∙ Time in port: 9 hours
∙ We began with a visit to Po Nagar Cham Towers (Hindu). As we made our way around town, we saw lots of people riding around on bikes and scooters and hanging around out on the sidewalks, like in Indonesia (see City pictures below).
∙ We paid a visit to the SOS Children's Village, with 14 family houses, a nursery for 190 children, and a 1,000-capacity school. There are similar villages in over 130 countries, through an organization based in Australia and funded by donations worldwide. The children are largely orphans, who were very excited about our visit. The card to the left is an actual drawing, handed to me by one of the children. Some of them put on a dance number to Bollywood music, while donning cute little Indian costumes. A few of them got especially excited when I showed them their pictures on my camera. One lady saved her little chocolates the ship gives us at night and handed them out to the children. Others of us donated cash and/or other gifts. This seems to be an extremely worthwhile organization, so if you’re looking for a decent place to direct your charitable money, look up SOS Children’s Villages.
∙ We stopped at a beachfront restaurant for lunch, where children tried to sell us postcards, knock-off Polo shirts and other wares. The food left something to be desired (the beer wasn’t very cold; most of the food wasn’t warm), except that the Lumpia’s were really good.
∙ We continued to the Buddhist temple Chua Long Son Pagoda, which is home to a giant white Buddha 152 stone steps above the pagoda. A little Vietnamese girl quickly attached herself to Bill and I, telling us that she lived with the Monks and that her parents were both dead. She wanted to show us around. It was quite a hustle, but I didn’t care. We had a cute little local “tour guide”, who I gladly tipped at the end.
∙ The tour bus then drove us to an embroidery shop for a “demonstration” (euphemism for an another attempt to sell us stuff). Bill and I opted to “cut out” at that point and used the last two hours ashore to instead ride the cable car to Vinpearl Land. The cable car ride itself provided sensational views of Nha Trang and even our ship just below the cable line. At Vinpearl, we found a sprawling water park, amusement park, underwater aquarium and rows and rows of shops.
∙ THOUGHTS/IMPRESSIONS
∙ We looked at the notion of visiting Vietnam, of all places, with some trepidation given the obvious history (more on that in my next post about Saigon.) I saw little to associate this place with the War, except a monument of a soldier, carrying a weapon, and the apparent poverty of its people. One U.S. dollar buys 20,000 Vietnamese “Dong”; everything is extremely cheap here; and people persistently approached (even begged) us to buy their goods. One has to wonder how these people might be living, had the War turned out differently . . . but we’ll never know. (Consider the contrast between how well the people of Hong Kong live (generally), at least compared to those in mainland China … .)
∙ Nha Trang presents an odd contrast between an impoverished people and a resort town with beautiful beaches and a line of hotels and other attractions to draw tourists. As our guide put it, “we have 5 star, 4 star, and no star hotels”. The people we met were kind and welcoming, and the children were precious. . . . Tomorrow we see Saigon, an even closer “reminder” of a dark time in history.
A LOOK AT NHA TRANG
FROM OUR ROOM AND SHIP
∙ The pretty girl is “Ping” – a masseuse from the ship, from Taiwan
These are some of your best pics yet, really like the white budha with clouds, also the kids were precious.
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