September 25, 2005

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  Nha Trang Ngày Về / Nha Trang Returning Day

  I did not stay in Nha Trang long enough to visit all the exotic places that I have heard about.  Nha Trang has been famous being an exotic vacation destination with beautiful white sand beaches.  I first visited Nha Trang years ago.  There are not much memories of Nha Trang in me from the first visit, perhaps because I want to forget lots of things happening then.

   

  I was getting tired of restaurant food after I had been pampered for about two weeks with all the exotic tastes and marvelously designed dishes.  I was craving for fresh fruits.  Renting a bicycle I explored Nha Trang City.  The streets are very clean and broad.  Each bus stop on major streets is a nicely decorated graffiti-free shelter with bus route wall map to accommodate riders who are not accustomed to the city streets.  Although the hot and humid weather was still uncomfortable to me, I was getting used to the traffic in large city such as Ha Noi and Hue, so navigating the streets of Nha Trang no longer invoked my tingling fear and foot ache, on foot or on bike.  I wanted to eat quả na (also called măng cầu) dai, or sweet sop.  Asking directions from local people for the nearest market, I was directed to chợ Đầm (Đầm market), which is the main market of the city and a short distance from my hotel.  Here besides sweet sops, I also bought plenty of longans and rambutans.  On the way back to the hotel I spotted a shop that sold only sweet desserts (chè) because of its very boasting name: Chè Cung Đ́nh or Royal Palace Sweet Pudding Shop.  During this trip in Vietnam, although I have refrained from eating foods that are sold on the streets because of the risk of traveler’s diarrhea, the look of those chè in more than a dozen large pots that were prominently displayed at the shop front was so tempting that I took the risk in enjoying my favorite chè from one of those displayed.  And enjoying, at higher risk, even with the complement coconut milk for the best taste of my favorite.  Wholly delicious.  The taste well matches the boasting Royal Palace.  I was glad I took the risk.

   

  Nha Trang has been in my heart even before my first visit of the city because of the widely popular romantic song Nha Trang Ngày Về written by Phạm Duy.  The night before I left Nha Trang, I took a long walk along Nha Trang downtown beach.  There are numerous gorgeous restaurants along the city’s broad, beautiful boardwalk which is paved with bricks and concrete and almost spotlessly clean. The song was lulling in my head as the memory from my last visit of this city a long time ago was stirring up in my mind.

   

  I then was a school girl who liked to read romance novels and to write short stories.  I befriended a male writer and we became pen pals for a while.  After we met face to face, I was secretly smitten with him (or his words).  Now in reminiscence I did not think that infatuation was love.  But I was sure that it was more than friendship, at least in my heart.  Perhaps I should call it as “It Seems Like Love,” same as the title of a novel I bought recently in Vietnam H́nh Như Là T́nh Yêu written by Hoàng Ngọc Tuấn. During that first trip to Nha Trang, I had a feeling that he was somewhere nearby and that feeling plagued all the three days I was there. I just could not explain why I felt that way.  Much later we met; I found out that he indeed was there at the same time.  That we did not meet in that small location perhaps was meant to be so.  The song popped up in my head many times during that night walk along Nha Trang beach. 

   

  “Nha Trang biển đầy, người yêu không có đây. Tôi như là con ốc, bơ vơ nằm trên cát, chôn sâu vào thân xác lưu đầy.  Dă tràng ơi sao lấp cho vơi sầu nầy…”  Nha Trang is in high tide.  My lover is absent.  I am like a snail, lonely lie on the sand, bury deeply in an exiled shell.  Sand carrying crabs, how can we empty this sadness?

   

  Edit:

   

  Dă tràng (little crabs that make sand into tiny balls) is not ốc mượn hồn (hermit crabs).   

   

   

  • 5:55 pm
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