Toasty in Phan Thiet
Well it’s 12:42 an in the west coast my laptop tells me, and my new bronze slip-on watch I got today reads 3:45 pm, Saturday. It has a bull on both sides of it,hahaha. So funny!! I had contacted a couch surfer in this city which is about 5km out of Mui Ne and he offered to get me a room at the hotel he lived in if I wanted to come into town. Considering the 500% markup of ANYTHING in Mui Ne and my obvious need for oh… I don’t know, everything, I decided it best to get out of there. I hired a motorcycle driver and hung on for dear life for the 5 miles for $2.67 CDN. Awesome. Grant is from Australia and it was really amazing to get to spend a few hours with somebody that didn’t look at me like I had 2 head’s. He was also insanely helpful and toured me on foot through pretty much the whole town here. The population is about 150,000 and they get next to zero tourists here so I was quite the spectacle walking around. They love to point, and touch. My tattoo on my arm gets attention from everybody I walk by and they are not shy to run their hands across it. On our travels he took me to a supermarket where I was able to buy soap, a toothbrush, and a much needed razor before venturing into the market. Very dangerous place, that market. The stalls are so condensed you can only have one person walking down them at a time and Grant warned me to hold onto my belongings tightly to ensure I left with them. I don’t have claustrophobia but I don’t think I would have wanted to spend anymore time in there than we did – operation obtain a new pack was a success. a Medium sized bag ran me $200,000 VND or just over $12 CDN. The thing with anything you buy here is that the quality is very suspect so I just hope that it lasts the trip. I made sure to buy one just large enough to hold a good amount of items but hopefully all future buses will let me bring it in the coach with me. Fool me once…., haha. I was also able to buy 2 dresses, a long sleeve sheer top ( the sun here is devestating ) and a pair of sandals. The heat is so intense that wearing flip flops has given me a minor heat rash between my big toes! About 20 minutes after I purchased them they started falling apart. hahahaha. The attempt at branding is laughable – they say converse on the top, and something else on the bottom, and have a nike swish!
I’m staying at Grant’s place at the Hoang Kim hotel which is on the coast as you can see here. After our much needed shopping trip he went down for a siesta ( side note: everywhere here closes every day,pretty much, for nap time ) and I wandered down to the beach. Not a person in sight! I had already been walking around in the sun for about 3-4 hours and my shoulders were crisping nicely into a funny box tan from my tank and pack so I wanted to run around in my suit a bit to even it out. Found some beauuuuutiful shells. It was fun checking the insides to make sure I didn’t bring any hermit crabs home with me 
At this rate the #1 thing I’ve been packing is shells, haha.
It’s been really handy that everywhere I go has wifi, and I cant thank my parent’s enough for this netbook. As much as I would like to be running around the entire day it’s just too hot – down time is essential, especially when you are up at 5:45am every day. In the last 24 hours I have read 402 pages out of the 702 book I got yesterday morning. I cannot wait to pick up some more reading material. Also, my camera seems to be alright here… only taken a few blurry pics. I think it has to just be humidity. It’s going to cost me 4,000,000 VND if I need to buy a new one. which is $220. I’m torn – I don’t want to have shit photo’s of this trip but that it a large expense I didn’t anticipate -especially considering I had to spend a million bucks today on items that needed to be replaced. When I get into Nha Trang I’ll asses the finances and figure out what to do on that front.
Grant told me that every single bad thing that could happen to me here has already happened, with the exception of getting sick, so I am looking forward to smooth sailing going forward.
Bean out!
Categories: Vietnam
2 Comments »
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February 6th, 2010 at 1:30 am
Ahh!!! This looks so awesome!The sun and the water in the background looks so nice. I can’t wait to see your updates throughout your trip.
Motorcycle ride? I’d be scared shitless haha.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:47 am
oh dudes you just wait until I upload the video from Ho chi Minh city. This was a CAKEWALK compared to that. Good times!!
And ya the water is a gorgeous blue, approx 25 degrees.Full of shit, though. Like garbage – not feces.It’s not the cleanest country but swimming at the beach is alright because of the tide