At the hotel we spent a few hours cringing at the karaoke music blaring from somewhere outside, and trying to snooze to give us energy required to go on an ablibing exploration of the town. Here is the view out our window:
Dong Hoi is a town in central Vietnam, and the closest big city to the former Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), where Vietnam was semi-formally split in half at some stage during the war. 
As a result there are some stark reminders of the war with an old fighter plane and ruins of an old church that suffered from a bombing campaign that potmarked much of the country.
Two interesting city gates have been restored after the war, and a statue has been built that depicts an old lady rowing North Vietnamese troops off to battle. 
In Vietnam so far we have only been to very touristy places, meaning that eating out had not been a problem as most of the menus have been in English, with prices. Dong Hoi is not that popular with tourists and we decided to dine with the locals, where managing to get some vegetarian dishes proved a bit difficult - however persistence paid off and we got a yummy lunch at a good price and we were farewelled with smiles, even though we had been extremely difficult customers. In fact at the first restaurant we tried, they refused to serve us, apparently because they were scared of the effort involved in serving the foreigners - though we can't really blame them as our Vietnamese skills are terrible!We spent the rest of the day figuring out how on earth we were going to leave Dong Hoi. A trip to the bus station was only semi-successful as we think we got some information, but there was no one at the ticket office and we were getting information from a man who seemed more interested in finding out how old we were and how much our camera cost us!! After a few unsuccessful stops at cafes for help with tickets we ended up at the end of the street where we were dumped this morning, and managed to find out from some men drinking beer on the corner that we should be on that same corner at 5am tomorrow morning to wave down a bus! This is the closest to confirmed information we could find, so we'll just have to see what happens when we turn up tomorrow morning. In this part of Vietnam there is limited English spoken with the main phrases that can be spoken being "you want motorbike", "you want tour", and "come look at my hotel, very cheap" - so we were very grateful to the man who could help us!
In the evening we went to the beach for a wander, and felt like we had been transported back to Otaki beach back in NZ because of the long and seemingly never-ending beach, the sand dunes and the murky waves. We didn't stay long as we noticed so many needles around (drugs are a big problem here), and headed off to walk some red clay alleyways behind our hotel. Along the paths we were greeted by the residents, who probably don't see many foreign tourists, with cheerful "hellos".
The walk was wonderful as we strolled through the neighbourhood past lovely houses and looped around to the river front where the fishing fleets are docked and small, round, weaved boats are kept for the night.We went to the only open restaurant for dinner, where the waiter kept inviting Liv into the kitchen to look at vegetables! We ended up with a lot of different, but delicious dishes, including a plate of raw green chillies and spring onion - interesting!!
Back at the hotel we packed and had an early night - dreading the sound of the alarm that will go off at 4am!
Adlibing circles around Dong Hoi.
No comments:
Post a Comment