Gym's Ramblings: On to Danang

After a day at sea we arrived in Viet Nam this morning. The past 24 hours have been a very easy transition to life at sea for myself and as anticipated, a less than easy time for my dear wife. She was seasick immediately after we left Hong Kong and had basically slept for about 20 of the past 24 hours prior to docking here in Danang. Thank god for Doxylamine and Pyridoxine which is a wonderful combination of drugs that have restored her to a semblance of her former self and allowed us to go on a little 5.5-hour tour of central Viet Nam.

I have to admit the seas have been a little rough since we left the harbor protected by Hong Kong Island. Even the local guide here indicated that the South China Sea was ‘shaking’ a bit and asked whether that meant that the cruise ship was also shaking. We acknowledged that is was a little turbulent out there. She apologized for the condition of the sea and the brown coloured surf and told us that it was normally a brilliant color of blue and that we would have to come back when the sea wasn’t shaking so much.

Central Viet Nam is a part of the world that is in transition. It is being modernized whether it wanted to or not. The government has realized the tourism potential here and there is construction everywhere. There is new infrastructure being built around the city and the shorefront is being beautified with two-way boulevards, which are framed by lush shrubbery. In recent years they have completed a 6 km. tunnel along Highway No. 1 and a beautiful new suspension bridge, which connects to the highway. There are also numerous investments being made by foreign corporations in building four and five star resorts along China Beach, which was a place that U.S. servicemen unwound during the Viet Nam war. The most interesting thing though is that some of this development would not be possible if it weren’t for the communist government in Hanoi. Now why would a commie government make the development easier you ask? Well, those 5-star resorts can only be built if you are able to re-locate a whole bunch of poor fisherman and their families that have lived close to the beach for generations. And only a communist government could force them to move away from the beach and accept new accommodation in government housing several blocks away from the water. Since no one has property rights, there are no issues.

The people here are very friendly and seem to have a wonderful sense of humour. Our guide would tell us these long stories about the history of the area and punctuate her lectures with observations about the traffic, water buffaloes on the road or other similar oddities and then laugh after every sentence, which made everyone else laugh.

We saw some amazing things today. The area here is noted for the marble carvings that are produced around the Marble Mountains and the beautiful embroidery that is done by local artisans. I have never seen such beautiful sculptures or such large and intricate embroideries. What also stood out for me was a little trip to the market and I hope you get a sense for what we saw in these places by the pictures that I am attaching.

The traffic here is crazy but it has its own ying and yang. Tour buses need only honk two times and all the traffic shifts over to the right and lets the tourist go by in their buses. The motor scooter is the dominant form of transport here and there are very few family cars. On the contrary you can see whole families piling onto a single scooter. The winner in the family-touring category was a family of five scrunched onto one scooter. The winner in the scooter furniture mover category was a queen-sized bed being moved by scooter. You had to see it to believe it! Sorry we were not fast enough with the camera.

The only thing I did not see today but which the guide told us about was the golf courses in the area. I heard her say there were quite a few. I don’t doubt it when the 5-star hotels are running up to $1000 US per night. The Hong Kong tycoons need places to play golf.

We are off again tonight and will spend another full day at sea before we dock at Ho Chi Minh City (southerners still call it Saigon). I hope to get another blog posted tomorrow with some more pictures while we are at sea.