Boat cruise buffoonery
Trip Start
Jun 25, 2006
1
97
127
Trip End
Aug 01, 2007
Nha Trang,
Vietnam
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Look at a map and you'll see that Vietnam's shape is really elongated but quite skinny. Traveling the length of the nation is about the same distance as going from Montreal to Miami, except that the road (National Highway 1) going the full distance north to south is only one lane in each direction. Every hour of the day the thoroughfare is filled with insane leadfoot drivers with horn permanently engaged, manically passing every type of motorized and human or animal powered vehicle you could imagine. This makes for a lot of long, hectic bus rides, which can only be tolerated if broken up into shorter legs supplemented with a few domestic flights or trains. In order to avoid the ubiquitously hellish overnight bus journey, we decided to mix it up a bit by taking a five-hour daytime bus here to the big city beach destination of Nha Trang, stay one night then catch an overnight train tonight to get to the charming town of Hoi An
1. The "cruise director". One for me...
. Nha Trang is a pleasant enough place but is a lot more of a party place than the sedate beach town of Mui Ne from where we just came. Actually is caters as much to vacationing Vietnamese as to Western tourists, and has a really odd beach scene. Most Vietnamese women consider pale skin to be a sign of beauty (enough so that most all wear gloves that go all the way to the shoulder, large hats, and bandannas over their face whenever they are outside in sunlight) so before sunup and after sundown the beach is packed with Vietnamese while during sunlight hours you see only international tourists on the sand. I guess these "shifts" help keep the beach from ever getting too crowded! Once you have your towel down though, you don't have to get up for anything other than using the bathroom. Itinerant vendors roam the beaches hawking their wares, their "store" though is the ubiquitous stick balanced on their shoulders with a basket hanging from either end containing anything from cartons of Marlboros to a mobile kitchen to serve up steaming bowls of noodles!
Since we only had 24-hours here we decided to book one of the "must-do" Nha Trang experiences, a full-day boat cruise to some of the neighboring islands. Virtually every one of the dozens of small travel agencies and hotels in Nha Trang sells these tours, but it seems that no matter whom you book through, everyone gets herded onto the same boats. At a cost of only $6.00 per person, we didn't have really high expectations but it actually ended up being quite the entertaining experience! Forty passengers (about half Vietnamese and half Western tourists) were loaded on each boat and once fully loaded, set off to visit Mun Island, to snorkel. After about an hour we motored a bit then dropped anchor off another island and were served a huge lunch
2...and one for you!
. After all the dishes were cleaned up the crew performed their "Home-Made Music Show" which included, some dancing from the tipsy captain/cruise director, and even live karaoke from a few passengers. Ummmm...Katie will be able to describe this one much more colorfully than me, so I'll defer to her! Anyway, after that the boat dropped us at a local resort island catering primarily to Vietnamese day-trippers. I never really thought of dried whole squid coated in chili powder as the ideal beach snack, but it seems to be all the rage here! Once back onboard they served us up a "local fruit party" before heading back to the harbor. It was quite the cultural experience and fun to hang out with Vietnamese vacationing in their country.She Said:
When we arrived in Nha Trang, I was still in mourning over leaving Mui Ne, so I have had a Nha Trang bad attitude and might not be the best person to take advice from about this city, so take what I say with a heaping spoonful of salt.
Nha Trang is a large city, which just happens to be located right next to the beach. Its not so much a relaxing beach vacation destination as it is a loud party scene for party goers from all over Vietnam, as well as the young backpacker crowd (of which we are finding out that we don't really fit into either). Todd really wanted to do this full day boat cruise thing, and I wasn't really too keen on the idea.... 8 hours on a party boat with no idea what the swells at sea would be like, and no where to escape to? The whole thing just made me feel trapped and stuck with a group with no way out
3. Dance party on the South China Sea
. I couldn't come up with a better plan, so off we went on the boat cruise thing. Once we pulled out of the port, the bar was officially open at 9:30am, the music blared out bad 80's hits through speakers with extreme audio challenges, and the leader/emcee/instigator though he was a comedian (though I think is jokes were much funnier in Vietnamese than they were in English from judging the crowds reaction). The tour promised stops at 4 different islands, the first of which was off-shore of an island where the snorkeling was supposed to be good. Todd had fun, but the water was so cold that I decided to stay on the boat (as did a lot of the other cold water chickens on the boat). From there we anchored off the shore of another island and tied the boat to a series of floating shacks/sheds (which used plastic oil drums for floatation) set up to farm lobster, and had an enormous group lunch. All 40 people on the boat crammed around the sides of the boat, and all the benches were pushed together to make one large table.
As soon as the food was cleaned up, this large table became a stage. The crew brought out a full drum set, guitar and amplifier and started playing and encouraging the crowd to do karaoke. And to my huge surprise, there were takers
4. Floating fish farm
! Several Vietnamese women lined up to be the next one to get up on stage and sing a dance around. Red wine was included in the price of the ticket, of which the leader/emcee would take one swig directly from the bottle, and then fill someone's glass, and then another sip for himself... the one for you, two for me approach. As appetizing as it was, I decided to pass. So he danced all around the stage with various passengers and his bottle of wine, all the while belting out Vietnamese tunes from a handheld microphone. It was all so unexpected and strange to see people really cutting loose in this way! It was the first time we had actually experienced Vietnamese tourists. The final two islands actually came with the great benefit of being able to get off the boat for a bit. Regardless, we had fun and met a few other travelers and had a good time chatting with them about their travels through Vietnam. All in all, it was a pretty interesting way to spend $6! 
