Friday, January 08, 2010
{ 6:56 AM }
Day 3 - 28th December 2009
Our day was supposed to start early at 7 plus Vietnam time, and we did! Upon checking out, we asked the receptionist at the concierge to help us dial for HCMC Tiger Airways Call Centre to upsize our luggage and to our horror, we realised that the number given to us by the airport staff is a wrong number! To minimise our time lost, we decided to have breakfast first. Breakfast at Green Nha Trang was the best we had, with a buffet spread of beef soup noodles, fried rice, fried noodles, baguette, toast, omelette, bacons, sausages, and the list goes on and on. PS somehow started 'terrorising' one of the chefs to teach her more Vietnamese, and so Jay and I left for the business center for their computer, hoping to find out the real number to call. Somehow we found another number on Tiger Airways website, and it turned out to be a wrong one too. Like, wth? Tiger doesn't even know their own number?! Finally we gave up and decided to fax them a note for help. Well, the fax number can't be wrong too, right? Went back to the concierge and asked if they could fax it for us but the receptionist directed us to their post office instead. A SGD$2+ was charge to fax just that piece of paper. Urgh. Still worried, Jay decided to call Francis for help. AND HE DID! YAY~!
By the time the entire nightmare of the possible need to pay SGD$18 for each extra 1kg of our luggage was over, nearly half the day was gone. With a not very happy heart, we immediately started our day as planned.
First up, to the Mud Bath and Hot Spring! Initially we were told it's only $VND75k for everything, but it turned out that that price was for the public pool, whereby you will be immersed in the mud, and later the hot spring, with any tom, dick AND harry. So we took the private pool at higher price, which I can't remember now. Dressed in bikinis (swimsuit for ps), and barefooted, we finally came to this large bathtub whereby upon a turn of the tap, greenish grey mud (marine clay, I reckon) came splashing out from the pipe and into the tub. The staff then motioned for us to step in, which we did after much hesitation. It was slightly warm, much appreciated for the weather that day was rather cold for us to be wandering around in bikinis, and the texture just felt like thick liquid with minute specks of fine sand. We were wondering if we should spread the mud on our faces as well (cause we saw many others who did so) and were glad to have not done so as one of their staff came and took a groupshot of us for free. After slightly more than 15 minutes, we headed down to the recliners, covered totally in mud, for a sunbathing session to dry up the mud, after which we washed them off with the HOT SALTY water (hot spring water?) from the shower stalls located just beside the recliners. So after the mud bath, it was hot spring time! We first had the hydro-massage therapy session whereby strong jets of the spring water will be spewing out from this two stone walls and you have to manuver yourself to get the jets to hit you at the correct spot. Haha! And after that manual hydromassage session, got to another bigger tub-like pool where it was filled with the NaCl rich hot spring water in the same matter as the mud bath session. The water was HOT! I'm not really a fan of hot water bath at all, so it really took me some time to get used to the temperature of the water, partially also because it kinda cooled down after some time. PS had a great time acting Yang Gui Fei using the coconut-shell ladle to scoop the water to rinse her back. -LOL- We had wanted to try the waterfall but didn't want to wait for out turn to come. The 38 degree Celsius swimming pool wasn't attractive to us either, and so we quickly wiped dry and change back into our clothes and set off for our next destination - Po Nagar Cham Towers.
Nothing much happened at Po Nagar Cham, and it's almost impossible for me to describe how beautiful the place looked like in words. The Po Nagar Cham Towers were built between the 7th and 12th Centuries and used as Hindu worship. Pictures to be up real soon, I hope.
After bidding the magnificent Po Nagar Cham Towers goodbye, we ventured slightly down the road over to the seaside whereby countless of fishing boats were docked and spent some time under the hot sun taking pictures and just enjoying the view. However, there came a point when all of us decided that we're going to either get burnt or melted and hence we hailed another taxi and headed off for Long Song Pagoda, which is yet another place I'm unable to describe with words, especially the magnificent 24m tall white Buddha statue and the 18m long Sleeping Buddha statue built from funds donated by Thailand. I WILL DEFINITELY POST PICTURES UP ONCE I GOT THEM. Anyway, since it's a Buddhist temple, there's no need for any entrance ticket BUT if you're planning to go there, do remember that you do not have to feel obliged to fork out VND$200k (around SGD$16) to buy that stack of just 10 postcards from those self-proclaimed students of the school next to the temple(with hints of affliations), in place of the entrance fee. If the need arises, be firm and walk away. Eventually, other more 'enthusiastic' students will follow you and bring you on a 'guided' trip and at the end of the trip, you'll feel more obliged to buy the postcards from them.
