So we’re in Manila for our annual physical and I had some other medical tests to take.  Once it was all done, I wanted to get away for awhile but didn’t feel like dealing with airports and airplanes and so I opted for Subic.  I’ve never been there but was curious about it for a variety of reasons, thinking that it might be somewhat like Clark but with the added attraction of being on the coast and having some beaches.  My gf had managed a restaurant up there many years ago and thought it might be fun to go back for a visit.  I didn’t do a whole lot of research on the place up front, just picked a hotel via the reviews on Trip Advisor, the #2 rated place was on Waterfront Road, which seemed like it would be a good place to be, and so we hopped in taxi for the three hour drive.

(Lesson learned – On the expressway between Clark and Subic, there’s this spot where you can see where the lava flowed down from Mount Pinatubo when it erupted roughly 20 years ago.  It was a sparkling clear day and one could see all the way over to the volcano very clearly … and I didn’t ask the driver to stop so I could take a picture.  Two days later, on the drive back to Manila, I did ask the driver to stop, but the view was nowhere near as clear or as special.  I am really kicking myself over this.)

Entering Subic and not quite sure of how to get to our chosen hotel, our taxi driver made the mistake of not making a left turn when he was in the left-hand lane, right where there was a group of cops standing next to signs that said “pull over area” or something like that and sure enough, we got pulled over and he got a ticket for lane-swerving on an almost empty road.

Then we found the hotel and it was like, why are we here?  Segara Suites is a gorgeous boutique hotel, the rooms were great, modern, flat screen TV & DVD, high thread count sheet, rainforest shower, nice pool, decent restaurant.  But the location?  Sure, Waterfront Road, all the way at the wrong end, where it was surrounded by warehouses and a commercial wharf.  No view, no beach.  (The staff later told us that thanks to its secluded location, it was a favorite rendezvous point for politicians.)

On checking in, I was required to sign a sheet stating that I’d read the house rules – which included “no partying” and a corkage fee if I was to bring any alcoholic beverages back to my room.  Already I’m not liking this very much.  Strong sun, no shade, so we called a taxi to take us the 7 or 8 blocks down to where there were some restaurants.  The 3 minute ride was 100 pesos.  We went to Giligan’s, a Filipino chain, and we could sit out by the local beach.  The only other customers in the place weren’t actually customers – 4 old Filipino guys who came over to us as soon as we sat down to try to sell us some bullshit trinkets. The music in the place was all sappy sad old songs of unrequited love, music to commit suicide to.  I was low on cash so I went to the ATM next door which was “unable to dispense cash at this time.”

Some friends drove over from Clark and joined us for dinner that night.  We drove around and every place we looked was dead dead dead.  After dinner we went to a “hot spot” on the beach called Pier One.  Live band (4 musicians, 5 (!) singers) playing the usual crappy pop.  We walked back to our hotel from there, my gf walking a lot faster than me and soon there was enough distance between us that girls sitting in the park along the beach started calling out to me.

Get the feeling that I wasn’t having a good time?  Back at the hotel, I told my gf we should get out the next day – the hotel was prepaid and I’m sure we would not have gotten our money back but I was really feeling as if going there was a huge mistake.

However, the next morning, after having a decent breakfast poolside, we decided to call a taxi and go to the Kamayan Beach Resort.  It’s a hotel with a private beach.  If you’re not staying at the hotel, you can pay 300 pesos per person to use the facilities and we figured it was worth that to sit on a beach where we wouldn’t get hassled by vendors every three seconds.  It turned out to be quite nice – not really remarkable in any sense of the word but pleasant, peaceful, stretched out on the sand for several hours and a little bit of swimming.

After the beach, we went to the town that adjoins Subic – Olongapo.  This place at least seemed to have some life to it. The town seems to be “owned” to some extent or another by one family.  The current mayor is James “Bong” Gordon Jr. and there’s a long line of Gordons running the town.  ”Fighting for excellence!”  Signs all over the place with a quote from the first Gordon, “what this country needs is not a change of men but a change in men,” something like that, plus signs of how it was a “no firecracker zone.”  But at least it was lively.

