Mud baths and strange men

February 16th, 2002 at 12:00am

It’s been a strange 2 days in Nha Trang. Yesterday it was cloudy and raining all day. Not much to do in a beach town in that weather, but I found something to do and that was to go to the mineral springs 7 km north of town. For about $3.50 I had a natural mud bath and then a soak in the natural hot springs. Nice, but there were a lot of Vietnamese men oogling at the Western women in bathing suits. Back in town I went to the hotel and the people running it asked me if I wanted a roomate to share the price of a room. With Tet and all mostly every hotel is full and I would never leave a fellow traveller stranded without a place to stay so I thought sure, just assuming it would be a female. And they said,’Oh, he stay here before, he’s very nice man.’ And I said,’It’s a MAN???’ Well the Vietnamese family had a good laugh over that at my expense but they were not the ones about to share their room with a strange man for the night.

Well, the’stange man’ turned out to be Erik, a 27 year-old American guy who’s been teaching English in Japan for the past 6 months and is now travelling a bit before heading home. He turned out to be a really nice guy and we wound up going out to dinner together and then having drinks and playing pool later. He’s done a lot of travelling himself – Europe, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, etc. etc. so it was really interesting to hear more of his stories.

Erik left early this morning on the day bus to Saigon. That’s the same bus that I TRIED to get on but they wouldn’t take me because of the bicycle. No room for a bike on a bus full of backpacks. So I thought, well ok I’ll just take the train tomorrow (today) then. This morning I went to the train station to buy a ticket, but the trains are sold out for the next 3 days! So many people travelling because of Tet. Well, I thought now I’m screwed – I either stay in Nha Trang another 3 days or just start cycling to Saigon. Either way I wasn’t going to get to Saigon for several days.

Then I had a THOUGHT (I know it’s rare, but sometimes I get them). I bought a bus ticket for myself for the night bus tonight. Then I took the bike to the train station and checked it in as baggage. So now we are both leaving tonight – me by bus and the bike by train, and we’ll arrive in Saigon tomorrow. Brilliant!

The clouds and rain cleared out late this morning and so I had a sunny day for my last day in Nha Trang. I spent most of the afternoon at the beach reading my book and talking to a guy from Belgium (also travelling solo). Now I’m just killing time until 8:30pm when the bus is due to leave. This will be my first’night bus’ on the world journey. Due to arrive in Saigon at 6am tomorrow. Erik recommended a good place to stay so I might even run into him if I am able to get a bed there. Then I will arrange my visa and method of travel into Cambodia where I plan to spend a few weeks before heading back to Thailand.

Entry Filed under: Cycling,Nha Trang,Vietnam