| After we left Hoi An, we pretty much followed the coast line a couple
hundred miles to Nha Trang before going inland. This is a section of
China Beach. Nearly every American serviceman eventually got liberty
here if they survived long enough, or at least tried to. It doesn't
look like much now, but it was a happening place during the war. It was
also a clearinghuse for journalists to get together to try to separate
fact from fiction. The biggest sources of fiction were in Saigon and
Hanoi. Since this is halfway between, it's about as far from the source
of fiction as you can get and still be in Vietnam. |
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| You would be amazed by how often I saw people breaking rocks with
sledge hammers, and how many rocks they managed to break. The pile of
rocks you see in front of Jacques was made with nothing but the tools
you see in use here. |
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| I mentioned the ubiquitous use of moto-bikes for hauling children.
Here's an example, although I saw much younger children all the time. |
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| The coastline from Hoi An down to Nha Trang was beautiful, and there
were nice beaches galore. If you're a beach person, you could do quite
well to just go into Nha Trang, Vung Tau or any of the other beach
towns and just veg out for a few days. |
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| This is from the oceanographic museum in Nha Trang. This is living
coral. I'd never seen it alive before, and was surprised by how
beautiful it is. Of course, now that I've seen the Great Barrier Reef
in Australia, I'm aware of just how ignorant I was 2 months ago. |
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| This little bugger is about the size of my palm, and can kill a man
within less than a minute with a single sting. |
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| This is a rock fish. It looks just like a rock, and if you step on it
it's very bad news. The guide had us try to count the rock fish in a
small aquarium. It was devilishly hard to do even when we knew what we
were looking for and had only a very small area to check. |
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| This is a traditional Vietnamese musical instrument that I heard quite
a few times. It's unique feature is that it has only one string.
The artist grabs hold of the lever with the left hand. The string goes
down from just above his left hand to about 2/3 of the way down the
flat. It's played by either plucking or rubbing the string or
combinations of the two; along with wobbling the upright piece around.
All in all, quite an interesting instrument. |
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| More biking photos. This is Etienne. |
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| This is a typical Cham tower. As you can tell, it's built from bricks,
and not all that great of bricks at that. That explains the lack of
lasting Cham monuments. |
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| This was the most vocal and approving bunch of kids for my toys of the
trip. Somewhere along the way, I figured out that all I needed to do to
have a bunch of people to chat with is pull out my camera and/or
computer. It works every time, 100% guaranteed and some of my best
conversations with Vietnamese people started out that way. This
particular group in Nha Trang was the most vocal and
appreciative of the whole setup of the trip. They would still have me
there hanging out and showing them the photos on my computer if they
had their say. This particular group was a school group on a field trip
or a holiday. |
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| You see a lot of this kind of communist propaganda all over the place.
The communists are big on propaganda. I was in Saigon during a
celebration of some kind of communist holiday. Just about every shop in
Saigon ended up sprouting a small Vietnam flag. That all seemed very
patriotic until I found out that they are required to do so, and the
police actually have people come to each business and check for the
presence of the flag. Owners are fined if the flag is missing or of
insufficient quality and prominence. |
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