Once again accompanying my wife on a Baker retreat to a seaside destination. How much devotion can one man show? This time to Nha Trang, or to be more specific, the vast Vinpearl resort carved out of an island about 1 mile off the coast.
The hotel certainly was not an eco-resort with the facilities blasted out of the hillside – the hotel thrust upon the landscape. It was giant, including a cable car across the bay (we took the speedboat) modern amusement park and what was billed as the largest pool in Southeast Asia (it was really big). It was also expensive – must have cost $250 million. Not overtly tacky, but not warm either. Like one of the big Disney resorts. However, over time I came to grudgingly admire the place. Everything was built well and everything worked. Someone clearly wanted their investment to succeed. Plus, like Disney, whether your consider it an authentic experience or not, the dozens of kids squealing happily in the water shows that many people enjoy their time there.
Speaking of investors. The owners apparently are Vietnamese who moved to Ukraine and started a giant instant noodle business. The hotel attracts many Russian speaking guests, which explains the smoked fish on the breakfast buffet, the Russian speaking women in Ao dais greeting guests, and the 13 year old girls wearing “Daddy’s little hootchie momma” outfits sauntering by the pool.
We visited Nha Trang one week after the completion of the 2008 Miss Universe pageant. From the airport to the resort convention center, signs and billboards proudly highlighted the world beauty event of the year. Even in Hanoi, we had been assaulted by breathless news coverage of the pageant (not enough photos for my taste, however). Vietnam really was proud to host this event and treated it as further proof of their emergence onto the world scene. I’m not sure that they have a firm grasp on where the Miss Universe pageant stands on the global cultural scene, but it’s a start.
Following Nha Trang, I headed down south for a slightly different experience – visiting rural chicken and duck farms. I cover avian influenza at work and I coordinated a trip with our Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City to visit some of the newest and most modern facilities in provinces north of the city to look at their efforts to limit possible exposure to the disease. We spent two days visiting local officials and farms in Binh Phuoc, Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces. Much of Binh Duong and Dong Nai close to the city are flat, but Binh Phuoc marks the start of low, forested hills that eventually lead to the Cambodian border to the west or the Central Highlands to the north. Lots of traffic leaving Ho Chi Minh City, which seems to go on forever, but finally we got to more rural areas.
The farms themselves are located far away from urban centers, among vast rubber plantations. Turning off the tarmac, we traveled along red dirt roads (fortunately, it had not rained in a few days), past thousands and thousands of rubber trees lined up row by row. As each row stretched thousands of feet into the distance, the interlocking branches made it look like we were passing green-hued cathedrals. We also traveled by pepper trees (plants, I’m not sure), strung up along wooden posts or brick chimneys.
The chicken farms themselves stand out. One, they’re typically the only buildings for miles and miles. Two, they are surrounded by high, broken-glass topped walls, to keep people out and chickens in. Once inside, we took tours of the facilities, complete with automated feeding and cooling systems. They raise up to 180,000 birds at one time. Very impressive. And clean. For some reason, I seem to have spent relatively little time at U.S. chicken farms, so I’m not sure how they compare, but I’d definitely eat chicken from these places.
