Three Rings In The Water

Vietnam is still celebrating the "glory days" ….of the early 2000's when boy bands ruled the pop charts. Everywhere we've been at first in Saigon, and now here in Nha Trang, people aren't just playing, but blasting them some Westlife, N'Sync and above all, the Backstreet Boys.

Sure, they play some early Justin Timberlake too. But it's really about the boy bands.

Luckily for us – and everyone visiting Vietnam – "Larger Than Life" remains larger than life here.

As odd as that might ordinarily be, there's something about the setting of Nha Trang that makes it almost fitting.

Let's start by saying that any beach town or island beach area I've ever been to in Asia has somewhat of a chaotic element – with Ko Phanyang, Thailand being on the highest end of this scale and Langkawi, Malaysia being the lowest. Much of Asia has figured out that foreigners will come, party and drop money if they allow them.

Thailand has cornered the "do practically anything you want on the beach at extremely low prices" market. If you're 21, out of college and wanting to go wild with your newfound freedom for a little while, Thailand welcomes you.

In fact, it's anticipated you're every need and will give you an almost consequence-free environment in which you can wake up on the beach, half-clothed, next to someone you clearly had a great time with, but whose name you don't remember, have little recollection of the night before and face no shame.

Moreover, you may be just one of many waking up to this same scenario. In this event, the correct protocol is to invite the person passed out next to you for banana pancakes and laugh about whatever did or didn't happen. This is just how it's done.

From what we've seen so far, Vietnam doesn't appear quite as "anything goes" as Thailand, but Nha Trang certainly is set up to encourage people to have a good time at the beach. Western restaurants of all kind fill the town, nightclubs pump at night, travel agents line the streets and water sports operations line the beaches. It's a very similar recipe to Thailand's, only – like the food – a little less spicy.

Still, the Backstreet Boys loving population of Nha Trang has developed that slightly disjointed and quirky feeling that's so typical to Asian beach towns. Fake 7-11's, massage parlors sprinkled everywhere, a completely touristy night market, cheap booze on display at half the shops, bicycle-rickshaw drivers soliciting you at every turn…. all the usuals.

Only Nha Trang has something you don't see so often in Thailand or Bali….locals on vacation. Vietnamese come here for their weekend getaways and vacations too. This is both great and part of the disjointedness at the same time. The Vietnamese seem to share the Chinese sensibility for tall hotels with dark entrances, smoky lobbies and flashy lights in front. I saw them all over Taiwan and indeed, Saigon and Nha Trang have their fair share of these. This makes Nha Trang an interesting mix of five-star resorts on the beach, hole-in-the-wall $5 a night backpacker guest houses, low-end hotels frequented by Vietnamese, and some upper-rage nice hotels like ours with a mix of Vietnamese and Western guests.

Although last night we explored Nha Trang, today Emily and I have ventured no further than the beach across the street where we spent most of the day lying on comfortable lounge chairs with waiter service. At the end of a hard day of eating, drinking, lounging and swimming, we faced a whopping 575,000 Dong bill ($28.00) including the fee for use of the chairs for the day.

However, we had one major downer for the day. My wedding ring fell into the depths of the South China Sea and was buried waves mercilessly pushing sand over it. This is my second "travel ring" lost this trip and the third between us.

I lost my first one less than a week into our travels at a water park in Alanya, Turkey. We and the water park staff spent time swimming around a pool at the bottom of a long water slide. While the tungsten ring was only a $50 loss (we both bought cheap bands for our travels for just such a reason), someone added insult to injury by stealing by inner-tube raft – which we paid for! – while I scoured the bottom of a pool for my ring.

This ring was silver, purchased in Antalya, Turkey from a very nice artisan jeweler for $30. He told me it would never tarnish and would always hold up because of some process he used on the finish. He was right, the ring held up well and was no issue until today, it slipped right off while I was holding Emily.

Emily too lost her travel ring down a drain while washing her hands in Alleppey, in Kerala, India. The sad part was that she really liked the $20 ring from the LA Farmer's Market. Now she has a silver one with three bands (a little like her real wedding ring safe at home) we bought for $4 from one of Alleppey's many cheap silver and gold dealers.

My ring costs seem to be going down with each loss. I'll be looking around town for something even lower-ticket than my Turkish ring. It just needs to get me through a little less than two months. It's a little sad because I expected the Turkish ring to be a nice memento of the trip.

Lesson: get travel rings, leave your good wedding rings at home and don't take any of them in water. In all three cases, water was the culprit. Or, just gain enough weight that the ring can't come off. I'll be sticking to the travel ring idea.

 Sent from my iPad