Okay, maybe not so much on that particular street.

There was a small SM Mall there (with signs everywhere giving directions to a breast feeding clinic – hmmm).  And of course wonderful food.

(Her name, according to the poster, is Shamcey Supsup.)

That night, my gf said we should go up to Barrio Barreto, which is just north of Subic and is basically a mini-Angeles.  Lots of cheap beachfront hotels and a dozen or so girly bars.  We had dinner at a place she remembered, “The Coffee Shop – Home of the Jumbo Taco” (and it was a freaking huge taco, just 99 pesos, and not too bad).

After dinner, we hit one of the girly bars.  About 20 girls working inside, standing on stage, not even pretending to dance, just standing on stage.  It was pretty depressing.  My gf called down the one relatively cute girl from the pack and bought her a drink and started to ask her questions about how things worked there.  After the first round of drinks, she had this brilliant idea that we should barfine the girl and go off to the gay bar with dancing guys.  ”I took you to a bar where you could watch sexy girls, it’s only fair that you take me to a bar where I can watch some guys.”

And so we did.  Her, me and our new friend.  This place wasn’t exactly Chippendales.  There were about 5 or 10 guys there taking turns dancing on stage.  Each guy had essentially the same dance moves, each one wearing a tight wife-beater shirt, shorts, kneepads (!).  My gf was disappointed that none of the guys there were tall or especially well built.  But she found some guy to sit with her and give her the rundown on the joint.  I kept looking at my watch, kept trying to get her out of there, but she wasn’t budging.  I ended up asking the DJ how come they weren’t playing Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Relax” – I would have thought that would be the song they’d play every 15 minutes.  The guy put it on to get me to shut up.  Finally there was a low rent Priscillia Queen of the Desert two guys in wigs and dresses lip syncing to records show.  I think we ended up staying in this joint for close to 2 hours.  And no, it was not my idea of a good time.

Probably needless to say, but I was pretty happy to get out of Subic the next morning.  I don’t think I’ll be rushing back there anytime soon either.

Nha Trang is pitched as the top beach resort town in Vietnam.  It’s a 50 minute flight from Saigon and we decided to give it a try.  Unfortunately, we never had beach weather the entire time we were there but I found this laid back town so charming that I could easily have spent another week there waiting for the sky to turn blue.  While the beach may not be the kind of pristine white sand that you’d find in Boracay, it’s very well maintained, including a narrow strip of park that runs along the entire length, several kilometers of outdoor art, sculpted trees and bushes, peaceful places to sit.

The tourist section of the town stretches back for two blocks from the beach and is filled with travel agents, salons, t-shirt shops, restaurants and bars that are clearly aimed at a foreign crowd.  Aside from the selection of western restaurants, all of the Vietnamese ones had large sections of western food on their menus.  There’s a very small night market and a lot of outdoor coffee shops as well.  Russians clearly make up a large percentage of tourists here and you’ll see signs and menus in Russian as well as encountering plenty of Vietnamese who appear to be fluent in Russian.  There are some islands right off the shore including one that has a resort and theme park called Vinpearl which can be reached by boat or by cable car.  I decided to give it a pass.

Our first day and night was spent walking around this touristy part of town.  For our second day, with the skies still gray, we did a spa day.  There’s a famous spa just outside of town.  We decided to live it up so we went for a VIP package for two.  This included a private room (with bed, double-sized jacuzzi, TV and other amenities), a swim in their hot springs pool, mud baths, herbal jacuzzi, 90 minutes massage, a host of salon options, lunch, transport to and from the hotel – all of which came out to about US$150 for the two of us and we were there for about 6 hours.

The drive to and from the spa gave us an idea of the rest of the town and on the third day we decided to explore some of that area.  We started with the Po Nagar Towers, which date back to the 8th century.  If you’ve been to Angkor Wat, this ain’t much – but it’s okay enough I suppose.

You do get a great view of the city from here.

We went walking in search of food, preferably banh mi, but we came to this corner place selling Banh Xeo – Vietnamese crepes or pancakes, in this case stuffed with fresh squid and veggies, with lots of greens served on the side of course.

