Nha Trang

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Unfortunately we had to sit for 9 hours on a day train from Hoi An to Nha Trang which wasn't particularly fun, it was pretty noisy and very busy. We either tried to sleep, read books, played cards, ate bread and fruit (all we could really find in Hoi An to take with us!) and watched Vietnamese TV on overhead flatscreen(?!) tvs! By the time we arrived at 9pm there were little cockroaches crawling in and out of the window frames on the train and the carriage was pretty dirty...we were glad to get off!!
When we got to the hotel Elaine, Mike and I went for a walk round the block and ended up having cocktails at a pretty cool bar, Elaine had a Pina Colada, I had a Blue Lagoon or something, Mike had a grenadine/fruit concoction called Zero Percent.....of course. Elaine reckons she's drunk more beer with me this trip than she has done in a decade and has announced she's going to start buying Tiger beer when she gets home to Washington DC! Haha, brilliant.
The next day we had an option; either do a day trip with a private guide, or do the same trip with about 20 other people for a third of the price. The others decided they wanted a private guide and even offered to subsidise mine so I would go with them but I thought no, I'll just do my own thing today, so I went with the public tour group which was a lot of fun. Nha Trang has some of the best beaches in Vietnam and the weather was finally fantastic, the day trip was basically a boat ride round 4 different islands, included snorkelling, lunch on the boat, aquarium trip, all for 7 dollars for me, about 25 dollars each if I had gone with my original group! Met two really nice english guys on the boat called Dave and Matt from Norwich so spent the day with them, there were also really nice australian people, and also some french and swiss and a few vietnamese as well.
Our tour guide was about 60 and had his first beer at 9:45am...although maybe he had already had some before we got on the boat, who knows? he was hilarious anyway and said everything in vietnamese and then english. the snorkelling at the first island was really good, great coral reefs with lots of fish, then we had lunch on the boat about 12, lots of different plates of vietnamese food which was really good, especially when you see they made lunch for 25 people using a small gas cooker at the back of the boat!
After lunch was cleared away 2 guys brought out a drum kit and electric guitar and our guide (who had had a few more beers at this point) got up and started singing!! He sang a couple of vietnamese songs, then gave the mic to this poor vietnamese tourist who had to get up and sing a local song too, meabwhile our guide had dragged this australian girl up and started dancing with her (this is about 1pm!) then he sang Let's Twist Again and made everyone get up and start dancing (did I mention that when the guide started drinking we did too?!) then he did 2 more songs to finish with.
We stopped at a couple more islands for a swim and to visit the aquarium, had lots of plates of fruit on the boat that everyone was encouraged to try, and eventually got back to the harbour about 4:30. So it was worth doing my own thing for the day!!
Locked myself out of my hotel room that night by snapping the key in the lock, think I forgot to mention when I was staying with Myles I locked myself in the bathroom for an hour by snapping the key in the lock, one day I'm going to be in big trouble when I do that!!
On Thursday Mike and I went to the oceanographic museum in the morning, then we went to the beach in the afternoon, the weather was brilliant so had to make the most of it, then we got on the last overnight train of the trip down to Ho Chi Minh City, our last stop on the trip.

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