21st and 22nd of September, 2024.
Hitchhiking in Vietnam: Phan Rang
Phuong’s home is right above her shop. She keeps repeating her home is small and simple but I think is just lovely! They are lovely! I meet her daughter Gia Han, a very enthusiastic young girl, with a great English; and her son, Huy, a more shy but still very caring young boy. The baby girl Anna would come home after school later, and she is also adorable!
Gia Han and I keep chatting about many things while they help me with my laundry. I really need to wash my clothes! Phuong starts making dinner and she prepares a buffet of delicious food, including tofu, omelet, and fried fish. We all eat together and I feel super welcomed by this super sweet family!
We go out for ice cream later. Yummy! The place is quite full because it’s the weekend, and also because it’s together with a kind of playground, where the kids can play. Huy is the one looking after Anna, and I notice how much she loves him and how much he cares for his young sister. That’s so cute!
I have a hard time deciding what to order, but I finally go for an Oreo ice cream. Phuong makes the best comment when she says that the picture of my choice on the menu was great, but the one which I actually received looked nothing like that.
Next morning, we go to have breakfast in a traditional shop for Phở Bò, one of the most traditional dishes of the country. It’s basically a noddle soup with beef, but the broth is made in a very special way, with fresh herbs and spices, then also served with fresh herbs. The detail is for the beef, which is thinly sliced and added still raw to the bowl with noodles and herbs, and let to be “cooked” by the steaming hot broth which is poured overall. It is a nice dish but, perhaps because I am vegetarian, so not the biggest fan of beef, I don’t really get what is all the fuss about this dish.
Then we have some nice coffee and as I order a cafe sue hot, I finally figure out what is about this coffee in Vietnam. Cafe sue is coffee with condensed milk, which you can have either hot or with ice cubes. Many ice cubes. The thing is, if you order hot, the amount of coffee is very small compared to the amount of condensed milk, so it gets really sweet and thick, which with the ice cubes, you kind of get that “extra water” you wanted in your warm coffee, from the ice cubes while they melt. If you want a coffee with fresh milk (cow milk) you must ask for cafe sue tuoi, and that’s for iced or warm.
This area of Phan Rang where Phuong lives with her family is actually very nice. It reminds me of a holiday place, I don’t know how to explain but that’s how I feel around here. It doesn’t feel like an actual regular neighbourhood, where people live and go to work but only a place where people come for vacation.
Phuong’s sister just gives birth and she lives in Nha Trang. They are all going to visit her, and I can come along so they can drop me off on the highway, just outside Nha Trang. Perfect!
It is really weird to say goodbye to this lovely family, as I feel so at home with them. At least, I am very grateful and honoured to have met such kind souls, to be part of their family even if for just a while, and to be treated with so much love and respect.
My next destination is a long and narrow extension of sand, basically, with tiny villages all over it. I kept calling Bai Bien because I thought that this was the name, but now I actually now that bai bien simply means “beach” in Vietnamese. So the proper name of the place to where I wanted to go is Bãi biển Đại Lãnh. And because it is not that far from where I am standing, I decide to accept the lift of a truck driver when he stops. He is a nice man but cannot speak any English. He gives me a big bottle of water (the first and only I would get in Vietnam) and some rambutan.
When he drops me off at the exit to my destination, something interesting happens. A lady in a motorbike stops for me. As I show her in the map where I am trying to go, I understand by her explanation in Vietnamese that she is going somewhere half way there, which for me is fine and I get in the back of her motorbike. But I don’t think that she understood what I meant, or she really just wanted to help, because she stops at the house of an English teacher, who happens to be teaching her students. That’s the beginning of the story about Kiman and I.
10 Years Around the World 