Walking a bit more, we came upon a place where they were charcoal grilling pork chops in the street.  They smelled so good, we couldn’t resist.

A bit more walking and we came upon two small temples, side by side.  I went into the courtyard of each to take pictures.  At the second one, they motioned for me to wait while someone ran around to the back and opened up the temple so I could see inside.

Meanwhile my gf found this cart where a woman was putting pieces of banana into sticky rice, wrapping the whole thing up in banana leaves, grilling it and serving the result with condensed milk.  Yum.

Just US$1 and seriously nice.  After that, we went to one of the town’s two main markets, Dam Market.

Some shopping and, yeah, some more eating, at this very tourist-friendly banh mi cart that let you mix and match from more than a dozen different kinds of meat and sausage:

Dinner (yes, we had room for more food!) our last night in town was around this area:

I really enjoyed Nha Trang and would gladly return.  I’ll leave you with some photos of some of the people we encountered there:

Oops!  I forgot to post the photos from the evening of our third day there.  It was Christmas Eve and unlike any I’ve ever spent.

We came to the night market that sets up around Ben Thanh market once it closes at 6 PM.  While they were getting set up, we found this little street corner place to have some seriously good Bun Bo Hue – the spicy beef noodle soup from Vietnam’s heartland:

Walking around and shopping, I saw that the streets were getting seriously crowded.

But before we could join the throngs, I saw this and knew I wanted to try it:

No, no, sorry, I meant this:

It was red snapper, it cost around US$5, and it was possibly the best fish I ever had outside of Japan.

After dinner, we joined the throngs walking down Le Loi and Dong Khoi Streets.  It seemed as if everyone in the city was out on the streets celebrating the holiday.  It was pure exhilaration!  Here’s a selection of photos that I hope convey what we were in the middle of:

Does the world even know that this is what Saigon is like now?  I had no idea!  Does Saigon know how to party? YES!

We began our day at Nhu Lan.  There are some who will tell you it’s not a healthy option to get your banh mi from street carts – I don’t believe it.  However, this place is reputed to have some of the best banh mi in town and after eating there, I can’t disagree.  I’m told the place is open 24 hours.  There are a range of carts and counters around the restaurant.  Pick up what you like from a cart and grab a seat or go inside and order from a decent-length menu.

Here’s the counter with the banh mi selection:

Yeah, unlike the street carts, these are already made.  But they’re made fresh that day and go fast so I don’t believe freshness will be an issue.  Here’s where they’re assembled:

Hey, have you ever seen ham like this:

This is for something called banh mi thit nuong and of course we had to try this too.  Wow!  Intense pork goodness.

After breakfast, we went up to the Sky Deck on the 49th floor of the Saigon Financial Tower.

They charge you just under US$10 per person to ride the elevators up to the 49th floor.  You don’t get to go outside on that deck but you can walk a 360 degree circle around the building for unmatched views of Saigon.  Sadly it was a hazy day (and also the windows were not that clean).  Here are some of the views you get, starting with an aerial view of the Ben Thanh market:

After that, walking around, we grabbed some of this waffle-y thing as a snack – not to be missed.

More walking, more people watching.

And speaking of great views and people watching, I can’t resist posting this photo of a cop enjoying the view of my gf walking down the street:

The famous whatchamacallit building:

For lunch we went to one of the many branches of local fast food chain Pho 24.  In a country obsessed with pho, this place gets it right:

However my gf opted for broken rice served with 3 kinds of pork, which tasted better than it looked:

There were lots of charming looking restaurants around here but when it was time for dinner, I knew we had to go check out Quan An Ngon on Pasteur Street.  They’ve brought in former street vendors into this beautiful upscale setting:

This prawn dish (I forget the name) was very nice:

Bun Cha Ha Noi was tasty but unfortunately paled next to my memories of eating bun cha on the streets of Hanoi:

It was our third dish that was the real winner – Cha Ca La Vong.  I know it sounds like the name of a stripper but it was actually one of the tastiest fish dishes I’ve ever had.

