Thursday, December 01, 2005

Beach Vacation/Leaving Saigon

We wrapped up our initial, month-long Vietnamese language course last Friday and left Saturday for a four-day weekend at the beach. We went to Ho Coc by bus, which took about 2 1/2 hours. Where is Ho Coc? If you headed down the Saigon River, when you reached the ocean, you'd be at Vung Tau. Head up the coast about -- well I don't know how far, 100km? -- and you're at Ho Coc. We chose Ho Coc because we heard it was very quiet, unlike Vung Tau, and has a 11,000 hectare forest reserve, Phuoc Buu, with lots of birds and monkeys. It was beatiful. We're now posting photos on pbase -- see www.pbase.com/tcholz for photos of the beach and forest.

We had a great time. Getting there was a bit of a challenge -- Lonely Planet wasn't helpful and the Saigon tour agencies don't go there and said you have to go to Vung Tau, then by motorbike to Ho Coc. So that's what we planned to do. But when we got to the bus station in Saigon that has buses to the central highlands and the coast, including Vung Tau, we found a bus going directly to Binh Chau, which is only about 10 km or so from Ho Coc. It would have been a very long motorbike ride from Vung Tau to Ho Coc, so this worked out great.

We stayed at a resort right on the beach, paid about $10 a night, and stayed three nights. The beach and the forest were wonderful. The first afternoon we just swam and hung out on the beach. The next morning we went to the forest reserve. There were no English speaking guides so we went for a hike on our own. It was late morning by the time we got there, and we didn't have much luck spotting the birds we could hear in the trees. But the butterflies were spectacular. I posted one photo of a butterfly at pbase -- it's not very good, the butterflies were not being very cooperative, but it gives some idea what the things looked like. Some of them were huge.

The next day we hiked along the beach and into the dunes. We walked into the dunes until we reached the forest border -- we had a great view of the forest from the top of the dunes. Hoa spotted some pretty cool birds -- we tried to look them up when we got back to Saigon, and we think they were a "thick-knee" or something like that.

Each evening we ate very well, although we never tried the crab being peddled along the beach. There was almost no one else staying overnight at the resort -- the only people there were usually Vietnamese people who came only for the day. So at night we sang karaoke with the people who worked at the resort. One night, we met a Swedish man who spoke better English than most Americans. He sang very well -- mostly Elton John and the Beatles. I did my usual "Hotel California" -- I think I need to try some new songs.

On the motorbike ride back to the main highway where we'd catch the bus, we rode through the forest. It was early morning and we saw lots of birds. I even saw one monkey. We'd seen monkeys when we visited the headquarters, but they seemed pretty tame. While waiting for the bus, I took a little walk and saw some green pidgeons. A drunk motorbike driver tried to tell us the bus didn't come until 2 pm -- it was 10 am, but we didn't believe him. And the bus showed up right on time at 10 am. All the seats were taken so we had to sit on little plastic stools in the aisle, but for $2 a piece I can't complain. Lonely Planet makes it sound like these buses, and the on-board Karaoke, are a nightmare, but we don't mind. In fact, we like Karaoke -- it's a good way to study Vietnamese.

We're leaving HCM City Saturday and going to Vinh Long for a few days before heading on to Da Lat, Ba Me Thuot, Cat Tien and Yok Don National Parks, Nha Trang, and perhaps on to Hue, Ha Noi, and who knows where else. We'll probably be on the road for 4-6 weeks, but we don't really know. Hoa has family in Ba Me Thuot who live on a farm, mostly coffee, apparently, but also black pepper and some fruits and vegetables. We could end up staying there a while, but our tentative plan is to stay one week.

It was hard to come back to HCM City. The traffic and pollution seem worse after finally having experienced the natural world of Vietnam. And it's not that easy to escape the city. So we're now thinking it's less likely we'll settle here. We'll see what we think of the rest of Vietnam. What HCM City has to offer us is jobs and good Vietnamese language instruction. If we can find these things elsewhere, we probably won't come back. Ha Noi is sounding pretty good, with it's four-season climate and cool winters, but it's a long ways from Hoa's family in Vinh Long. And we certainly would like to see more of them.

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