Moving House

Mrs Hoff started the move.

Can't read what she's thinking? Click here.

I noticed the boxes we were using had once held something entirely different...was it a bad omen?

So, a five minute journey down to the end of Tran Khac Chan, over the small bridge, and we're home -- Mieu Noi apartments.

The thing I love about this place is the view. From our place, up on the 16th floor, we have an unobstructed view over District 1, District 3, and other areas of the city.. Here's my map of the D1 skyline as seen from chez moi (or check the larger size here).

and here

And finally, the sunset over the city.

Nha Trang

A few pics from Nha Trang, that's all....it's a baby Saigon.

The river

Tran Phu from the ground

and from the air

These shacks still survive at the northern end of Tran Phu St. They overlook the new coastal bridge and the bay back towards the city, what a juicy piece of land.

The city

The countryside

And finally, something we can't deny, 'soaking in mineral mud is very interesting', as the sign states.

Disney, no, Vin-Pearl Land

Ever felt like you were in a James Bond movie? From the beginning to the end, visiting Vin-Pearl Land is, well, odd. Prehaps on the Florida coast, in amongst other spectacularly well oiled tourist attractions, VPL would fit in. Out here, in the midst of 'south central' Vietnam, it's surreal. VPL declares its presence to the entire bay with a Hollywood style message prominently displayed in the hills. These hills belong to an island, which has been hired on a 50 year lease from the Vietnamese government. One of the owners is a Vietnamese national who made his fortune in the Ukraine with an instant noodle factory that supplies Eastern Europe and Russia. Who doesn't like a steaming pot of spicy noodles on a winter evening in Moscow heh?

Following the coastal road out of Nha Trang, all of a sudden the town fades away eventually disappearing. It then turns into a kind of industrial estate where development, once again, is the only thing on the agenda. Vast areas are already cleared, prehaps for a VPL HQ, but one imagines that they already have one deep inside a 'hollowed out volcano' (AP) somewhere in the South Pacific. As the earth moving equipement noisly shifted gears on the land above me, I felt like I shouldn't be in sight and needed to hide behind a conveniently placed advertising board. Had I come across something I wasn't meant to be seeing?

It seemed that half the province is ready for whatever is planned for this area.

As I found the entrance to VPL Mainland Water Docking Station, or whatever they call it, things got more interesting. Currently in construction is the world's longest cable car over water. In this picture, you can see the navy hanging around the pylons erected on concrete platforms -- that kind of protection doesn't come cheap.

Here, the route of the cable car is clear, and you may be able to make out the Hollywood sign in the hills on 'Bamboo Island'.

Let's play 'spot the safety harness'.

Bizarrely, there was no place to park my bike at the ferry terminal, and I had to leave the Yamaha in the staff parking area. I felt bad for being so poor, and not arriving in a shiny gray beamer. I made sure that the poisned dart in my new wrist watch (a gift from Q) was on 'kill', and stepped into the lobby. The place was frequented by slavic looking gentlemen in white sailors hats. Obviously, with Russia having so much coastline they have a lot of sailors......

Since the cable cars weren't ready, we had to take the boat. Journey time, about two minutes, running 24 hours a day every 30 minutes. On the 'other side', the Disney experience truly began. Passengers were sheperded into large golf carts, which took us up a winding road to the other side of the island. Unfortunately, the visitors badge they gave me meant I couldn't pretend to be staying there. The hotel itself is of course damn good. It has over 200 rooms and also this, a kilometre of private beach with perfect surf. When we say private, we don't mean someone from the hotel has hammered a crude wooden sign into the sand, we mean that nobody else is on the island except the hotel guests and its visitors (by the way, it's $20 to visit...but you do get a free hat & pen, and a welcome drink).

If you could find a good reason to leave the island, please let me know. They have a quality Spa:

They have a 5700, thats right, 5700 square meter swimming pool.

The golf course is nearly finished by the way. The driving range already is. You can also go diving, parascending, hire a jet ski, play water polo, do some aerobics, join the stretch class or the beach volleyball game, or just chill out at one of the bars...

and enjoy the view....

And if you're bored of that, why try one of the nightly musical performances over at the enterainment complex -- the huge purpose built theatre recently hosted Miss Vietnam 2006.

Foreigners in Saigon : Update

This update is quite feeble, cause I've hardly been doing my research. Anyhow, I'll add what I've found. My running total from the last post was 45199. In the comments, Kev from Saigon Nezumi guesses around 3,000 Americans in HCMC -- until anyway says otherwise, thats what we'll stick with. I believe it was Henno who added that there are between 30-45 South Africans, so in the diplomatic nature of this whole enterprise, let's say 35. Speaking to Filipino friend Jerry, he reckons around 200, most in the entertainment industry.

Three new countries added takes the total to 48434. I want to now take into account a variable, which in turn means the accuracy will decrease somewhat, hopefully not spiralling into a shambolic waste of everybody's time. I'm happy with 35,000 for the Koreans, beacuse the embassy said that was estimated. Other figures used in the first post were only souls registered with their embassies, but it's hard to judge exactly what % of what countries may have more strays etc. Some think it's close to 50% of foreigners who don't register with their embassies. I'm gonna take a figure of 40%, to be conservative, excluding the figure for the Koreans. So, ready?