Cooked table-side, it comes with this assortment of sides:

Our waitress very kindly showed us how to assemble all of this for maximum effect:

And all I can say is, Holy Buddha was this good!  As that Makansutra guy down in Singapore says, “Die! Die! Must try!”

The really cool thing about this restaurant is that you can walk around the sides of the place watching all of the food being prepared:

It just adds to the enjoyment.

And that was it for us for Saigon.  We had to be up at 5 the next morning for our flight to Saigon, so it was back to the hotel to pack and get to sleep early.

Coming soon, photos from our 4 days in Nha Trang.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are one of the major tourist attractions in the Saigon area.  It’s a series of tunnels used by the Viet Cong for staging guerrilla attacks against the American and South Vietnamese armies during the war.  There are lots of ways to get there – we chose a tour company called Saigon River Express because a boat ride up the Saigon River seemed like a more interesting journey than sitting in a bus or a van.  It costs a lot more (US$69 per person, including a buffet lunch served on the boat on the way back to Saigon vs. an average of US$25 for a bus tour).  Is it worth the extra money?  That’s a matter of opinion – mine is that the boat ride was more interesting than the tunnels.  Here’s a  sampling of shots that I took along the river.

As for the tour of the tunnels themselves, a lot of it was basically standing around staring at holes in the ground.

And we got to crawl through a tunnel – specially widened for fat-assed western tourists! – and get a splendid view of this:

In all seriousness, it’s actually a pretty good history lesson and one can only marvel at some of the ingenious ways that they did this – digging a massive series of tunnels in an area constantly patrolled by the enemy, 16,000 people living down there – though there is a certain amount of “here’s another thing we came up with to maim and kill Americans.”  Which if nothing else helps you understand their perspective.  As the only American in our tour group, it seemed as if each time our guide would tell us something like, “and then the tunnel would narrow and the fat Americans would get stuck and we could come up behind them and shove a bamboo spear up their butt,” he’d glance over at me looking perhaps a little bit apologetic.

Actually, I felt more than a little weird hearing these descriptions and then seeing a film by “Liberation Studios” filled with archival footage of brave 14 year old village girls leaping out of a tunnel to kill another American.  I may have been against the war but I certainly wasn’t against the Americans who fought and died in the war.  And so as much I was against the war, I felt more than a little twinge in my chest about the whole thing.

Well, the lunch on the return boat ride was nice.

Our second day started at the breakfast buffet at the hotel and as boring as that may sound, the Intercontinental did manage to fit in some of the local cuisine alongside the usual suspects, so I could have both banh mi and pho for breakfast.  And then we hit the streets, roaming around for several hours.  First was Saigon’s beautiful central Post Office, simply because it was the closest to the hotel. Outside, several couples were posing for their wedding photos.

Inside the post office, these school kids were all quietly waiting on line for Santa to help them to mail their letters to the North Pole.  (Notice that the North Pole is considered “domestic mail” in Vietnam.)

Uncle Ho watched and approved.

Next stop was Saigon’s Notre Dame and the statue in front, which was said to be actually weeping in 2005 (the year I was there last – coincidence?).

Inside and out, its architecture isn’t particularly notable, but it’s there and it’s nice enough.

As you walk around Saigon, at any time of day, no matter where you look, people are eating.  And why not?  The food is outrageously good and the prices are ridiculously cheap.

Here’s Saigon’s lovely opera house.

One of the biggest changes since my previous visit is the very visible arrival of the global luxury brands.

Walking around Saigon’s District 1, you can still see some of the old …

… but it’s slowly getting replaced by the new.

(The big building there is Le Dong Tho aka The Financial Tower.  The next day we would go up to that big Sky Deck thing.)

We continued walking, finding both modern shopping malls and older street markets.

Evidence of the old and new everywhere …

For lunch, we stopped at Ngon 138, a lovely restaurant with plenty of outdoor seating.

We started with banh tom ho tay (basically sweet potato fries topped with shrimp).

Next was ban xeo, the famous Vietnamese crepe, here much larger than the street version, filled with prawns and sprouts.

