Our bus was to pick us up at 8:00am on front of our guesthouse. We had
breakfast at the guesthouse, fruit and a banh khaoi for me, a baguette
full of eggs and bacon for robert. Banh khaoi is supposed to be a
signature dish of hue, so i wanted to get it before we left. It is
basically a deep fried crepe filled with shrimp, pork, bean sprouts
and mushrooms. It was too greasy for my taste, but okay otherwise. Not
something i will miss in the south. A bus organizer met us at 8 and
ushered us to wait around the corner with several other westerners
waiting for the same bus. We enjoyed the "cell phone" she carried in
the crook of her arm, which was a desktop sized phone with a giant
antenna.
Finally the giant yellow bus appeared and robert and i did out seat
securing trick. Robert stows the bags as i beeline for good seats. It
worked like a charm, two seats, third row. Now we just had to pick up
everybody else - taking the bus on several laps around the city for
about an hour! What a terrible system. It's not so hard to walk to the
center of town, why not make everyone meet there? Oh - because some
people can't carry their own luggage. Gah! One couple getting on the
bus wanted to pose for a picture before getting on the bus, but they
were rushed onto the bus and then they weren't allowed to stow their
massive luggage under the bus as punishment for delaying us. Pretty
funny - don't piss off the bus driver.
The road was fine enough, full of traffic, being resurfaced in places
and the bus took it really slow up the hills, reminiscent of the snake
driving in Thailand. One cool part of the road was the 6280 meter
tunnel through a mountain, soon after which we stopped at the nicest
road side stop you have ever seen. The driver was hungry so we stopped
for thirty minutes for him to slurp a giant, beautiful bowl of pho. I
got some snacks: dried jackfruit chips that protect against glucoza
according to the bag and some Texas grilled beef flavored wheat puff
chips. Yum! We marveled that such a nice place didn't take advantage
of it's hillside perch to offer views of the valley below. Only the
bathrooms had a view of the valley!
Arriving in Danang
Amusingly, we only were about ten minutes from our drop off when we
stopped for the snack break. We knew that Danang wasn't a popular
destination, but surely at least one other westerner would be getting
off here. Nope. We were the only ones. I don't know if there was a
second stop in Danang and we just got off too early or not though
because we were a good hike from the city center. Maybe the other
westerners just knew better than to get off in the middle of nowhere.
Can't be sure. Once we were on the sidewalk with our bags, we
attracted a crew of friends. I started ignoring them, but one of them
seemed to be offering a map, which could be handy. I really stopped
ignoring her when she pointed us out on the map! This is usually are
biggest challenge in a new city; now we had a map and our location on
that map. Robert took care of the rest by asking where xx hotel was.
They pointed it out and we thanked them and walked off. The most
helpful sidewalk friends ever (Im sure they also would have offered to
take us to our destination, but we didn't stick around to find out!).
We were in downtown Da Nang or Danang, however you prefer to write it,
and it was strikingly similar in feel to a "downtown" from the states.
Tall buildings, crowded streets, people in business suits walking to
lunch or meeting; it seemed very business-y. We used the wonderfully
well-marked addresses, each on a standardized blue license plate, to
find the first hotel option. Robert nixed this one straight off as
being below snuff. Danang is supposed to have a good midrange hotel
scene, but not many budget hotels worth even their budget price.
Robert thought we wouldn't be happy with how much they wanted for the
room, given how shabby its exterior looked. On to the next one - a
hole between buildings! I guess it wasn't up to snuff either and is
being redone. A third, fine enough, but let's look one more place. Ok,
ok, please let's take this one! My bag is weighing me down. $13
dollars, single bed that more than accommodated us - how fat do they
expect you to be?! Everything here is "Asian-sized" except for the
beds! A quick call to Moo-ers, just to remind me that I have friends
(besides the trusty Robot), and off to find lunch.
Pre-lunch and Lunch
After several disappointments, we managed to locate a place called
Bread of Life. You might immediately realize that it was a religious
bakery, but we somehow missed the clue and were quite surprised to
find ourselves in a nest of missionaries! We had already sat down and
gotten menus and we were so hungry, I convinced Robert to give them a
chance - just so we could eat something to power us through our search
for real food. From the inset in the menu, we learned that their main
goal was improving the lives of deaf Vietnamese, definitely a laudable
goal, but at what cost did the sign language education come? How many
church services earned you knowledge of the alphabet? I'm currently
reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which has only
increased my negative feelings towards those out to "save" the world.
