7. Hà Tiên
10.09.2023
Oh, what a day that was yesterday! I surely created some long lasting memories...and fortunately for you and me, I also took plenty of images and a few clips to document it. But first a short catch up what happened the day before.
since the 8th of September I am in Ha Tien. In the morning I took a grab taxi from my hotel in Rach Gia to the bus station that was 4.5km away and interestingly just 100m away from my first hotel I stayed at. I paid 79,000 Dong for my ride and then hopped on a local bus for 70,000 Dong albeit travelling around 20x further than with the taxi. The bus had no aircon or functioning fan but who needs those if you can just leave the windows and the door open during the entire journey. That would have been potentially good for photography, however, my window couldn't be pushed open more than around 7cm, severely limiting my potential photo angles. Also, smoking in these type of local buses isn't uncommon and I hated to have no other option than trying to breath the air coming through the small gap of the window rather than inhaling the full dose of nicotine shared by a couple of not so considerate dudes. Potholes made the ride pretty bumpy and I was glad it didn't take more than a bit over 2 hours although I enjoyed the scenery.
Upon arrival at Ha Tien I was inundated by guys trying to convince me to hitch a ride on their motorbikes with all my luggage. The idea of having my huge 20kg checked-luggage bag on their wimpy bike plus me on the back with another backpack and a bag with my pillow, water and miscellaneous other stuff didn't appeal and 50.000 Dong for a 2km ride seemed to be overpriced. I know, it is only AUD $3.30, but when you pay for a comfy taxi 70.000 Dong for over 4km, their offer wasn't good value. I was under no time pressure and knowing that I had walked myself with all the luggage over 4km to my hotel in Saigon, 2km should be a walk in the park, right? To their amazement and disappointment, I declined their services and started walking, my camera ready to snapshoot whatever looked of interest to me. I had to cross a huge, long bridge with no footpath. It didn't feel safe but I had to get to the other side somehow so I did it and as you realise by reading this, I am still alive – nothing bad happened.
As a city at the coast, Ha Tien has a lot of fishing trade going on and a fair share of it is sold at the market in the city centre close to my hotel. Seeing thousands of wiggling and squirming animals in buckets, on plates, in plastic bags and in tiny fish tanks, gasping for air, was hard to watch for me. So much suffering and nobody seemed to bat an eye. The smell of rotting fish and meat in the heat was disgusting and that first market experience shaped a slight negative impression of the city together with the uninspired, decaying architecture of several big buildings in and around the market. Having a vegan restaurant around the corner was lifting my mood, though. However, my mood declined again when I saw myself confronted with tiny ants in my room roaming everywhere: on my bed, on and under the desk, on the walls...and I knew it wouldn't take long before they would march in armada strength to wherever I would leave my fruit scraps. I deposited the core part of a pineapple in the bathroom sink, hoping it was safe there but it didn't take long before the food source had been localised and flagged as desirable ant hot spot. The next morning I requested a room change. Got a new one and accepted it after checking for critters. The room was even one square metre larger...at the expense of real estate in the bathroom – toilet, sink and shower are squeezed into the back part of the it. To sit on the toilet, you have to mount it sideways, then slide your legs underneath the sink. Uncomfortable and almost claustrophobic. In exchange for ants I got an aircon leaking onto my bed. Dark green stripes running down the wall tell that this hasn't been a new occurrence. I searched my bag for the insulation/duct tape I always carry with me – because you never know when you need it – and fixed the issue...I won't even tell the hotel staff because it is apparent by judging the condition of the room that nobody really cares. The bed is too short, meaning I have to sleep diagonally to stretch out my legs, a big family next door made a lot of noise and guys sat in the aisle smoking. I unsuccessfully tried to keep the smoke out by insulating the bottom of the door with a towel.
In the morning I woke up with something tickling my spine...after two minutes I found the culprit and blew the bug that could have been a cockroach baby off of my bed. There is a lack of affordable, centrally located hotel options, so I will just deal with it and live with the status quo for around four days. Ha Tien is a border town and my last stop before crossing over to Cambodia.
