LOCATION: Nha Trang
APPEARING: Me | Is a dried fishes a "people"?
APPEARING: Me | Is a dried fishes a "people"?
The first two images are from the night before. I've gotten used to dining on my own and not feeling too strange about it when I'm away for work. The first day when I got in, I tried one of the seafood places in the touristy part of town, on Tran Phu, by the water. At what was supposed to be a good place, I had rubbery shrimp and cuttle fish, seemingly soaked in salt, cooked in salt, and topped with half a cup of palm sugar. Typical.
This time, I walked along the beach as the sky darkened, and headed to the far side of town to a place called Lac Canh-- not totally off the tourist trail, but heralded by locals as the real thing. You can't blame anyone if the food is overcooked when you cook it yourself. Needless to say, I gorged myself on prawns, eel, morning glory fried in garlic sauce, beer, coconut juice. Though I was sitting outside and had a fan on me, I was swimming in clouds of BBQ-seafood smoke.
The next morning, I headed out of town on a rented motorbike to the village of Duc My, where I had heard there was a nice hot spring (the Vietnamese military officer had helped show me the way using my local map). My chest pain had returned, but a bowl of pho and a cup of coffee-- and the realization that even if I was having a heart attack, riding through Vietnam on a motorbike would probably be more dangerous-- set me straight.
The drive-- over 100 miles round trip-- took me way out into the countryside, to the base of a string of lush mountains. Without knowing a word of Vietnamese, I'm surprised I ever round the hot spring, which was on an unmarked dirt path off of a small country road. I probably stopped 10 times along the way, trying to sign my way for directions. But how do you sign "hot water that I want to swim in"? I was offered bottled water twice, and a cup of hot tea once. When I made swimming motions when the hot tea came, someone laughed and pointed up the road a bit further.
The hot spring was really just a little stone outcrop in the middle of the woods. I was the only person there for the hour or so I spent dipping toes, fingers, and torso into different temperature pools. The top pool was hotter than any water I have voluntarily touched-- even dipping my fingers in was painful; it is not clear if it is meant for going into; I've been in crazy hot springs in Taipei, and this was twice as hot.No heart attacks on the way, or in the water, I figured I was cured; after all, this particular spring is known to heal the ill.
Before returning the bike, I headed back to town, and then to the far southern tip of the peninsula, where the Oceanographic Institute is housed. There were a few tanks of live fish, but mostly a massive collection of pickled and dried fish on display. Everything from a manatee to hundreds of flavors of intestinal worm. The bit about the fish on the poster saying S.O.S. (presumably about oil spills or something) gave me a laugh: Oil spills... or being caught by the museum's curators?
This time, I walked along the beach as the sky darkened, and headed to the far side of town to a place called Lac Canh-- not totally off the tourist trail, but heralded by locals as the real thing. You can't blame anyone if the food is overcooked when you cook it yourself. Needless to say, I gorged myself on prawns, eel, morning glory fried in garlic sauce, beer, coconut juice. Though I was sitting outside and had a fan on me, I was swimming in clouds of BBQ-seafood smoke.
The next morning, I headed out of town on a rented motorbike to the village of Duc My, where I had heard there was a nice hot spring (the Vietnamese military officer had helped show me the way using my local map). My chest pain had returned, but a bowl of pho and a cup of coffee-- and the realization that even if I was having a heart attack, riding through Vietnam on a motorbike would probably be more dangerous-- set me straight.
The drive-- over 100 miles round trip-- took me way out into the countryside, to the base of a string of lush mountains. Without knowing a word of Vietnamese, I'm surprised I ever round the hot spring, which was on an unmarked dirt path off of a small country road. I probably stopped 10 times along the way, trying to sign my way for directions. But how do you sign "hot water that I want to swim in"? I was offered bottled water twice, and a cup of hot tea once. When I made swimming motions when the hot tea came, someone laughed and pointed up the road a bit further.
The hot spring was really just a little stone outcrop in the middle of the woods. I was the only person there for the hour or so I spent dipping toes, fingers, and torso into different temperature pools. The top pool was hotter than any water I have voluntarily touched-- even dipping my fingers in was painful; it is not clear if it is meant for going into; I've been in crazy hot springs in Taipei, and this was twice as hot.No heart attacks on the way, or in the water, I figured I was cured; after all, this particular spring is known to heal the ill.
Before returning the bike, I headed back to town, and then to the far southern tip of the peninsula, where the Oceanographic Institute is housed. There were a few tanks of live fish, but mostly a massive collection of pickled and dried fish on display. Everything from a manatee to hundreds of flavors of intestinal worm. The bit about the fish on the poster saying S.O.S. (presumably about oil spills or something) gave me a laugh: Oil spills... or being caught by the museum's curators?
