Month: March 2015

Got another motorbike for $4 and headed to Alba Hot Springs. These are located in Thahn Tan, 20km or so outside Hue – and made an interesting distraction for the day.

The road down there is particularly nice, and un-congested by Vietnamese standards.

When you get there, you can put your feet up and soak in amongst the hot water. There some cool springs and some hot springs – 5 pools in all in the complex I visited.

I jumped from the cold to the hot, this lasted about 40 mins. They recommend you don’t do any more than 45. I managed to stay in for stints of 10 minutes max.

I had an ice-cream, took a walk around the complex. There was a little park at the perimeter with pigs and deer – Vietnamese pot bellied pigs.

There are many other things to do in the park and apparently, the Vietnamese tourist board is trying to make it more attractive to tourists by reducing the prices.

It was 100,000 VND when I went or 170,000 if you wanted to pay for the luxury enclosure.

Thuan An Beach

The rest of the day, I spent looking around the beach. This was less spectacular, but I had some juice in the tank. I took this picture of a view over the bay.

Not actually the bay, but the view back – it’s a series of lagoons formed by the fisher people using the sand and the water from the rivers flowing toward the sea to create lagoons to farm fish and crustaceans.

Bus to Hanoi

Tonight I’m catching the bus to Hanoi, where I will renew my VISA and get out pronto.

Bus departs at 9.30pm so I’ve got some time to hang around.

Will have dinner, then go, I guess. My kidney is still dodgy. Still drinking plenty of water.

Related articles

• Vietnam Visa Process
• ABC’s of Travel

Sunny by day

Sunny by night

Spent 21 hours or so on the bus. Next to a crazy woman as it happens. She was about 60 odd – but mentally, like a puppy.

I offered her some of my drink, which she pinched off me and drank. So I offered her another one. And she drank that.

She then proceeded to start depositing money in my seat-back wallet which added up to a few dollars. No particular reason, just better there, I guess.

As we got going, she kept looking into my eyes, she was staring over at me and trying to play with the hairs on my arms muttering strange inanities, with wide eyes and an expectation that it was making some sense to me.

Sometimes, when I said the words back to her, this was very funny. Hilarious in fact.

I wondered what she was actually saying, because she seemed to make most other people laugh, the driver and the service station staff. And whether we would find her funny in England.

Not sure that we would.

So I soaked up some of this novel humor.

Collision

As we were coming out of Ho Chi Minh, the bus driver had a collision. Someone pulled out on him and he moved into the side of another vehicle.

After a while, this vehicle caught us up, and the two parties had a debacle on the side of the road. The crazy lady slept through it, but woke up shortly after and started ranting and raving and singing songs.

Warning

When we stopped for dinner, one of the other bus riders told me it would be better to stay away from her as she probably wanted to ‘turn me over’ as I believe the phrase is.

I said I thought she was crazy and a little funny, but I wasn’t intending on doing anything ‘with’ her. He said he thought that would be a good idea and that Vietnam was mostly ‘safe’, but you could still need to be careful.

 

Yesterday, took a cheap motorbike (for $2), and made a tour of the city.

Picked the bike up for cheap very close to my hotel, the Sunny Hotel, Hue. Didn’t seem like not worth doing for that price.

Had a little ride around, over to the island, around the citadel. Then out of the city.

Not a lot to impress really.

Motorbikes are simple too stressful in SE Asian cities.

It’s only a numbers game until someone smashes into the side of you and knocks you off.

My advice is stay off them. They’re a death trap. If you’re going any distance, take the bus. You’ll see just as much of the country with 1/2 the stress.