On the Road Again

Today we had the opportunity to sleep in (though most of the group reported being awake early anyway). Hoi An is a nice place, but it seems we had too much down time there, and the late departure this morning just added to it.

The bus finally left at 10 a.m. and drove us to Da Nang. This time, on the way through town, we had opportunity to visit the Champa Museum, which contains a number of artifacts from the My Son site we had visited yesterday.

The museum is not large. While there were some interesting pieces, we saw all of it in about 15 minutes.

The museum happens to be located just at the tail end of the "Yellow Dragon Bridge." This relatively new structure gets its name from the fact that it was designed to look like a yellow dragon. No surprise there.

The bus delivered us to the Da Nang airport once again, where we checked in for the flight to Nha Trang. We actually landed at Cam Ranh airport, near the famous seaport at Cam Ranh Bay. This was a major supply depot for the U.S. during the Vietnam War. It is now leased by the Russian navy. We immediately noticed signs in Russian everywhere.

The bus ride from Cam Ranh to Nha Trang was actually quite scenic. There are huge sand dunes near the coast, and high-end tourist resorts line the road along the seaside. This isn't rice paddy country as we've seen elsewhere.ets

First stop was a boat ride to the island of Hon Mieu in Nha Trang Bay to visit a fairly typical fishing village. The contrasts here were quite amazing, with abject poverty sitting alongside comfortable middle class houses, and some clearly upper class homes.

Our guide allowed us to taste some carefully chosen street food. Young children followed our group through the streets.

As we walked, the boat moved around to the other side of the peninsula to meet us. However, it could not dock on that side. Rather, it docked next to one of the many dozens of floating fish farm structures just off shore.

Some in our group braved the tiny, round "basket boats" made of woven bamboo to get out to the boat that would take us back across the bay.

The rest of us walked and very tipsy floating dock out to a raft, which two boys pulled across to the fish farms with a rope.

Our trip back to the mainland took us under the high gondola that takes visitors across the bay to another island, known as the Vietnamese DisneyLand.

Nha Trang is a bigger place than it initially appears. It's also a fairly prosperous place, at least along the seaside, there huge new tourist hotels line the streets.

Dinner tonight was at a place that was definitely outside the fancy tourist zone. Meat and seafood were brought to our table raw, along with buckets of burning charcoal over which we grilled our own dinner. It was very entertaining, but probably not fine dining.

Our hotel here is a high rise by the sea. Our very modern room looks out toward the ocean. We hope we get some time to walk along the beach tomorrow.