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Day Sixteen, Monkey Island.
Oh god it's early. I can barely move, yet somehow, I drag my ancient carcass out of bed and into some clothes. I'm really unhappy right now. My funk lasts through breakfast, and on while we collect the rest of our crowd. A note, not everyone that's part of our group is staying at the hotel. Some of the gang actually live here in Nha Trang. So, every time we want to go somewhere we have to go collect that part of our group.
This time we end up at a boat terminal that's on the river, a few mile away from the coast. We pile onto this little tourist boat, (say about thirty feet long, capable of carrying about 20 people, we filled it to about half it's capacity), and launched forth. I perched myself on the bow, and for the first time since the trip began, felt myself starting to relax. The river was broad and slow, say about two or three miles across. The trip took about thirty minutes. We landed a small concrete jetty and headed down a small well maintained dirt road.
You know all those little plants that you can buy at souvenir and flower shops, well this is where they're born. They had a farm here with hundreds of little pots, each with some plant or another growing out of it. In addition, they had a pretty little herbarium, with hundreds of different little plants. Of particular note are the parasite plants. These plants take root in, and grow out of the sides of trees. We spent sometime looking around and then headed back to the boat.
Our next stop was Monkey Island. So named for the plentiful population of relatively tame monkeys. They had only a little fear of humans, and could easily be induced to take food from your hand. They're fairly bright as well, one of our party got careless, and a monkey stole an entire bag of food from her. The monkey immediately ran off, not just to protect his/her prize from us, but also from the other monkeys. Well, I hoped he/she enjoyed the fruits of their boldness. There was a lot more on this island then just monkeys. We watched the dancing bears, got lifted by the elephant and watched the children get pony rides. All in all, it was a blast. I was pretty tired though, so eventually I found a nice quiet spot, in the shade, and rested and read. Around noon they rounded everyone up and we headed back to the boat. This boat delivered us back to our starting point. We got in our bus and headed back to Nha Trang.
After lunch we went to our friends home. There I napped until it was time for us to head for the train. This was a sleeper train as well, but it wasn't an express. It was an older model, but in some ways better. There were only four people to a compartment, thus the beds were bigger, and little more comfortable. It left Nha Trang at 5:30 in the afternoon, and arrived in Saigon at about 4:00 in the morning. This time I actually had a chance to look out the window and enjoy the view for a few hours.
Vietnam is country that's inherently beautiful, with it's rice paddies and forest covered mountains to it's bustling cities and towns. Sadly there's a lot of ugliness too. Trash is everywhere, industrial areas mix with old museums and classical buildings. Slums and rich houses are often side by side. It's a little depressing because much of the ugliness could be eliminated, if the people of Vietnam just cared a little more. For example, most Vietnamese think nothing about throwing their trash out car windows, or just onto the ground. And, in most cases, there's no one to come by later and pick it up. Oh well.... |
Date(s): June 22, 2004. Album by Steven W Dugger. 1 - 24 of 67 Total. 428 Visits. |
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