Tour day in Nha Trang

Nha Trang is really a beach town, so the tours here are really scrambling to find something interesting.  I have to hand it to Ha though, she has this set up pretty good.  We started off this morning with a visit to Ponagar temple and some history of the Vietnamese in this region.  There are certainly some big differences between here and the north of the country.  The females play a much more influencal role here. 

Ponagar temple

After we left the temple, we hiked down a few back alleys, and soon hooked up with a fisherman, who had converted a boat into a tourist boat.  We basically went through his yard to the boat, past a few workers that had dry docked a boat between two houses and were doing a re-build.  On the boat, we cruised through the harbour and learned about the different boats.  The large woman boats did all the fishing, the smaller man boats ferried fuel and supplies.

Fishing Boats

 We took the boat up the river, there was surprisingly little traffic on the water.  I guess the serious fishing is in the ocean.  We made one stop at a little set up that a local has started, just a rest spot where they serve up some fresh coconuts.  These are quite different than those we've had in the Caribbean or Costa Rica, these ones were good.  we carried on up the river some more, passing under what they call the Monkey bridge, which is a rickity looking structure that is wiped out every rainy season and rebuilt every year.

We ended the boat trip at an ancient rural residence.  The house was built sometime in the 17th century, and compared to a city house, it was very spacious, separate entrances for men, women, and the head of the house.  As always, the center of the house had a shrine, with pictures of ancestors.  The yard was gorgeous, with fruit trees, flowers, birds, and butterflies all over.

The car was waiting for us here, on the drive back to town we got out once and walked a couple more alleys to a small scale weaving operation.  It was very interesting to see these two women creating a mat with this ancient looking weaving device.  Eileen had a try at feeding in the next strand.  We bought a couple of placemats from them for $3.

Our lunch stops on these tours are all similar, a nice little restaurant where they have a set menu.  Todays was a little crazy for volume, there is no way that the two of us were going to eat all this, but we didn't end up leaving too much behind.  That was it for the tour, we were back at the hotel by early afternoon.  We saw that there were empty beach chairs, so we headed right down there.  After about an hour and a half it clouded over, our first stint on the beach and our first clouds, bad timing.  Oh well, finished my nap on the bed and then we went down to the pool bar for drinks and a look at the supper setup.  Tonight is the Saturday BBQ buffet.  We had a couple of drinks and then moved to the other side of the glass for supper.  We paid the exorbidant price of 350,000 VND (17.50) which included a beer, glass of wine, or shot of vodka, for the buffet.  First time I've seen that drink offering combination.  You name a seafood, and it was probably available.  For appitizers, I has clams, scallops, fresh oysters, smoked salmon, shrimp, a jellyfish salad, and probably some I can't remember.  We followed with a seafood soup, then went to the bbq selection, where you put whatever you wanted cooked on a plate and then the cooked it.  Think lobster, prawns, more clams, scallops, oysters, beef, and other meats that I did not try.  Throughout the meal, they had live entertainment, an acoustic guitar with a couple of singers doing very familiar music and doing it well.  For desert I had some flambaed banana and pineapple.  Eileen had some baked deserts. Awesome meal.....
We went for a late night walk after we finally finished.  They really have the streets lit up here for New Years.  A nice walk along the big walkway that is between the main drag and the beach.  Tomorrow is another relax day for us.  We had so much fun with the last cooking class that we booked another one for tomorrow.  It's something like $24, and we'll be well fed when it's over.