I perused the internet what to do in Ha Tien and two suggestions peaked my interest – a 100m high hill or mini mountain called Núi Đá Dựng promising great views over the area and over to Cambodia and some caves in the mountain are advertised as worth visiting as well. The second trip recommendation I am tinkering with is Mui Nai Beach with palms and dark, muddy sand. Both destinations are a 5-6km walk from my hotel.
Yesterday I undertook a half day trip to Núi Đá Dựng and WOW, that trip exceeded my expectations! I started at noon after lunch. For the first time I had chosen to wear my running shoes hoping it would make walking easier...- FAIL! Less than a kilometre into my trip, the skin on my right Achilles heel was rubbing painfully against the shoe. I removed the sock in that area, I put paper as padding around it (due to the heat and sweat, it didn't last for 5min) but nothing worked. I was seriously considering to abandon my plan because walking up a mountain and back when you are feeling discomfort already right from the get go could be a recipe for disaster. I was stubborn, though, and soldiered on trying to not roll over my toes to reduce the rubbing at the back of my foot. Once I had left the city centre, I was fascinated by the rural architecture, the simplicity of the buildings, often not more than an open shed with a hammock spanning across two wooden poles. You could call it poverty on display and I tried to imagine what kind of life people lead there, whether they have any income or are completely self-sufficient. Many people waved at me, many hellos and even more smiles were exchanged while I was walking down the main road towards the mountain in the distance.
An old women signaled to me through a window to enter her restaurant – a name sounding too posh for the wood construction with open sides. A young guy and a girl were also present and they started bringing me a cup with ice and a Pepsi. It took a bit before the old lady gave me to understand that she did not want any money for it. And I still had to politely reject her Pepsi as I am not a fan of it to say the least. Thank Go............ogle for for Google Translate! Without that app on my phone I would have missed out on a lovely conversation. After asking the standards: Where are you from, how old are you, etc.. it turned out that an older daughter of the women had married a guy from Germany and she proudly showed me their wedding photos on her phone.
I then chatted mainly with the girl who was more proficient in using google translate. I found out that she lived with her family in the building since she was born and has never seen another country besides Vietnam and Cambodia. I asked her where she would go if she could travel to any other country, and her answer was Thailand which perplexed me since I expected a destination much further away. Living in such a super basic accommodation and clearly a no frills life style I wonder how the boy could afford his iphone. It seems certain priorities are the same for people all over the world with the difference that a 1000+ dollar phone means he needs to spends his income of 3-4 months for it – if it was bought new that is. - They refilled the cup of water with more ice and I continued my trip.
The moment I turned off the main road into a side road I entered a new world – again a much more rural Vietnam awaited me. Chicken, geese and dogs at every second house and lush vegetation surrounding the buildings. After a few hundred metres a company of young army soldiers on a motorbike with a trailer came towards me. Shortly after they overtook me and then a few minutes later I caught up with them again when they stopped. I greeted and one of them spoke a bit of English. I asked where they were going and they had the same goal as me – the mountain. Jokingly one guy offered me to join them and when I took them up on their offer and climbed on the trailer, the whole company was cheering and excited to have a foreigner on their vehicle. Mud sprayed on my clothes and the potholes were terrible, but it was a fun ride and I managed to videotape part of it utilising my Insta360 X3 for the first time as an action cam on a fully extended selfie stick.
At the foot of the hill we dismounted. They had to do some work at a ditch/hole. Not sure what their task was and despite asking it remained unclear. The guy with the English skills told me I had to buy a ticket. I hadn't been aware that a walk up and around a mountain warrants an entry fee but hey: 20,000 Dong is less than AUD $1.50, so I was more than happy to comply. Shortly after I found out what I was actually paying for.
At the foot of Núi Đá Dựng
The entire path up and around and sometimes even through the mountain is paved, there are occasionally bins for rubbish, shrines and statues embedded into the dozen or more small to medium caves that are illuminated with different colours of light. I had expected to summit the hill and take a few nice pics of the landscape, instead I went on an adventurous hike up and down very narrow stairs with caves to explore as side quests.
