The Local Bus to Phan Rang ...
And why you don't want it!

You won't want to stay in the city of Phan Rang, a city that has no tourist infrastructure, and very few people --- even at hotels --- that speak English. This city on Vietnam's southern coast sits between the beach towns of Mui Ne and Nha Trang, but boasts one of Vietnam's finest Cham towers, Po Klong Garai.

Even the "open buses" running from Saigon to Nha Chang refuse to stop in this backwater city of 143,000 souls. To experiment, we took a local bus, just about the only way out of town, to Nha Trang. The rattletrap had unanchored seats, no aircon (not expected, to be fair), and the driver tried to rip us off for a fare of 100,000 VND, roughly double what we paid for the aircon bus between Mui Ne and Nha Trang (a longer distance). What was amusing was the driver and conductors found us to be a point of ridicule, and continually pointed to us and shouted, while the whole bus laughed along. We laughed too, as good sports; after all, the ribbing was in Vietnamese (ours ain't too good, and they didn't speak English).

After two hours, though, country bumpkin humor had run its course. We finally shouted back, called them silly old asses, requested they go back to driving their jalopy. Our fellow passengers thought this was great fun, as we bantered back and forth in languages neither side understood.

Here, your Vietnam Oasis reporter "took one for the team" so you don't have to. Avoid Phan Rang, but do stay in Mui Ne or Nha Trang and hop on over to these superb Cham temples. You can do this by aircon taxi from Nha Trang, jeep from Mui Ne, or via a Saigon-Mui Ne-Po Klong Garai-Nha Trang tour.