Ringing in the Rain

As we drove to Hoi An we soon realised that it was very much still rainy season, a full month and a half after it usually ends. It was quite funny driving past all the scooters and motorbikes being ridden totally covered in cheap plastic Macs not seen since the temporary stand was still being used at Celtic park. It was just before lunch when we got to the Green Field hotel but since it was so wet we decided to catch up with the sleep we missed on the train.


As Joanne mentioned in the last blogger entry this is our third tour of Nam and we last came to Hoi An almost three years ago. One of the main reasons for coming here apart from it being a beautiful World Heritage town is for its thousands of small family run tailors & dressmakers who will knock you up made to measure clothes in one day for a fraction of the price back home. One of the hazards of so many competing small companies is that it’s difficult to walk down the street without being harassed by some over zealous teenager trying to get you to her mother or aunt’s shop. Joanne decided to wait until the following day before going to get her clothes made up so we decided to brave the rain and head into the old town and have a wander.

When we got to the market the front street was under about 3 or 4ft of water as the river had burst it’s banks and started edging it’s way into town. After about 20 minutes we abandoned the walk and headed to a bar for some spring rolls and a beer. We went back to the hotel and began watching the third series of 24 which we picked up in China, this was the first of the series which switched to Sky in Britain. So the next two days when not running from puddle to puddle we were holed up in our room either watching Keifier Sutherland run from one disaster to the next or catching news updates on Roy Keane’s move to Celtic.


Next day Joanne returned to the same dressmaker she went to three years ago and blew a big part of her Christmas money on three skirts, two blouses, a pair of trousers and a Chinese style dress. The girls in the Nhi Trung dressmakers remembered Joanne and where very glad to see her again but I’m sure they were just glad to see her money. It still hadn’t stopped raining so it was another day of avoiding puddles and far fetched storylines. We spent a bit of time in a bar which had free internet for my laptop and really nice spring rolls, they also had a Christmas tree made from Heineken bottles.

We decided to go by bus for the next leg of our trip and managed to get two tickets for the 512km journey to Nha Trang for $13 which didn’t seem too bad at the time. The rain hadn’t stopped once since we arrived in Hoi An and we don’t have too many photos from this visit, but if you click here you can look at some of the photos from our previous visit. The bus journey to Nha Trang should take 12 hours but I had a feeling with the weather that it might take a bit longer and it all seemed to be going quite well until about 2:30 in the morning. After driving without any problems for 6 hours we suddenly stopped and were part of a huge convoy of very stationary vehicles.

Well we sat in the same place for a good four hours and not once did anyone think to tell us what was happening up ahead and when any of the westerners asked we just got a nervous laugh back and a soft shrug from the driver. We moved meters rather than kilometres in the next few hours. After another few hours some of the passengers got off and headed to a small café up the road which was having an extremely profitable day with hundreds of buses and trucks stopped on it’s doorstop. The local kids also noticed an opportunity and were round all the buses with small baskets filled with drinks and snacks hoping to make a tidy sum out of the gridlocked travellers.

I decided to go for a walk and headed down the hill towards the front of queue, after about 10 minutes down the hill I noticed in the distance that the convoy had started moving again and had to run back up the hill and get on the bus. I managed to get back on the bus but quite a few passengers were still in the café, the bus didn’t want to lose it’s place in the queue so it headed off without half a dozen of them. An argument then broke out between quite a few of the passengers when a stroppy woman told the driver to keep driving as it was their own fault for leaving the bus, we stopped after driving about five minutes and all the stragglers managed to get back on the bus. The journey could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t for a good crowd of passengers sitting around us, this made the long stops slightly more bearable.

We eventually arrived in Nha Trang at 3.30am on the Sunday morning, 32 hours after leaving Hoi An. The bus pulled up at the Khan Duy hotel and we managed to get a decent room for the next few days. Next morning when we awoke it was still raining, so once again it was on with the cagoules and we spent the next few hours dashing from one café to the next café checking weather report son the net. Later in the afternoon the rain stopped for a few hours so we walked along the beach watching the massive crashing waves smash upon the shore. The water was a murky brown colour and flotsam was strewn across the promenade and what we could see of the beach.


We spent 5 nights in Nha Trang in April 2003 and had a great time, but one of the main reasons we wanted to come back was due to the work being done by Crazy Kim’s Bar. We only found out on the last night of our previous trip that most of the proceeds from the bar goes to helping the local street kids and to the promotion of measures to rid Nha Trang of paedophiles. The bar also asks for English speaking volunteers in the morning to help the street kids with their lessons. If the kids go to the class they also get a lunch which might be the only meal they get some days.

That night before we headed to Crazy Kim’s we went to back to our favourite restaurant in Vietnam, the Cyclo Café On D Trang Quang Khai. The place hadn’t changed much and the food was still brilliant, we ate here most nights on our first visit and every night this time. Their specialities are pork in a clay hot pot and barbeque beef grilled at your table, but to be honest everything we have tried in this place has been brilliant. In Crazy Kim’s we sat at the bar and we got talking to Neeyun and Duyen as we managed to get a few cocktails before happy hour came to an end. Neeyun spent most of the night talking to us and didn’t seem to do much work, she kept asking us questions about Scotland and why men wear kilts and what happens at Hogmanay.