That being said, the banana bread was amazing; soft, moist
wonderfulness. The lemington (an australian chocolate and coconut
treat, we were told) never came, but we were more than sated by the
giant banana bread loaf we were served, and only for 22,000d ($1.10
usd)! I do enjoy watching signed conversations though, so it was a
treat that most of the staff was deaf. We were sent a hearing
waitress, so trouble there, but somehow I ended up with cold chocolate
milk instead of hot chocolate. Alas, I might have done better miming
to a deaf waitress!
Next we needed some real food. Found a place in the book, but we were
shoo-ed away because it was closed. Before trekking miles south to
another book-marked spot, we poked our heads into a small soup shop.
Asking for a menu garnered pointing at a bunch of Vietnamese on a
white board, no help. Maybe she could tell we were floundering, she
pointed to a dish for us and quickly brought us chicken soup. Fine by
us. It was tasty and good cuts of meat to boot. Sometimes the meat has
just been hacked to pieces with a cleaver with little regard for
edible portions, landing bones and all sorts of unnamable things in
your bowl, never a pleasure for a vegetarian by heart! We also tried
the long tan colored stick things that are occasionally served with
soup. Somehow I knew they were pork cracklin', because I know
everything perhaps, but they turned out to be deep fried bread! Tasty
even though I'm not sure when they had been deep fried. As we were
finishing, a whole passel of westerners, on their second pass, decided
to give this place a try. They only gave it a chance because we seemed
satisfied with our meal. We brought them as up to speed as we were and
let them enjoy their fried bread in peace. ("we are having the chicken
soup, it's tasty, those are fried bread, try them - they are tasty
too, soup costs 25,000d, take care!")
Walking, beer and sleeping
Next we took a monumental stroll. Halfway through we were ready to be
home, but alas, we were very far from home! It was enjoyable getting
to see the city, but the sidewalk suffered from the common problem of
having been completely repurposed for this or that, making it
impossible to walk upon. Motorbike repairs, street food, construction,
etc. The most amusing interaction we had was in Robert's quest for a
cold beer. One woman tried to charge him 12,000 for just a can, too
much. A second woman only had warm beers, but he was a persistent
bugger and eventually conveyed his question. The woman started shaking
herself and grabbing her shoulders, chattering her teeth. Finally we
realized she was miming "cold." She gleefully kept at it until we
realized what she already knew we wanted. Yes, yes a -brrr- one! She
brought us two and they were brrr!
At one point I re-discovered there is a food section in the crappiest
guidebook printed (lonely planet), I don't care how much market share
they have, they are still crappy! The food words are in a completely
different section from the other phrases, leading me to forget that it
existed at all! Grrr. But now we have a little guidance, not excellent
guidance that you would get from a Rough Guides book, but some. We
used that new found guidance to go to a bar, marked in the book, with
English menus and English speaking staff and anyways, we know the word
for beer (bia).
We sat drinking for quite a while, especially loathe to leave once the
rain started in earnest. I got some pics of the motorbikes in ponchos
though! Then we scurried towards home. We made a fatal mistake though,
being enticed to stop for a bite to eat at a vegetarian place! Don't
get me wrong, the food was great: bun (round rice noodle) soup. We
avoided the beef soup, perplexed. Once we got our food though, we
figured they probably meant feet not beef (feet==fake beef) because we
had a hearty helping of tasty mock-meat in ours. Dinner came with a
hot pot of tea, which is standard we have started to notice. Instead
of water, there is always lukewarm to hot tea, wether you order it or
not. (free though) It was a mistake because after we scurried home
through the rain, our bellies were just full enough to cause us to not
want to eat again until too late to venture out and expect to find
food easily. We went to sleep not so full and regretting eating so
early and so lightly. We did get to see the first two episodes of
Boardwalk Empire, which is actually a good HBO series, so that was a
plus in the tv column.
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