Spice markets, Nha Trang

Today is our last here and we want to see some of the local way of life. We take another bike out to the Bao Dai Villas which has a breakfast restaurant and nice views over the sea. Then we head for the Dam Market, the local shopping zone where it seems you can pick up pretty much anything you want – including a life-threatening illness. We are lucky enough to collect a guide – a little woman who is hoping we’ll buy some 70′s suits from her clothing shop and in return is prepared to show us around the market and legitimise taking plenty of photos of the denizens of it. The market is full of rice, beans, baskets, chillis, tomatoes, all kinds of vegetables, plastic bowls and buckets, chickens and ducks (tied down, laid on the floor and hyper-ventilating in the heat), meat and fish in all guises, tea, coffee and fruit. The chickens and ducks are used, rather cruelly, as life support machines for their own meat – cheaper than refrigeration but it wouldn’t generally meet with the approval of animal rights activists.
After we’ve escaped buying one of those nice suits, we take the road north again and detour to the Chong Peninsular. It is quite fun to see a more rural life as we go by. The motorbike is definitely the best way of seeing Nha Trang. Finally we end up on the beach at the Louisiana Cafe where an hour’s kip comes in handy especially since afterwards I am persuaded to be pummelled almost to death by an old crone who claims to be a masseur. Pam gets a pedicure from a similar woman and the whole experience is probably over-priced but still quite a laugh. No “naughty” extras this time.
Receive by email today, Pam’s sister Gillian’s first ultra-sound scan of her new baby. We’ve christened him Bernard and even though he’s only centimetres across is already clearly a baby…
We get a couple of cyclo drivers to take us to our sleeper train to Danang. This is a father and son team and we met the father last night coming home from an Ice Cream shop near the hotel. The father is 58, speaks very courteous English, has five children and says that before 1975 he was an air traffic controller for the South Vietnamese Air Force. According to the Lonely Planet, many cyclo drivers like him are denied official residency of Nha Trang and are forced to earn a tiny income from cyclo driving because they can’t get any other job. It doesn’t fully explain how this unhappy state of affairs arose but I guess they are the human “casualties” of the war. It’s a shame. Our man is wonderfully courteous in his goodbyes: he wishes us good luck on our journey ahead and best wishes and happiness to both of our families.

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