It's pouring rain and Louise and I are sitting in the mud pits with a twenty-five person Vietnamese family celebrating their reunion. They laugh, make small talk, and pour mud over our heads. Every time we utter something in English it's met with the roar of two-dozen Vietnamese vacationers howling in laughter. Even though we're quite sure they do not understand a word we're saying. Louise and I were expecting thick Woodstock-style mud when I read about the pits, but the consistency more closely resembles dirty dish water. No bother, it's a great way to wait out the rain and we've become honorary members of this extended family who came to Nah Trang from two hours away. The young females in the family stare at me with hungry eyes and keep touching my shoulder even though I can't properly respond to their leading questions. I think they would gladly drown Louise in the mud and steal me for themselves, but it is really impolite to snog foreigners whilst cavorting in muddy water with one's family members in the pouring rain.
***
Although it's our first day in Nah Trang and the weather is perfect, most of our group doesn't want to leave the beach. But they don't share my malignantly serious ADHD, so Louise and I hop on a motorbike and begin exploring the city. I'm driving and she's riding behind, embracing me tight, which is necessary as driving in Nah Trang is analogous to laughing in Satan's face -- truly tempting death. Like Hanoi, the coastal city is a sea of frenetic, exhaust-spewing motorbike traffic. The streets are entangled with one another and many share identical names, making map reading futile. There are no traffic lights, stop signs, traffic cops, and roundabouts are disorganized nuclei of 5-8 streets that somehow maintain order. I don't see a single accident although I've heard a rumor that ten people die a month in Hanoi alone from motorbike accidents. When Louise and I embark, I notice immediately the bike's speedometer and odometer are completely broken. I return the vehicle, to which the bike shop proprietor shrugs his shoulders asking, "so what's the problem?"
He doesn't win the battle and within twenty minutes our new bike is at Nagan Cham Towers -- a cluster of large copper towers overlooking all of Nah Trang. Like the sister temple of My Son we viewed in Hoi An, this site was built between the 7th and 12th centuries by the ancient Cham Empire. Each temple is fully preserved and Hindus and Buddhists line up to enter the buildings and kneel at the altars. Inside, elaborate shrines are decorated flowers, busts of notable monks, fruit, and golden sculptures. Visitors pray and light so much incense that the small interior altar rooms resemble aromatic saunas. In front of the temples is a hexagon of perfectly symmetrical columns where Hindus prayed while preparing for battle.
Louise and I heard there were hot springs and mud pits outside of town and were expecting long hikes culminating in natural pools deep within the forest. So you can imagine our surprise when the springs are actually a large, expensive, artificially-built complex packed with vacationers. Well, we traveled this far and got lost about a dozen times. So there's really no turning back at this point. We start in the mineral baths, which are laid out in an ascending fashion on a small hill. The baths are packed with people and the whole scene brings to mind people in private VIP booths waiting for the opera to start. Except they're in their skivvies. The mineral water is incredibly refreshing and invigorating after the long bus journey. As are the narrow brick hallways that spray visitors with multiple powerful streams of hot mineral water. The faucets are in every direction and it's quite entertaining to run suicides back and forth through the showers.
Highway to the Danger Zone
During our ride back into town, one local gentleman decides to bike directly into oncoming traffic. We nearly crash head-on, but both veer aside at the last minute, missing each other by mere inches. Louise and I pull over panting after this near death experience, while our opponent thinks nothing of it and continues biking at 40MPH in the opposite direction, bikes parting at the last second is his wake. This man clearly graduated from the Ray Charles School of Motorbike Driving.
Fortunately, we make it to Long Son Pagoda in one piece. The site, right in the center of Nah Trang, is a large temple decorated with colorful mosaics and statues of dragons. The pagoda dates back to the 1800s yet is still operational today with canary yellow-garbed monks walking through complex, including one of the highest-ranking in Vietnam. As with the Cham temple earlier in the day, Long Son has several altars that are so full of incense smoke that one can barely see the shrines. Behind the pagoda, up a huge hill, rests a giant ivory white sitting Buddha looking down on Nah Trang. Louise and I pay our respects in traditional Vietnamese rice paddy conical hats. Nearby, local teens play hackysack while others sell colorful fans.
Eat Your Veggies
We're starving upon descending from the giant Buddha and I spot a lively restaurant at the pagoda's entrance. Typically, I avoid any food by tourist areas but we're famished. Or "knackered" as Louise says in her thick Cork accent. Well, I think, it's only one meal and it's cheap. How wrong I was.
The large open-air restaurant is packed to the brim with Vietnamese locals and we're the only tourists. First good sign. Second is everyone is making their own soups in large hot pots over electric blue flames. Third sign is they have stuffed buns which share the color and addictive qualities of crack cocaine. The fluffy white buns are filled with a melange of roasted onions, garlic, carrots, peas, potatoes, broccoli, and mushrooms. It's like a salad and croutons turned on its head. Appetizer is a refreshing lotus root salad: Julienned lotus root, roasted tofu, peanuts, cabbage, onions, fake shrimp crackers, fresh herbs, and a lime vinaigrette. The piece de resistance is a sweet and sour hot pot, whose broth hints to the sauce of the same name but has endlessly more depth of flavor and is devoid of the sticky, gluey consistency. We use chopsticks to add in tofu, noodles, chilis, tomatoes, herbs, and cabbage, then close the lid and bring everything to a boil.
The meal is utterly spectacular and dirt cheap for Vietnam at 100,000dong ($5) for both us, including drinks. As with the terrific vegetarian meal at May Kaidee in Thailand, it reminds me how overrated meat can be and how easily I could become a vegetarian. Upon further reflection, I think the meal was completely vegan. And the entire experience was ethereal: Eating a transcendent meal in surprising setting, completely sans meat, in a beautiful open-air candlelit restaurant, in perfect weather, under the watchful eye of a three-story ivory Buddha. Plus I'm sitting across from a beautiful woman and the conversation is splendid. That's it, I'm becoming a vegan, proposing to Louise right here and now, and we're going to spend the rest of our lives as vagabonds-in-love traveling in Asia on motorbikes eating the freshest vegetables the region has to offer.
Ok, well maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, let's simply marvel at the zen nirvana of the vegetarian meal we just consumed and continue to search out more fauna-based magic.
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