Day 13 - Beach Town

Things were going OK on the bus after midnight, it wasn't really possible to sleep but I was at least pretty relaxed. Then out of nowhere we stopped in some small town and everyone started to get off the bus. It turns out since we had payed for a sleeper bus they were going to take us the second half of the journey in it. A sleeper bus has little cubbys, two high, where I could sort of lay down. I say sort of since you can never quit get vertical, since for some reason it is designed so my back was always on an incline. The had little pillows and blankets for each seat, which just made me worry about getting lice. It was though much more comfortable then the other bus since it was much cooler and the seats were better if not great. The real fun began when they realized there were way more people than beds. The back of the bus had one big flat sort of bed where they put about nine guys. Eventually they even doubled up on a few of the small beds. Finally there were still about five people who for the rest of the trip had to sit on the floor in the aisle. I would have felt worse about having a bed but my ticket probably subsidized half the people on the bus.

It took about an hour to load and rearrange all the people on the new bus, which made me wish we had just stayed on the first bus. The best part of the sleeper bus though was that when we finally got going they turned off the lights and actually kept them off. I was eventually able to turn onto my side by convorting my body in a weird position and got an hour or two of sleep. When I woke up again it was almost dawn. It was already very bright though since the sun had to rise for a while before it could crest a set of mountains. What I saw outside was incredibly beautiful. We were in a long wide valley between two sets of green mountains. All around us were rice patties and a few small houses. Everything was just incredibly green and colored by the early morning sunlight. Ho Chi Minh city is a big city, and it had been dark when we left, so this was the first time I really saw the Vietnamese country side. We drove though this valley for a long time but I had a really great time just staring out the window. Even a lot of the Vietnamese people on the bus were sitting up taking a look out the window. It did bring to mind questions like, we bombed this? We left the valley after a while and the rest of the ride was gorgeous, though not nearly as spectacular.

At about seven in the morning we arrived in Nha Trang a small beach town about 450 km north of Ho Chi Minh City. Nha Trang was a mix of bustling city that looked something like Ho Chi Minh City, a beach town with amazing beaches, an a more western area with wide clean streets and new shinny buildings. Actually a lot og Nha Trang's charm came from the fact that it was fairly poor. Unlike cities in China with their gray high rise buildings, Nha Trang was a hodgepodge of small brightly painted houses. In fact all of Vietnam seems to go in for bright colors more than China. The other amazing thing about Nha Trang was just how blue the sky was and how bright the sun was. Removed from the pollution of China, or even big Vietnamese cities like Ho Chi Minh, Nha Tran just had a beautiful sky that wasn't hazy of gray. All this was backed by green mountains and in front of a blue sea to create the perfect beach effect. The bus dropped us off at some hotel connected with the same company. Not really liking the bus too much we weren't eager to stay there. We started walking towards the train station which was towards the edge of town. At the train station we tried to get sleeper tickets for Danag, about another 11 hours up the coast, but they didn't have any as everyone was traveling for Tet.

We walked further to a bus station where we got tickets to Gui Nhoy, another smaller beach town about six hour north. As we walked we passed some of the sights of the city, an old cathedral and a Buddhist temple with a swastika, originally a Buddhist symbol, on the gate. We walked for quite a while with our back packs until we came to the more touristy area with most of the hotels, which was right across from the beach. After we got settled we walked across the road to a nice strip of beach. It was still early, about 11, so we were able to get some chairs under umbrellas, though we still had to pay for them. The beach was full of soft sand and quite wide. The water was cold but the view was great, green hilly islands with there own sandy beaches. Honestly the most noticeable thing on the beach were, well, breasts. Chinese women, for all their nice qualities, don't really have them so it was actually something of a surprise to see women with breasts walking around the beach.

I finally finished reading River Town, a book buy a guy who lived in a fairly small Chinese city in the mid 90's. River Town is a great read for finding out what living in China is like. Even though a lot has changed since it was written, a lot of it is still spot on. The way people are so interested to see him, the way his school sort of treats him as an oddity, the amount of Baijou that is consumed at the various banquettes, all these things ring true. One of the most interesting parts of the book is when another peace corp volunteer, who gets into some trouble, finds out that the police have a file on him and every thing he's said in class. I don't think they'd do the same thing now, foreign teachers are a lot more common, but you never know. As he notes in River Town it's always the best students who have the closest relationship with the party. Being a good student means you can become a party member which can lead to advancement. In fact monitoring their fellow students is inseparable from being a good student in China. The best student in each class is the class monitor, who is essentially in charge of the other students. The party essentially co-opts the best students as a means of controlling them.

There is also a scene near the end of the book where the author is almost beat up by a mob. Scenes like this just make me wonder if it could happen to me. Again I think not but I'm reminded of another book I was reading, The Life of Pi, where the main character cautions that just because we read human characteristics into animals does not mean they can't turn on us very fast, and be very dangerous. Just because I think I know China doesn't mean I should let my guard down. We ended the day by going to a pretty good pizza restaurant. It may seem odd to come all the way to Vietnam then eat western food, but since Vietnamese food is so similar to Chinese food it's actually more exotic to eat western food, which is more prevalent in Vietnam than in our part of China.