Last dish was bun thit nuong – a bowl of cold vermicelli topped with grilled pork and fried spring rolls.

As you would expect, every dish was served with a huge assortment of greens. The cost of this meal, including iced coffee and a coke, was under US$10.

Of course one of the best things to do in Vietnam is people watching.  For me, this often translated into sitting at the front of a shop while my gf was inside trying on everything.

For these construction workers, finding a shady spot for their lunch break meant hiding under this scaffolding.

Most people on scooters wear these over-sized face masks, at least in part due to rising pollution.

For dinner, I managed to find my way back to Bo Tung Xeo (also known as Luong Son for some reason), a famous and well-loved outdoor restaurant where the specialty is DIY barbecue.  They have a huge menu there that includes some very exotic options.

We didn’t go quite that crazy though.  The best dish we had was some marinated beef:

And then some “wild pork”:

Here they are cooking away …

We followed that up with some barbecued chicken and of course some local 333 beer served with ice.

I don’t recall the price but it was well under US$20.  This place may be listed in every tourist guide but it seemed as if almost everyone there was local families and, as always in Vietnam, incredibly friendly people.

No night life for us, too tired after lots of walking and eating.  Besides, we’d missed Elvis.

(I’m rewriting the posts from our Vietnam trip so that I can add in photos.)

My one and only previous trip to Vietnam was in 2005 – 4 days in Hanoi and 4 days in Saigon.  During my stay in Saigon that time, almost everything was closed for Tet (lunar new year).  I liked the place but I didn’t feel as if I’d really been there.  That’s one of the reasons that for this trip I decided to go to Saigon and not Hanoi.

December 22nd – Our trip got off to a great start courtesy of Cathay Pacific and free upgrades to business class.  The plane had their super-old business class seating but really I’m not going to complain about that.  Then a taxi ride into District 1.  We stayed at the Intercontinental Asiana Hotel and it was just fabulous – the room was great, the staff even better.

We were a bit tired but also hungry so we decided to venture out and start to get a feel for the city.  The Diamond department store and shopping mall was close by so we headed in that direction.  It was mobbed with people!  Everyone was taking pictures in front of the Christmas decorations.  The crowd was very young (and very good looking).

Crossing the streets was every bit as anarchic as I’d recalled.

Finally we came upon this brightly lit up place with a large outdoor seating area so decided to grab some food.

Unfortunately once we sat down we discovered that the only Vietnamese food on their menu was the fried spring rolls and the fresh vermicelli rolls.  Fortunately, beer (served with ice) was cheap and it was a comfortable place to sit and let the evening pass by.

After that, we walked around a bit more.  Every street was packed with people posing for photos in front of Christmas decorations.

We got some sort of sticky rice thing from a street vendor to munch on as we walked around and looked at the people.

Eventually we made it back to the hotel and called it a night.

The morning starts with my gf returning from breakfast to tell me that Korean doctor-turned-actor Ken Jeong (Hangover, Community) was in the restaurant with his family.  She had gone down without her phone so couldn’t text me to come down or take a picture but she’s sure it was him.

We head off to the Po Nagar Towers, a small hillside temple complex that dates back to around the year 700.  It’s not as good as it sounds because the small buildings have been restored seemingly by kindergarten students, but you do get a great view of the surrounding area.  While there, we meet a Filipino family – the husband works in HCMC and has brought his family over for Xmas. (There’s a reason I’m mentioning this, just wait.)

The Towers are located well outside of the tourist zone so we go walking in search of food.  First we find a place making banh xeo, those great crispy crepe things, in this case filled with fresh squid.  We get 6, served with a bowl of the ubiquitous sauce and another bowl of greens.  Seriously good.

Walking down the street, someone charcoal grilling very thin pork chops, served with rice and veggies, about US$1.30, they come over to us later with a small plate of grilled prawns and squid, free, they just want us to enjoy.

(Everyone thinks my gf is Vietnamese.  Everyone is talking to her nonstop in Vietnamese.  It’s a little awkward and weird.)

