Nha Trang

Hello all,

Just a short one as spent well over an hour on Reality - had lots of things I wanted to say!!!

Left Delat, mountain town (actually gets cold!), with a small copy of Eiffel Tower.... Hmm. Lots of people thinks it's really touristy but I like it. It's quite well off, but its touristy for the Vietnamese as much as foreigners. Vietnamese seem to like kitsch things!

First day on bike tour was ace - saw lots of little home based business, tried local food, a couple of walks. 2nd day went round an ethnic minority village - matriachial society. They used to have 2 ladders into the huts - an ornate one for women and a basic one for men : ) The huts are huge - long and thin, but the only live/sleep/eat in 1/4 of the hut. The rest of it is kept for celebrations. They could be 9 people living in a room smaller than most sitting rooms when they have all this other space! I'm sure it makes sense to them.

After that felt really ill. Took me ages to work it out but had heat exhaustion, got fever, felt very weak and generally exhausted (funny that!) Felt better the next morning but was still a bit of struggle to make it all the way to Nha Trang. THe other 3 decided to take the trip up to Hoi An, where I'll meet them 2morrow. I wanted to dive in Nha Trang but haven't actually felt like it. Spent a lot of time lying down - either in bed, on the beach or at these wonderful hot mineral spa/mud spa just outside of town. Did hire a bicycle and look at a few other sights, but generally just taken it easy.

Hoi An should be busy, infact the rest of the trip should be busy. Lots of world heritage sites here. So this is probably last lying around time for a while.

Vietnamese are very industrious and quite well off (compared to other parts of Asia), more like Malaysia, but could just be cause there are so many people here, it feels like they're richer but comparatively it's still the same.

They have businesses for everything. Last few days I've seen incense factory (when I say factory - usually mean home business), flower farms, brick making, black mushroom growing, black pepper farm, rubber producing (trees), granite production (roads, house foundations), chopstick production, coffee plantations.

The list goes on and on! For the most part, quite environmentally friendly and not wasteful at all. They use stuff for everything. Once the rubber tree life is over, it's used to grow the black mushrooms. Leftovers from chopstick prodcution goes to make toothpicks. They use everything! More because of money concious than anything else, but that's better than nothing.

I'm used to pushy sellers all over Asia, but here they take it to a new level. People walk up to you and say "buy something". Or you walk past a shop and they say "buy something". They don;t say anything else, just "buy something". Doesn't matter what! One old lady just flung her arm out and pointed at her shop. I quite liked her so I bought some water - probably not what she was intending, but that's life!

Hope you're all well and happy,
love
kx