Lady selling something on the street with announcement on repeat gets us moving this morning.
Andre has found a bridge online that he wants to go see, and we could use some more dong, off we go.
The bridge turns out to be at the end of the night market street, overlooking a market. Great views of the market below. Already photo ops taking place, one wedding party pictures are being done, it is not 8am! All pictures from this morning will be from cells, memory card is still in the computer. That's twice this trip so far, but who's counting.
Find the VP bank, load up on as much cash as we are comfortable carrying, take advantage of the other button again. Everything is 500,000 bills again so no bulky bills to tuck away.
Back to hotel, finish packing up, goodbye to lovely lady in lobby. Grab car ordered, 1 minute later says arrived. Arrived where? We can see on the map that he is no where near us. Phone rings, Andre passes the phone to a woman sitting outside, she tells him where we are, he is a good 3km away, not sure what happened there. During all this the coffee shop proprietor that we have been going to comes out to see if we are OK , he knows as much English as we know Vietnamese, we got across to him that we were OK. Sad we did not get to see my latest love to say goodbye today, I would have enjoyed spending more time with him, I'm sure there is an incredible story if we got to know him, I still can't believe how good his English was.
Arrived at bus station , traded voucher for ticket. Luggage under, shoes off , what is this?? We are business class on this route. Chargers at our seats, TVs, internet, water bottles, hand wipes, recliners work, and privacy curtains. We used Futa for our first bus trip, but this is even a step up from that. We are both bottom bunk, middle and aisle. Checked map, gravel taken and we are off to Nha Trang. Bus left 15 minutes early, this will be a not totally wasted travel day I hope.
Tv and Internet were a bust. I actually don't like the Tv, they block any view that you would have in front of you.
20 minute break when we are about 1 hour from destination. It is noon, and this us the nicest place we have stopped yet. Pork skewer with veg in a bun for Andre. I order sticky rice that is on the grill in a piece of bamboo. Looks interesting, I order that , do you want peanuts and sugar to dip it in? Of course I do. It was good, but along with extra salt for fruit I won't be adding sugar to the table at home for my rice.
What I had not read about is when you book with Futa they will shuttle you to your hotel. We were approached by a grab driver and nearly took it, but then I saw shuttle busses parked to the side. So if you use Futa watch for the shuttle when you get off the bus.
Arrived at our hotel. Our 4 hour bus ride turned into 3, so our room wasn't ready for another 30 minutes. A beautiful beach right outside I'm sure we can find a beach bar that will occupy us for at least 30 minutes.
Loungers and umbrellas seem to have a charge of 100k for the day for 2 people. Use of bathrooms, bar and showers. We booked a tour for tomorrow morning, pretty sure I know where we will be tomorrow afternoon.
Got a message from a friend of a friend that is also traveling through Vietnam. They are in Hue staying at Eva Homestay , so John if you are still reading this your recommendation has got a couple of guests reservations for her. My message today was a big thank you for telling them about this place, they love it. We will be there ourselves in about a month for a couple of nights.
Time to drop off some laundry, dirty clothes are far outnumbering clean clothes now. See a laundry place on google maps pretty much directly behind our hotel, but our hotel is down an alley that is blocked off at the end. Laundry here is 20K/kg, no Brainerd no hand washing for me this trip. Around back is much more of a local scene, the front is pretty much all massive hotels. I think this is mostly a Russian vacation spot so there are very few tourists around again. Everyone is telling us tourism is picking up, it must have been really terrible if this is picking up.
Off to walk along the beach, a lot nicer now that it has cooled off. Earlier this afternoon there was hardly anyone out, now the beach is full of families having fun in the water.
In my stacks of notes I see that someone had written to try Ban Xeo Chao 81-85 for a meal. It is just off a really fun street to walk along. Andre says are you sure, yep let's try it. We ordered spring rolls, then knew nothing else on the menu. So I ordered the egg, Andre ordered the mixed, of what we did not know. I'm watching other tables , but still can't figure it out. We have a basket of greens on the table , some veggies in a dish , and a few bowels of sauces, limes. Our egg and mixed plates arrive. I call the waitress over and ask her to help. You have no rice paper, do you like rice paper, yes. She gets an order of rice paper for us. We each have an empty bowel in front of us, she shows us to add fish sauce, and one of the other sauces on our table and told us to mix them up. Then she took a rice paper added greens and a slice of the pizza type dish with eggs that I have. You roll it all together dip it in the sauce you just made and yummy. Way too much food, we really had fun trying it. Plus they had beer so Andre was happy.
Enjoyed some of the lights on the way home calling it an early night, early start again tomorrow.
Pictures from today:
Saying bye to Da Lat and the swans peddle boats
Lots of buses outside and quite a few leaving for Saigon soon
Tons of mom & pop shops and restaurans and also massage place
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