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Published: June 23rd 2008
Khmer Pagoda
what you don't see is the streetlight that the statue in the foreground is hiding .. nice shot kelly :)Alas, we arrived in Nha Trang hoping for the Scuba. But you see, it is like the hippo ... (that's a personal joke right there ... sorry for that).
Long story short .. we took our first sleeper bus down from Hoi An to Nha Trang. It was an eventful ride and the state of Vietnam's highways is not all its cracked up to be apparently. Not to mention that we were super-laden with tailor made clothes from Hoi An (we both invested in custom suits and shirts for that fast approaching day when we meet the real world) - all 7 kgs of clothes in fact! That made carrying the stuff out of the hotel a bit rough ... the trials we go through eh? So we arrived to a stunning sunrise (5am .. youch) over the mountains and bustled into Nha Trang.
Nga Trang is a funny wee place. Not really much to it except for a wicked beach, a bunch of resorts and an otherwise very plain little town that just really struck it lucky when it comes to location. They've tried to cool up the place with sculptures and boardwalks but really, its all about
Thatsa big bhudda!
And in the base was memorials to 6 monks that died of self-immolation protesting all manner of things. Hardcore. the water. Nha Trang is the spot in Vietnam for scuba diving in general and has one of the most kick-ass qualified dive centres around .. alas, that niggling sickness that Kelly is having meant that we couldn't get our dive tickets here - but we did get to watch a couple of videos so have a good headstart when we try again in Thailand 😊.
As some sort of consolation prize (and after deciding that we should really do something in Vietnam..) we spent a day out and about, visited a couple of pagodas and bhuddas and the local aquarium!
Now, anyone in New Zealand is hereby commanded to take an afternoon and go visit Kelly Tarlton's cause its really cool. We walked in to the Aquarium kind of with that in our mind only to realise that most of the aquarium's in the world are a little less flashy. But hey, a bunch of swimming pools with sharks, turtles, coral and another whole bunch of fish tanks built into a wall actually turned out pretty cool. Kelly probably spent a good hour hanging out with the giant turtles (I'd tell you what breed they are but
Out of the hotel window
You can' see it but one of the islands to the right has a giant 'VINPEARL' sign a la hollywood - classy. all the signs were in Vietnamese) and Andrew's favourite was the room full of stuff in jars .. freaky!
On the same day, we visited some Khmer (ancient people who also built most of the temples at Angkor Wat) ruins, two giant bhuddas (for the record, 'giant' is 18m plus ...) and a local photographer's gallery. He's been published in those M.I.L.K books, amongst others. Beautiful black and whites from all over Vietnam .. and we actually met him, which was pretty cool.
To be honest, other than that, we are hitting the beach, enjoying the food (we managed to replicate our favourite vietnamese dish from New Zealand here ..) and trying to rest up in the hope that sickness will pass.
On that note, apologies for the lack of blog entries - we feel like we've done hardly anything but we should ramp up again in the next couple of weeks!
Peace out.
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team shwinter
Andrew and Kelly Sharp
Poop to the rotate tool I say!
It seems all the photos are coming out sideways .. I blame global warming to be honest...