There was a big Christmas party being organised for the kids on the 22nd and unfortunately we were going to miss this as were heading straight to Saigon as the weather didn’t look as if it was going to improve much. The bar was selling presents for the kids, so we bought one for a for a girl and boy which were wrapped and put alongside the already huge pile. We also bought some raffle tickets, but as we weren’t going to be in town we put the girls behind the bar name’s on the tickets. The bar also had a desk with information on all the work done at the morning classes and on trying to educate the locals about the dangers of paedophiles targeting the street kids in Vietnam. As well as a large wanted poster with Gary Glitter’s face there was a folder containing press cuttings of his time in South East Asia. We also signed up to help in the two classes the following morning, so we decided to head back to the hotel early so that we would be fresh for the next day.

After dropping off some laundry we headed to Crazy Kim’s, when we arrived there were only kids and one other volunteer. So at 9:30 the kids dragged us into the classroom at the back of the bar and they started handing out their jotters. The first class was for the younger kids and had about 14 kids ranging in age between 8 and 16, after 5 minutes the teacher came in and we sat beside one or two of the kids as they started working on some exercises from the books and blackboard. The young kid Phuock about 11 or 12 sitting next to me was very good at writing English and copying from the board but wasn’t great at stringing too many words together, but I guess that’s why we there to help them out.

After an hour the kids packed up and another group came in, this group had kids up to twenty years old but luckily quite a few more volunteers came for the second class. There were actually more volunteers than kids in this class and the next hour went in quickly with the kids each taking turns of writing on the black board and answering questions from the teacher. Quite a few of the kids had noticed my Celtic top and were asking me questions about Roy Keane and Gordon Strachan, almost everywhere you go in Vietnam you will see someone watching Premiership games and the kids all have fake strips… I’ve even seen a few Celtic one’s for sale in Nha Trang. The young boys were definitely more interested in talking about football than finer points of English grammar which was fine by me as you can tell if you read much of my blogger.

After the class the kids go back to their full time jobs of harassing tourist to buy their postcards, some of the volunteers never made it out the class as they were swarmed by manic kids when they showed more than the slightest interest in the postcards. Even though it was only a few hours it did feel great helping the kids and we would urge anybody who travel in this area to pop in and maybe help for a few hours. Check out the website for more information on all the good work done at Crazy Kim’s.

That night after dinner at the Cyclo we headed back to Crazy Kim’s and got chatting to the girls again, as well as all the good work done by the bar they also play some good music and have quite a nice place. Later on we headed to the Sailing Club on the beach which we went to for a few drunken nights out on our last visit. The Sailing Club is probably Nha Trang’s busiest bar and usually has people up dancing from 10 onwards, the place had a lick of paint since our last visit and was looking quite swish in the evening rain. We bumped into a few girls who had also volunteered at the school in the morning and also Lance from California who we had met in the internet café the day before.


We got talking to loads of people at the sailing club and had a really good night and when the lights came up for the end of the night we decided to try and find another bar with Lance and a couple from Greenland and Iceland. We had been tipped off that the Why Not? Bar opened later so we wandered about for a bit before finding it. When we got into the bar an Australian guy Lance had been trying to shake off found us and was being a bit of a pain, and was been quite racist to the guy from Greenland. Joanne stepped in kept the guy talking whilst I went with the couple to the other side of the bar and had a good laugh talking about Glasgow where they lived for awhile and about Henrik Larsson who they had named their son after. The only problem now is that after a few weeks I can’t remember their names, I will really need to start writing things down when I get back from bars.


When the bar closed we headed off with Lance and ended up talking to him under the awning of a shop trying to shelter from the now torrential rain. On first impressions Lance looks like your typical Californian surfer with more brawn than brain, but he’s actually a teacher and knew his stuff about America politics and was interested in other cultures and was a privilege to meet. We said our good byes as the morning light started to appear and we had a quick look at the market setting up for the morning rush. We eventually made it back to the hotel for 6:30 am and we had still to pack out bags as we were due to book out at 12.

We woke at 11:30 and quickly showered and packed our bags and just about managed to get out the room in time, I’m not sure how we managed it but we did. After catching some lunch with the rain still hammering down we headed further into Nha Trang to return to another place we went to on our previous visit. Long Thanh is an internationally known photographer who won many prestigious photographic awards and has been photographing the people of Nha Trang and the surrounding areas for the last thirty years. His Black & White photos really capture the spirit & kindness of the local people and we could easily have spent thousands of pounds on his work, we restricted ourselves to one print to go alongside the one we bought on our previous visit. This took us quite a while to choose as there was so many great photos in his studio, but we went for one that had stuck in my mind from the last visit. The last time Long Thanh also gave us some great tips for where to go and take some great photos and when to catch the best light, which gave us some of our favourite photos from Vietnam.

That afternoon we had also agreed to meet Duyen one of the girls from Crazy Kim’s bar for a coffee to help her with her English before she started work that night. We learnt that she went to University every day for four hours and then worked in the bar at night to pay for her English lessons which was very expensive for the locals. We found it quite difficult at first to help as she was quite shy although she seemed glad that we had agreed to meet her and soon sat chatting to us. After our final meal in the Cyclo we headed back to the hotel so we could catch the overnight bus to Saigon and unlike the last time we had no problems and arrived at the pre-arranged time without any hitches.