48,434 (running total) - 35,000 (the Koreans) = 13,434
40% of 13,434 = 5374 (estimated number of unregistered souls)
13,434 + 5374 = 18,808 (TFW's new estimate of non-Korean foreigners)
18,808 + 35,000 (the Koreans) = 53,808

So, my new running total is 53,808.

Still seems to be a shy total. More work required.

Dalat

Twice I got up to turn off the air con in Dalat, then realised there wasn't any. How I laughed at locals in their hats and gloves. A few hours later, they were laughing at me staggering back to the hotel in my T-shirt to retrieve my wolly jumper.

Dalat has some wonderful scenery. Truc Lam Pagoda for example:

Which overlooks Tuyen Lam Lake like this:

And from ground level it looks good too:

If you take a drive out of town and over the hills you're likely to see something like this:

Far from home.

Out here, everybody's producing coffee!

A couple of impressive waterfalls exist in the area such as Elephant:

And Pongeur:

And not such impressive farming methods:

There's also the vegetable farming around town:

Finally, was there really a need for this sign, considering that 0.02 Km is 20 meters, and the entrance is the pink castle turrets in the background? I think an arrow would have sufficed rather than the actual distance.....

Annoying Conversations

Tourist: "So how long are you here for?"
Jon: "Well actually I live in Saigon".
Tourist: (thinking - Yeah right, you mean you've been backpacking and decided to stay there for a couple of months) "Really! Wow. You must miss home. When are you going back?".
Jon: "Errr, well I plan to stay in Vietnam actually. I got married 2 months ago".
Tourist: "Oh, so your wife likes it here too?".
Jon: "Actually my wife is Vietnamese".
Pause
Tourist: (thinking - Well......he's quite young so I suppose it could be genuine) "Oh, congratulations!".
Jon: "Thanks".
Tourist: (thinking - You must be a useless git if you have to come to Vietnam to work) "So what do you do here?"
Jon: "I'm a teacher".
Tourist: "Ahh, English?".
Jon: "Yes".
Tourist: "International school?".
Jon: "Um, well, no. It's a Korean School".
Tourist: (thinking - What kind of two-bit outfit is that!) "Really, all Korean kids? In HCMC? Wow".
Jon: "Yeah. I teach them English, Science, Social and Math".
Tourist: "So you're qualified to do that obviously....".
Jon: "Um, well I have a one month TEFL cert".
Tourist: (thinking - I knew it!) "No B Ed?"
Jon (sighing): "No. I just kind of jumped in at the deep end three years ago when I went to Korea. I know what I'm doing in a classroom, don't worry."
Tourist (thinking - not qualified! how unprofessional): "Hmm. So where's your wife now?"
Jon: "She's in HCMC working".
Tourist (thinking - he just went on holiday without her!)
Jon: "Actually we have school holidays now, I'm working part time for a travel guide website....."
Tourist: (thinking - this guy is a pathological liar!). "Oh, that's nice".

And on, and on, and on.

Mui Ne

My preconceptions were all wrong. So wrong. I thought it'd be smaller. I thought it'd be full of jovial red faced expats smoking cigars and playing tennis, mixed up with odd backpacker who got lost on the way down from Nha Trang. I thought it'd all be quaint little bungalows on the beach, tropical breeze blowing of an evening. Whilst partly true, here's what else I discovered.

Mui Ne should be renamed 'Mui Netski'. It's not that I dislike the Russians, their terrible dress sense, bad driving and stern features, it's just that I've never seen so many before. I failed to take pictures of the signs written in Russian -- they litter the travel agencies and high-end resorts. To be fair, take any group of tourists who don't go abroad very often and bring thier obnoxious but acceptable in their native countries behaviour with them, and it'll grate when you have such a totally different frame of mind.

Mui Ne has a very nice stretch of beach, now cluttered with fancy bungalow resorts. Here was my favourite out of the 30 or so I went in to for Travelfish, Terracotta.

Past the resorts Mui Neski looks like this:

Now, Mui Neski is 'one of the windiest places in Asia', hence a large number of people kite surfing. Forget the tropical breezes, try tropical gale. Here, looking back across the tourist area, you can spot the vast number of kites with humans leashed to them.

This is more the Mui Ne I had in my head:

On my way to the infamous sand dunes I found this sandy street. I don't want to harp on about it, just take a look and make your own mind up.

On the way, these guys wanted me to take a picture of them, so I did. They were fascinated with my brace.

Without doubt, Mui Ne has the largest number of fishing boats you're ever likely to see. Can you guess the highest employing industry in this small town? No.....it's not xe om driver.

Finally, I made it to the sand dunes only to be accosted by young scallywags with rubber mats demanding I slide down aforementioned dunes and have some damn fun doing it too. Chatting with the urchins, I find out they don't go to school. I ask why, they say no money. I have to wonder, is it no money, or make money? My wife agrees. Here is one of the anklebiters on his lookout.

Now to my motorbike. It was called the 'Rooney', bless it, after the famous Manchester United footballer.

Now that's all well and good, but I'm not sure about this one, because the name could be connected to something entirely different. Presenting the 'Pooney'-- who wouldn't want to ride one (of these motorbikes).