Contrasts in beach city Nha Trang
By Lonneke — February 05, 2016 06:00 am
Getting off a long busride, walking fully packed to a hotel (we can't ride the back of motorbike-taxis with five people and 9 pieces of luggage - that doesn't stop them from trying to persuade us though), I'm so grateful for my children, especially the youngest. While all the tourists walk exhausted in procession to their accommodations, shoulders down, with grumpy faces, he just skips and runs and dances while he bellows: 'witch doctooooooor!' (a new song of the Dutch band De Staat that he immediately loved) and I can just focus on him instead of the sweat and the weight of the backpack.
Nha Trang is a big, touristy city, by the beach. It's crowded with Russians, all advertisement can be read in Russian and there are lots of things they assume tourists like, like braiding your hair and flyering for discounts, happy hour and such things. On the upside: we were quite fed up with ricenoodlesoup or dishes with inkfish, so we dined at the Dutch snackbar once and a few times at an Indian restaurant. Dear Vishnu, what a treat that was, munching on naan, tika masala sauce and baingan once more. This is one thing I never thought I'd experience in my life: being so happy to order Indian food and while eating it, having an actual opinion about the quality of this particular dish. There you have it, one of the pleasurable side effects of travelling.
As accustomed to the tourists as they tried to be, the Vietnamese still couldn't help being themselves, thankfully. Although, not every custom you learn firsthands about is enjoyable. It is a known phenomenon that Asians admire my love's physique, lovingly stroking his big, hairy knees or gazing adoringly at his abundance of facial hair. These men-crushes are common. My love doesn't let it faze him, even when he was squatting, taking a picture of some boats and felt someone grabbing his behind, full on, with both hands. He thought it was one of our sons, but when the grope didn't dwindle, he looked back and faced a babbling middle aged man. You have to be willing to immerse yourself in a different culture, people, and my man is very good at respectfully doing so. Sometimes though, the women here take this amicable approach to the next level, as our boys found out the hard way. Obviously most people still assume the children are girls (although they usually suspect the oldest one is a boy). When they learn about their boyhood, and are done laughing hysterically about it, they like to check for themselves through a simple but effective crotch-grab. So far, we've not been able to prevent this from happening; honestly, who sees this coming? However, it seems as though they're not traumatized by it, yet.
Just sitting on the boulevard you have a good time watching the traffic. You see motorbikes with chairs piled up three meters above the driver, who's nonchalantly holding them straight with one hand, or a large basket of sandwiches balancing on the driver's head, giant pigs wrapped up in wickerwork, large refrigirators, dozens of water-filled plastic bags with goldfish or humongous blocks of ice. If you can imagine it, someone in this country has transported it on their motorbikes. It's like it's mandatory for them to go to circusschool, before being allowed to buy a motorbike. The women going through the garbage on the streets, picking paper or plastics from it, are the queens of the accumulation. Plus, as a bonus, they're saving the environment, in an environment that doesn't particularly seems to care, so I bow my head to them for more than one reason. One of the funniest things we saw on the road was a fragile, elderly woman carrying a toilet, including the water closet - and not a new one, judging from the looks of it, on the back of her rusty old bicycle, cycling a crazy-busy roundabout.
