000 years old and built mainly from small red bricks that don't seem to have any mortar, similar to the style in Bali. As in Bali, they wer intricately carved to depict demons and we are told 'Garudas'...... Although there are still ethnic Cham in Vietnam, the symbolism etc of the towers have been lost. Needless to say, they were impressive, with huge vaulted inner structures (impossible to photograph). Sadly as with many Vietnamese visitor sites, the place was marred with rubbish and unfortunately, the Cham monuments had heaps of graffiti carved into the ancient bricks.
From here we drove out further to Ham Ho nature reserve. It wasn't really clear what we were going to. Barbara suggested it was nice with a good swimming hole. We were prepared with our bathers, but it was very overcast and almost drizzly. Yes, it would be great on a hot day. We got a boat punt for the four off us along a fast flowing irrigation canal that opened into the swimming pool on the river. Really nice peaceful spot. We saw a snake in the river (only about 40cm long) - missed the photo, but caught a nice lizard on the bank.
When we got back about 4pm, our train tickets on the 9am train were done and I went to an internet cafe down the road to let our next hotel know (in the hope of them picking us up!). (VND1,000 = A$nothing)
Barbara freely provides advice and recommendations. We decided to try the seafood restaurant next door to her cafe given that the kids don't go for seafood other than under protest at home, so we decided they could eat at the Kiwi cafe.
Our meal was great - They brought toasted rice paper and really tasty peanuts to start. We ordered Spring rolls wrapped in fresh green leaves of something at the table, a whole snapper pre-cooked but served on a plate over a burner at the table. The fish was served in a tasty broth with spring onions, ginger and garlic, and it was unexpectedly served with fresh spring roll wrappers and a big plate of salad and herbs so you could roll your own fish spring rolls. Our waiter (with no English) helped us greatly with our meal - how to do it and interrupted with other implements at times when we were embarrassing ourselves! Rick wanted to try the dried squid dish just to see why every(?) Vietnamese person returning to Perth brings the smelly stuff in their bags! (It was quite nice!), we also had fried rice with egg & crab. With four drinks it was less than A$20 and really well done.
Another night with the waves - very peaceful and, well rested and well fed after another great breakfast, we were ready for our Train to Danang and on to Hoi An.
