Travel Diary >>> Vung Tau, a desire

 

 

Written by:                          Vung Tau, a desire

 

 

 

I have a desire of visiting Vung Tau from the first time I heard about it, I don’t know why. Fortunately, I have a high-school classmate working in Vung Tau, thus I contacted him to ask for accommodation for a few days. After finishing jobs in Saigon, I took a bus from Hang Xanh intersection to Vung Tau in 3 hours, with price ticket 80,000 VND. Of course, I could go by high speed boat from District 1, just 1 hour, but more expensive, about 200,000 VND. I prefered cheap mode.

 

Hung, my friend paid 2 million VND per month for a dormitories of the oil and gas industry workers with all necessary appliances. When I came, he welcomed me by a big fruit custard, and I can only eat 1/6 even I tried so hard. To be honest, this was the first time I have seen a real fruit custard. I guessed it was a cousin of jack fruit, because they both have thorns in their cover.

 

Vung Tau is a land of the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry’s icons and works could be seen everywhere. My friend told me that 80-90% Vung Tau’s population working in this industry. In my eyes, Vung Tau is a green, clean, beautiful and lonely land. It has many empty huge roads with colourful flowers in 2 sides; the largest Martyrs Monument ever, several huge statues of Buddha and Jesus.

 

We visited Nghinh Phong (meet-the-wind) cape which reminded me about the Cape of Good Hope.

After many efforts of trying to go the cape, I found out that the cape was a prohibited area under

the control of the Navy, thus I could only observe the cape from a distant. The Nghinh Phong beach

was divided into separate parts. One part of the white sand beach where many local people wearing

normal clothes to swim (a bit strange), and the rest of beach with  several sharp rocks, and looked

dangerous.

 

Next, we climbed thousands stairs to reach the top of Tao Phung mountain, where the huge Christ

the Redeemer statue standing. There was a group of musicians playing ceremony music to express

the respect for Christ. Local people built a stairs system which allow visitors to climb to the arm of

Christ to see a gentle landscape of Vung Tau city. The stairs were tiny, and I had to try so hard to

bypass long queues of visitors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vung Tau is famous for seafood because of high quality and cheap price. I was introduced a seafood

restaurant floating in the water: fried shrimp, steamed oysters, stick bean, grilled squid... so delicious.

It was sunny,  suddenly rain thundered. The rain soaked into leaves roof, dropped in the floor and

tables. It was enjoyable to have lunch in that atmosphere, listen to the sound of rain falling in the sea

and see the the white balloons blowing up in the floor.

 

 

On the way to high speed boat port coming back Ho Chi Minh, I bought some seafood as the gift for

family and friends in a huge seafood supermarket. We went pass the church built in the middle of an

intersection and dog racing stadium.

Goodbye Vung Tau, 1 day was too short.