4:27 AM
Lee
The Trips
The White Sand Dunes
We began organising our excursions like anyone else would: by inquiring at the reception in our resort. As it turned out, they had cancelled all their excursions for some reason and recommended we take a taxi... Great service there Amaryllis! If we hadn't have been into town the previous day we wouldn't have noticed the 10 or 20 different local tour operators nearby and so through ignorance we might've been forced to take a ridiculously expensive taxi ride for a good 3-4 hours. As it happened, we did notice these tour operators and after another painful conversation trying to interpret their 'English' we managed to squeeze that blood out of the stone and finally got the resort to call and book a tour for us.
We decided to go for a jeep ride instead of a van, purely because I thought it would be cooler. It was cooler, much cooler, and I even got a good picture out of it:
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| Sarah in the jeep minus comb |
We had read that there would be loads of kids trying to sell us stuff, which after China we had a lot of experience in, but there wasn't really. I mean, there were some kids but they didn't really hassle us like I thought they would. My theory is that they thought Sarah was local - a reoccurring theme during our trips to both Vietnam and China - and so decided we were too wise to their ways be bothered with.
As we walked up the stifling hot sand dunes we were excited by it's beauty. With it's vast, rolling pits of sand with a blue sky backdrop on one horizon and a large lake with slight forestation on the other, it was great to behold. But we were also curious as to how out of place the whole scene was; a giant patch of sand dune, with an oasis-like lake nearby, set within eyeshot of the sea - it was all rather odd. Definitely worth the trip :)
Sarah even got something for free! I mean, the sand was quite difficult to walk through so Sarah thought it a good idea to take off her flip-flops... Two minutes later she stepped on gum; GUM in this vast expanse of beauty all caught between her toes:
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| Unlucky |
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| Lee and the white sand dunes, plus cool Saigon t-shirt. |
... weren't that special. Stayed there for about 15 minutes before leaving. Still cool to see though, but after the white sand dunes it wasn't that great.
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| Not that red. |
Apparently we couldn't actually get down to the fishing village itself in the jeep, so the driver just dropped us off at the side of the road to take a few pics.
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| Me and some fishing boats. |
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| Some fishing boats. |
Now I wasn't sure what to expect from the Fairy stream, so I didn't question anything when we turned up at a little trickle at the side of the road next to a convenience store.
Some kids told us to follow them down a precarious looking bunch of steps that led into the river itself. They were knee deep in the river and were beckoning us in. We stopped, looked around and asked if they were serious. They were and we were thankful that we wore shorts that day (there were some Germans behind us that wore jeans... not sure why; it was sweltering hot). Here's a video of the first few minutes into the stream:
From my experience traveling (Turkey comes to mind), I knew that we'd probably end up having to pay these kids something for helping us, but we had no idea where we were going so we just let them lead us into the unknown and we'd throw 'em a bone later.
The stream was actually very beautiful, much more than I expected, and I could see why it was on the tourist map. Now that I think about it, it was probably one of my favourite parts of the whole holiday. The kids were guiding us away from particularly deep parts of the stream which was nice (there was a Korean couple in front of us with a toddler and, because they didn't recruit the help of the local street urchins, they were struggling a bit - it was funny to watch at times :) ). We saw some beautiful butterflies lit up by the sunlight streaming through the gaps in the trees. The rock formations nearer the end of our little trek, but by no means near the end of the stream, were gorgeous. Here are some pictures:
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| Lee and Sarah in the Fairy stream |
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| Fairy stream |
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| Nice rock formations. |
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| Sarah and the rock formations. |
On our walk back to the jeep our child guides, as predicted, asked us for cash. Now you can buy a pretty decent meal for around 100,000 Vietnamese dong (around $5 (3 pounds)) and we thought that was a generous amount to give.
So I said 'Yeah, thanks for your help, kids!' revealed the 100,000 dong and they looked at me as if I had just called their mother something rude!
They were all saying 'Oh, no sale! No sale! We need to go to school! We need more.. Come on!'. (Inside I was thinking 'No sale? We don't actually HAVE to give you anything..')
I felt sorry for them so I picked up a little bit more of the small change from my pocket and said that's all I could give them and they walked off as if it wasn't even enough to bother with!
I turned to Sarah and said 'Well, beggars can't be choosers,' and put the cash back in my pocket.
They kept turning around and asking for more but I was like 'Nope! It's that or nothing.'
They kept walking off and coming back. By that time, I knew their game...
I said to Sarah 'We could've gave 'em 500,000 dong and they still would've reacted like this. Good tactic but we're no fools.'
As we we're nearing the jeep one of the kids finally came up to me and said 'You're good. 100,000, OK.' So I gladly gave them the cash, because they were helpful to be honest, and they said thank you and waved us off.
Cheeky little gits ;)
Takou Mountain
Another day, another excursion. We went through the same company and rented another jeep. This trip was a tad more expensive because it took longer to get there (about an hour and half) but it was definitely worth it.
The entrance to Takou mountain was almost theme park-esque. The mountain was actually quite large so despite Sarah's slight apprehension we took the cable car to the top.
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| On the cable car |
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| At the top in the semi-wilderness. |
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| Reclining Buddha |
Above is a video of the reclining Buddha so you can see how big it was.
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| Lee in the clouds. |
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| Random dragon fruit grove |
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| Random dragon fruit grove with Takou mountain backdrop. |
After being randomly dropped off here, we got randomly dropped off at this place:
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| The place we randomly got dropped off at :S |
Next stop was the Poshanu Cham towers that were actually quite close to our resort. Can't remember much about them except that they were from the 9th century. They seemed well preserved and were nice to look at :) We were surprised they hadn't weathered more, especially considering the powerful winds from the sea and the horrendous monsoons they get there.
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| Ancient-ish tower |
Final words
Overall, we loved Vietnam. It would've been nice to have seen more of it actually (Hanoi, eastern coastal cities etc) but we definitely made the most of the area we stayed in :) I know one thing for sure, the shock of returning back to work was real... We sure relaxed out there in the 'Nam :P
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| Me having a sip of my coconut juice. |
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| It was Pho-bulous :) |
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