A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Since I am really only capable of lolling about on the beach for two days, I made the most of the remainder of my stay. So in the morning I hired a motorbike to drive me around town, visited the market (lots of fish), the harbor (lots of beautiful boats), and toured a nuoc mam factory. Nuoc mam is the fish sauce that the Vietnamese serve at every meal that you put on rice or whatever else you might have in front of you. It's great stuff, but the overpowering stench of the "factory" (which really more closely resembled a brewery with huge wooden vats) was indescribable, and it's a damned good thing they didn't offer me any samples during the tour because I might never have been able to tolerate it again.

After lunch I took off with another motorbike driver, who unfortunately spoke not a single word of English. We headed north into the area that was closed to travelers until very recently by the military. Our drive alternated between the graded clay road and paths not accessibly by your average auto due to their narow width, rocks and bumps caused by monsoon season rains, and the periodic perilous bridge. These bridges generally had a gentle curve, a soothing shape that offset the alarming clattering sound while going over, the narrowness, the missing planks, and the disturbing lack of railings. Personally, I would have been more than willing to stop and walk over each of these rather than risk the combined weight of two people and a motorbike on those creaky planks, but my driver never hesitated for a second.

We saw no other tourists the whole day, and just wandered from deserted gorgeous beach to fishing village to another deserted gorgeous beach. Our final destination was the top of the island, where an enterprising crazy person had set up a beach restaurant completely in the middle of nowhere. The amazing thing was that he and his family had obviously worked very hard on this place, with home-made party tents set up all around made more festive with decoratively scissored blue tarp and a Japanese-lantern-style technique in which in lieu of the Japanese lanterns hanging from wires strung from tree to tree, he had attached something more available in his situation -- beer cans. Really, the place looked great, considering, and could seat maybe 50 people in the various makeshift tents. Naturally, considering his location at the back of beyond, my driver and I were the only ones there. I have no idea how this guy gets by, but if he can, life must be good in such a lovely place.

© 2002 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 7:32 PM