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Published: March 18th 2009
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Friday, March 13th
This morning Talita faced her fear and we rented a scooter to explore Nha Trang. It was Ferdi's first time piloting a scooter and he was a little nervous to have his princess on the back. We both set our fears aside and after a lesson in how to start the scooter we headed south to the Vinpearl cable-car station, 7km away. This cable car goes 3.3km to Vinpearl island. In the guide book the price was 100,000 dong per person (which is already pretty steep) but when we got there it was 300,000 per person. There was no way we were gonna pay that, so we headed back to our part of town for breakfast.
After breakfast we went in search of the Oceanographic institute, but just before we got there we ran out of petrol! Oops! The fuel gage on a scooter isn't the same as on a car it seems. After scooting the scooter for a while a guy offered to go fetch us fuel. We paid a lot for the little fuel we got, but it got us going again and soon we were at the institute.
We saw Nemo, Dory and
their friends, a lot of sharks (we didn't touch them even though we could), really big turtles (we touched them), an 18m Humpback Whale skeleton, Sea-horses, poisonous Puffer fish and a whole lot more. It was magical to see such gorgeous creatures and it sealed the deal to go scuba diving!
We cruised back across town in search of the 28m high Buddha sitting on a hill praying for peace over the city. We got lost (drove of the map) but eventually found it when we back-tracked. It was big and white and there were beggars and very cute children trying to extort money from us by their cuteness (Talita stood firm when Ferdi wanted to give in. It's no good helping them cause it just teaches them to beg).
We headed back to town and signed up for our PADI Open Water Course. We start on the 15th! Yipeeeeee! Had a cocktail each and a couple of home brewed beers to celebrate Leon's 30th birthday and our imminent diving course. That reminds us, we'll have to study a bit tomorrow...
Today's highlights:
1. Our first scooter expedition.
2. Touching the giant sea turtles.
3. Signing up
Dory? Is that you?
"I will call you squishy and you will be mine and you will be my squishy." for scuba.
Thought for the day:
Never trust a scooter's fuel gage.
Saturday, March 14th
In the morning we bought a waterproof camera bag for our little Sony camera. Ferdi had researched them before since they are much cheaper than a full marine pack (these cost as much as the camera). The bag is only waterproof up to 3m so you can't actually dive with it, but we can record our first pool dive and all of the other water activities we enjoy.
After a haircut for Ferdi and getting some supplies we started studying for our scuba course tomorrow. We're very excited!
Today's highlight:
1. Studying for scuba!
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