I reach two small temples, each dedicated to Kwan Yin.  At one, they tell me to wait while someone runs around the back and opens up the temple so I can see inside.  Meanwhile my gf takes refuge at the food stand in front where they are grilling banana and sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf, served with condensed milk.

We walk a little bit further.  I hear someone shout out my gf’s name.  I think to myself, “there’s a word in Vietnamese that sounds like her name?” and then we see it’s the Filipino family we’d met earlier.  They’re having lunch at this little street-side seafood place, eating crab and prawns and all sorts of other stuff.  The husband tells us this is place he eats at every time he comes to Nha Trang.  We figure this must be some sort of sign so we get the restaurant’s card and tell them we will return for dinner.

The sun is finally out so we chill out by the pool for a couple of hours.

Then we head to the Dam Market – not the damned market!  One of two markets in town, this thing sprawls over what I’m sure is at least one square kilometer.  We find  pushcart where they’re making banh mi with your choice of about a dozen different fillings – mix and match – and we do.  And a little place to sit where we can get some coconut to drink.  Dam!  We buy some silk stuff, we walk around, back to the hotel.

So for dinner last night we head back to that little street seafood place.  They’ve got about a dozen different kinds of shellfish on display.  We get a crab and some prawns and my gf also wants lobster – now that her stomach is better and her appetite is back.  Someone jumps on a bike and scoots off to the market to get us one.

The end result is a one kilo lobster (I think larger, actually), a nice big local crab, half a dozen shrimp, fried rice, peanuts, cockles and beer – all for around HK$300 or US$40.  What could be wrong?  Actually, it wasn’t that great.  Everything was simply steamed or boiled, which was a bit boring, but far worse was that the lobster wasn’t cooked long enough and had an odd taste to it.  So this wonderful “find” via our new friends turned out to not be so wonderful after all.

We fly back to Saigon this afternoon, 3 hour layover and then get back to Hong Kong tonight.  Photos to come this weekend.

Even though we didn’t get great weather for most of our stay here, I really enjoyed Nha Trang and would gladly return – just at a different time of year.

(I’ll most likely redo these posts top to bottom once I get home and can add in the photos, rather than posting photos separately.  I was able to get a USB card reader and load my photos onto my MBA but I find my old eyes cannot edit the photos as effectively on the 13 inch laptop screen as I might on my 24 inch monitor at home.)

So the day after the insanity of Christmas was our last full day in Saigon.  We started off the day by taking a taxi to Nhu Lan, a 24 hour corner restaurant that specializes in banh mi – you can sit down inside the restaurant and order from a full menu or just grab a banh mi from one of the outside counters and then sit down to enjoy it – and enjoy it we did.  This ranks among the best banh mi I’ve ever had and this is one place I will miss a lot.

Several hours of walking around in District 1 until finally, hot and tired, we collapsed into the nearest branch of Pho 24.  This may be a fast food chain but they don’t take shortcuts on their food and their pho is about as good as any you can find.  My gf however opted for broken rice served with 3 kinds of pork, which tasted far better than it looked.  As we were leaving, our waitress handed us two bottles of water – “today only!”

Chilled out the rest of the afternoon and then dinner at Ngon something Quan (will get the full name later) – a picture-book beautiful restaurant that gathers former street food vendors under one roof.  You can walk down the sides of the restaurant to see the various little stands set up where each is preparing their speciality.  We went for one of my favorites dishes – bun cha (a Hanoi specialty and here it was okay only).  We also had cha ca la vong – sounds like the name of a stripper but actually it’s a fish dish cooked at your table – slices of fish and sauce cooked in a pan with various greens, served with rice & sesame crackers, cold vermicelli and more greens – unique and satisfying.

The next day we had to get up at 5 AM for our early flight to Nha Trang. One thing I noticed at the airport is that almost all of the airport fastfood was of the healthy variety, noodle soups.  No wonder the only fat people you see in Vietnam are tourists.

In Nha Trang, we’re staying at the Sunrise, a lovely 4 star right across the street from the beach.  Our room has a balcony with an ocean view.  What we didn’t know is that this is low season here – good in terms of lack of crowds but shitty in terms of the weather.  Every day it has been completely cloudy and the surf is so rough that the beach is closed.