After leaving Long Song Pagoda, we started making our way to our next destination - Nha Trang Cathedral on foot. After asking for directions along the way, we finally found ourselves walking up a cobblestone path that really reminds me of Medieval England time. Once again, the infrastructure of the cathedral, the tainted glass and etc were all too beautiful for me to put down in words. So, look forward to my photo-blog in near future!
After leaving the cathedral, we head down to Dam Market, which is of walking distance from the cathedral. Well, quite near. QUITE. Dam market is bigger than Ben Thanh market in my opinion, and much more spacious and airy, with an open-air section selling food, drinks, fruits, flowers, shoes, apparels and other small trinkets, and a enclosed section selling stuff like cosmetics, lingerie, bags and etc. Didn't really buy anything. PS and Jay both bought a non-authentic Roxy duffel bag each and PS and I bought a hairband each and basically that's all. I was really tight on budget, you see. Found a roadside drink stall and finally got to sit down and rest our tired feets and quench our thirst before making our way back to Green Nha Trang again on foot, which took us 45 minutes to 1 hr, where the sleeping bus from Sinh Tourist will be picking us up.
Headed back to the small eatery beside Green Nha Trang for our Pho dinner again, and PS's terrorism strike again! The drinks menu at this eatery was organised such that one who doesn't understand Vietnamese won't be able to make any head or tail out of it. So, yup... PS can't really be blamed for this massive wrong order. But it was really kick-ass funny. On the menu, there was this column of small icons of different soft drinks like coke, sprite, mirinda, twister and etc, and right beside those icon are some vietnamese words. It just so happened that right beside the coke icon was cola, and so I guessed PS assumed that those words are how the vietnamese call those soft drinks. She wanted a Sprite (while Jay and I didn't want any), and so she pointed to the words beside the sprite icon, asking the waitress how to pronounce it. It was spelt something like 'Dauh Nahn' and sounds abit like doughnut. After a while, she came bounding back to us happily, telling us that Sprite in Vietnamese is called DAUH NAHN. After a while, the drinks were served. But instead of just 1 sprite, we were served a can of sprite, one cup of coffee and one cup of soya bean milk. We frowned, thinking 'Not again?'. Knowing how futile our attempts to explain the wrong orders to them in English would be, Jay immediately offered to take the coffee. But I do not drink soya bean milk. So PS attempted to explain to the lady that she only wanted Sprite. She repeated herself again, pointing at the sprite bottle saying: Dauh Nahn! But the lady shook her head and did something to PS that got Jay and I doubled over in laughter. The lady pointed to the soya bean milk and said: This is dauh nahn, dauh nahn is soya bean milk! Then she pointed to the bottle of sprite and said: This is sprite! *using her pen and tracing the words on the bottle as she enunciated the words painfully slow as if PS didn't know how to read SPRITE* SPUUU-RIIITEEEE. Haha! Poor PS! She needs a Vietnamese aunty to teach her how to read S-P-R-I-T-E. LOL
After our funny incident at the eatery, we finally got onto the sleeping bus (they were half an hour early and the staff was really pissed off at us for being 'late') and realised that we got the second row seats this time instead of the back row. After making its rounds through different hotels, the bus finally arrived at Sinh Tourists to pick up the final batch of passengers, whereby these group of Englishmen/Americans came on board. Two were seated in right in front of PS and I, while the other two sat further behind. Not going to really get into details here, but yeah you got it. They (the English seated in front of PS) tried to pick us up by offering us some cheap red wine. I somehow felt it coming when he was mumbling to the American in front of me about 'being weird by offering them wine'. And when he suddenly turned over to me after the American mumbled something like 'you can take the chance', I immediately turned my head over and stared out of the window as if those grass fields were the most beautiful thing I've ever set my eyes on, keeping a watchful eye on his reflection in the window, looking at him opening and closing his mouth a couple of times like a goldfish with that bottle of red wine hanging from his hand. Haha! I guess he eventually got the hint that I've no wish to entertain him and he gave up on that idea. *whew!*
Later that night, PS started eavesdroppping on their conversation while she pretended to sleep and guess what? That goldfish's other friend laid down a bet of VND$900K for him to pick us up before by the time we reach HCMC. And that American in front of me said: But how are you going to do that? They're all asleep!
Good one, American! Good one!
But seriously, 900k is just SGD$69! Like, WTF?
