September 2 National Day rolled around once again to bring a few days off for Bảo, so we decided on a trip to Quy Nhơn city in the central province of Bình Định. It is a long trip from Vũng Tàu, about 14 hours by coach but because there are so many fisherman from the province living in Vũng Tàu there is a daily service of two coaches. One of them is a standard reclining seat coach, but the other is a sleeper. Bad luck, though, that it was already booked out for the trip north, although the standard coach was fairly comfortable for the overnight trip which got us to Quy Nhơn at about 530 in the morning.Why go to Quy Nhơn? This was the question that all my students kept asking me. The short answers are: because we have a friend there (Dũng, a talented singer); because I want to go. Truth be told, there is not a lot to do there but the scenery is very interesting. There are also a few important cultural sites.
Another geographical feature is the Thị Nại lagoon which separates Quy Nhơn city from the Phương Mai peninsula, and is fed by the Tây Sơn river. The peninsula can now be reached by a newly constructed 2.5 km sea-bridge.
Another famous resort lies much closer to Quy Nhơn city. Ghênh Rang resort started life as a royal holiday spot and is best known for Bãi Dá Trứng - stone egg beach - and the second grave of a famous Vietnamese poet known as Han Mac Tu. He lived at the beginning of the 20th century, suffered from leprosy and died when he was just 28. He is said to have written 175 poems during his life and many of them still form the basis of modern song lyrics. Despite his disease, during his life and since he is seen as an incredibly romantic figure.The reason for two graves? I only know that he was reinterred within the grounds of the resort a few decades ago. The original grave site (in the picture) is inside the grounds of the skin diseases research institute. The institute appears to continue to be a residential compound for people with skin diseases (leprosy?) and certainly has a history of that. The rooms where Han Mac Tu lived have been kept as a small museum of his life.
Within Quy Nhơn city as well as on the flood plain of the Tây Sơn river and the lowest foothills there are a number of Cham or Champa ruins. The wikipedia article says that Bình Định was probably the first area where the Cham culture entered Vietnam. We saw a great range in the degree of preservation of the towers, from the tower within the city which is in good/renovated condition and located within a park that is a popular backdrop for wedding photos, to an overgrown tower in a farmer's field!
The town of Tây Sơn lies inland, following the river of the same name towards the Trường Sơn mountains and Gia Lai province, from where travellers can also cross over to Laos. This is the area that gave birth to the group of brothers who eventually progressed from being rebels against the tyranny of one of the ruling families of Vietnam, to heads of their own dynasty. Although essentially they acted against a mandate of heaven, and ultimately lost power to the Nguyễn family that they had shaken from power, the first Tây Sơn ruler, Quang Trung, was popular and continues to be remembered in modern Vietnam. Across the river from Tây Sơn town is a large museum/temple compound commemorating the acts of the dynasty: for resisting the tyranny of the southern Nguyễn lords, for defeating the northern Trinh lords, for repelling a Ching invasion (which occurred at the request of the official Vietnamese ruler Lê Chiêu Thống), and for undertaking a program of economic and social reform to benefit peasants and international trade.
We took at pleasant motorbike trip on a brilliantly sunny day to the museum, passing by numerous rice fields, mountainous haystacks and brick factories/kilns on our last morning. Then it was time to take the long coach trip south. A postscript of sorts to the holiday was that we arrived in Vũng Tàu at about 430am. There were no taxis around but an old woman running a coffee stall across the road from the bus depot offered to take us both! on the back of her motorbike. She drove so slowly that I thought we could probably walk faster and she talked the whole way! Maybe it was a novelty for her!
I enjoyed the change of scenery in Quy Nhơn very much, and I think that the city would be a pleasant place to live, but it is much quieter than Vũng Tàu and there is not a lot to do for relaxation unless you can make a good circle of friends. It gets a small number of foreign visitors and I think there are a few foreigners working there or running businesses but it is really off-the-radar for most international travellers. Personally I hope that it stays that way!