The beach itself would be wonderful in good weather.  It’s a straight stretch running several kilometers.  The parks alongside it and the streets in the tourist area are all immaculately maintained.  The city may be called the best beach resort in Vietnam but it is far from being overly built up.  Novotel and Sheraton are the only two international chains with sites here; a Crowne Plaza is under construction.  We sat at an outdoor coffee shop where the banh mi was a baguette and a plate with several small slices of ham and three tiny cubes of pate, no veggies aside from a few sprigs of parsley.  We walked up and down the beach and looked into some of the shops in the area, including the one shopping mall, but nothing to buy really.

Actually my gf has been ill for most of the trip, something went way wrong with her stomach actually before we left Hong Kong.  Each day it seemed to be getting worse instead of better. The hotel has a nurse who came up and took a look at her.  The decision was to get a doctor over here, one from the local hospital.  He examined her and the stuff he prescribed seems to have taken care of things (fingers crossed).

For dinner we went to a place called Nha Trang Seafood.  It was okay.  The problem is that all along the beach road and for the two or three blocks stretching back from the beach, it’s all tourist places.  We don’t see any locals eating at these places and the menus list as many German and Italian dishes as Vietnamese.

Nha Trang appears to be a very popular destination for Russians.  I think there are more Russian tourists here than any other nationality.  Signs all over town are in Russian, menus are in Russian, locals here can speak Russian.  The one big restaurant built right out on the waterside is called Svetlana 368.

Yesterday, still crappy weather, we did a spa day.  There’s a place not far from town that seems famous in these parts.  The price was certainly right.  We went for the VIP package.  Private room in the “VIP area”.  Swimming pool with mineral water.  Mud bath.  Herbal jacuzzi.  Lunch.  90 minute massage.  Choice of manicure/pedicure, shampoo, shave, ear cleaning.  Transport to and from the hotel.  Souvenir t-shirts and a discount coupon for our next visit.  All for around US$160 for the two of us.  We were there for about six hours though honestly after 4 hours I was feeling a bit spa’ed out.

Dinner last night at Truc Linh III.  Grilled red snapper, claypot beef Vietnamese style, crab spring rolls.  Then another walk around the tourist area.  The usual t-shirt shops.  Lots of restaurants serving western food.  Guys on cyclos wanting to give us a ride nowhere.  Only one guy offered to sell me drugs.  (No thanks.)

So today’s our last full day here.  Weather is still crappy.  Surf is still rough.  I guess we’ll do some sight seeing today.  A pagoda with a big white Buddha statue on a mountain top – too similar to HK?  Some sort of temple tower that’s more than a thousand years old.  There’s an amusement park here on an island – you can take a cable car over to the island to ride in some bumper cars. (Yawn).  What I did notice is the non-tourist part of the town – up the road, across the bridge, running along a river side.  Lots of local looking restaurants all lit up at night.  The hotel staff told us these places are “average” but it may be more the kind of experience that we’re craving.

Tomorrow afternoon, fly back home.

I really like Nha Trang.  I wish the weather was better but I’m finding the place really pretty, very laid back and relaxing.  I assume that it’s not so laid back during high season – when bars like Booze Cruise and Crazy Kim’s are probably going full blast all night long.  I won’t mind coming back here.  Just not gonna do it again this time of year.

It’s killing me that I can’t find a simple thing like a USB card reader so that I can start sharing photos – never mind that after 3 days I’ve filled up 50% of my memory cards and the last thing I’m gonna do is buy knock-off cards.

Our day began with a 6 AM wake-up call and a 7 AM pickup by the good folks at Saigon River Express.  We took a 90 minute speedboat (I don’t know that it was really a speedboat but we were the fastest thing on the river) ride up the Saigon River to the Cu Chi Tunnels.  The tour of the tunnel area includes a movie by “Liberation Studios” on how heroic 14 year old girls helped to defeat the evil Americans and there were very vivid demonstrations of all the various booby traps used to maim and kill Americans.  I was the sole American in our tour group and our guide kept looking at me apologetically each time he’d describe something like how they’d purposely narrow a tunnel so that fat ass Americans would get stuck in it and tiny little Vietnamese could come up behind them and shove bamboo spikes up their butts.