In the beginning I met a dad with his son, but for the remainder of the time I didn't see anyone until I reached again my starting point. It felt like being in a nature wonderland that was meant to be experienced with a tour guide telling you everything about the caves, the places of worship, their history, etc. Anyway, since there is only one main path, you can't really lose your way so you don't need a guide. Hence I enjoyed having the mountain to myself. I had strapped the action cam to my chest and put it into time-lapse mode taking an image every 4 seconds. Later on I found out that I should have decreased the interval to at least 1 seconds to end up with somewhat watchable video. Rookie mistake! Nevertheless, I still had my little pocket camera for more intentional photos. My brain got overstimulated by all the great photo opportunities...moss growing out of the stairs, bizarre looking rock formations, the rice fields and other mountains in the distance appearing behind a curtain of dense vegetation around me - and I was still carrying the cup of ice water that astonishingly hadn't completely melted yet.
And then it started raining – A LOT! Additionally to my camera and the bag with the ice water cup I now had to hold an umbrella bumping against the rocks when I needed to maneuver through narrow passages. The stairs got super slippery and I was concerned to trip, slip and fall, injuring my ankles, breaking my camera and being stuck on the mountain for the night. At the same time I didn't want to miss out on cave photos which sometimes required some extra climbing … to say that mountain tour isn't wheelchair accessible would be the understatement of the century. In fact, being a contorsionist and of average Asian people height is highly advantageous. Knocked my head several times in the dimly lit caves. Having zero hands free for grabbing the rock (because: ice water, umbrella and camera!) to help with climbing is something I do not recommend. The sky got very dark, the puddles on the paths became bigger and I wasn't sure if going back would be the better choice instead of continuing the tour around the mountain and potentially having to walk back in complete darkness. I completed my risk assessment and opted for adventure because otherwise I would always wonder what I would have missed out on, especially given the low chance to return to that place in the future. The umbrella helped to keep my camera from getting overly wet, but my clothes were drenched. Positively, my wet socks prevented further rubbing of the skin against my shoe and miraculously my ability to walk unimpeded improved a tad. - The rain died down after a while and I finished the tour around the mountain earlier than I had anticipated.
I walked the 2km back to the main road. Several dogs saw me as an intruder, emphasising their disapproval by barking, growling and sneaking up on me from behind. I had to use my open umbrella as shield to deter them from attacking. By walking backwards and avoiding direct eye contact, I averted more physical interaction with them. - Do you remember what I said about stray animals in Vietnam? That I wasn't sure if they either took great care of them or caught them to get them off the public's eye? Sadly, yesterday I think I found the answer, at least for the Ha Tien region. After 1 km walking down that side road, a motorbike with an iron cage on the back drove past me and then stopped at a property. In the cage were 4 dogs and on the property I could see several more cages with dogs being cramped into them. There was tarp around the verandah visually blocking what was going on behind it but it was pretty clear to me that they were slaughtering the dogs behind that tarp. The last time I saw dogs round up it cages ready to be killed was in China in 2014. It turned my stomach upside down. At that time, to do something, even if it was only making a difference to a single individual, I bought one dog and let them release it again. My girlfriend back then translated for me. Here in Vietnam I felt more helpless. Being a foreigner, not speaking any Vietnamese, having almost no money, walking through a rural area just before sunset it did not feel safe to approach a bunch of strangers on their property trying to explain with the help of my tiny phone that I didn’t want them to kill the dogs. I evaluated my chances of success to be close to zero. This encounter saddened me and was a wake up call that while I had a splendid day, exploring the beauty of nature Vietnam has to offer, for other creatures it was the ultimate day of their life, spending the very last hours in horrific conditions, in fear and with the prospect of certain death. It was a tough experience but I am thankful for it because it raises my gratitude for the life I have and increases my drive to help others whenever I can.
I veered off the main road when I entered the city to explore parts of it I hadn't seen before. I met a few kids that spoke a tiny bit of English and after I brushed off their: MONEY, please, MONEY! demand while rubbing their belly (they didn't look malnourished, so I figured it was just their standard behaviour for tourists) we introduced each other with our names and took some photos together.
Yesterday felt like having the amount of 3 days of experiences condensed into a single one. I am still processing the overload of impressions today and spent most of the time in my room, chilling, washing clothes and typing this post. Tomorrow I am ready for a new adventure that will be my walk to Mui Nai Beach, not to be mistaken for Mui Ne, a beach town I visited two weeks ago.