(I should state for the record that I was 100% against the Vietnam War and participated in many anti-war demonstrations.  If drafted, I most definitely would not have served.)

The 90 minute boat ride back to Saigon featured a very nice buffet lunch and we were back at our hotel by 1 PM.  After changing our clothes, we went to the Ben Thanh market. I had thought it would be mostly food with some souvenir stands mixed in but it was exactly the opposite of that.  The outer ring of the market is all vendors with signs declaring “fixed price” but the prices were definitely cheap enough.  Go further into the market and items got more unique and haggling got more intense.  One vendor, a young girl with good English, after getting far too much money from me for some shirts, decided to tell me in excruciating detail about the three times she’d had her mobile phone stolen.  The back of the market has a small wet market and several stalls selling cooked food.  But by this point my gf’s bags were heavy with purchases and her stomach had gone south, so we made it back to the hotel for a bit of rest.

That night we went back in the same direction, to the night market that surrounds Ben Thanh after it closes at 6 PM.  (Note: guidebooks will tell you it starts up at 6.  They start setting things up at 6 but it’s not really going at full force until around 7:30.)  Since we got there early, I spotted a corner with some tables and chairs and some street food.  We ordered two bowls of Bun Bo Hue, a spicy beef noodle soup originating from Hue.  Damn, this was good.  The soup broth was rich, the beef was tender, the noodles were not cooked to death, and there was a big bowl of sliced chili peppers alongside the plate of assorted greens and herbs.  Two bowls of this goodness and two bottles of water set us back about US$4.  (Expensive but it is a tourist area.)

With the market now going at full force, we walked around it a couple of times.  My gf got some dresses and we picked out some cheap lacquerware stuff.  Restaurants were setting up under tents in the street and this one place called, I think, Countryside Dining, had a huge barbecue in front.  We saw these amazing fish grilling away, were told they were red snapper, and I knew we had to eat that.  The line of people waiting for tables consisted of mostly large groups (mostly locals) so they were able to squeeze in the two of us pretty quickly.  The barbecue fish, coated in we don’t know what, served simply with greens, chilis, lemon, salt, ended up being one of the best fish I’ve ever eaten.  We also got a plate of beef stir fried with chilis and veggies.  A kid sitting next to us was picking his way through the Vietnamese version of balut and we saw gigantic river prawns to rival the huge ones you can get in Thailand.  Our meal came out to under US$15.

At this point our idea was to get a taxi back to the hotel, drop off our stuff and find a bar.  That wasn’t going to happen.  It was Christmas Eve and it seemed as if the entire city of Saigon (or at least everyone under the age of 30)(so many beautiful women) was out in the streets for the holiday celebration.  We walked down Le Loi, a huge boulevard, the sections on either side packed with people on scooters that were barely moving due to the traffic, the central section just mobbed with people, taking photos, laughing, spraying each other from aerosol cans of fake snow.  Everything was lit up, Christmas lights and decorations everywhere, music in the air, laughter in the air, the constant beeping of horns from the scooters.  Everyone was so incredibly friendly, too.  I was shooting photos almost constantly the entire time and people were really happy to pose, smile, flash a “V”, thank me and wish me a “merry chissmas”.

It must have taken an hour to walk over to Dong Khoi and that’s where we hit the real mobs of people.  Dong Khoi was not closed to cars and the mobs on the sidewalk, together with vendors (toys, balloons, “snow”, food) and beggars made some sections almost literally impassible.  We very slowly made our way up to Notre Dame, the huge circle around the church similarly mobbed, the church all lit up in front.  Hot, sweaty, exhausted, exhilarated, we finally made it back to our hotel and had no energy to go back out again.

This is our last day in Saigon. Tomorrow we have a 7:45 AM flight to Nha Trang.  Today I’m thinking a low key Christmas day of banh mi, pho, some cafe life, and an early night.

Pictures to come later!