Halloween In Vietnam

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After we had once again had another sleepless night on a sleeper bus from Hoi An. we arrived in Nha Trang at a rather small bus station a little bit further on from the main touristy area.......not that we knew this at the time because we thought we were at a different station and so opted not to take a taxi to our next hostel, and so soon we found ourselves on a rather long walk to the part of Nha Trang which we needed to get to, and as it was still very early in the morning the streets were deserted so for a change we didn’t actually have taxi drivers shouting at us everywhere we looked. Just our luck....but we made it there eventually to our home for the next few days called True Friends Inn. A nice little place just along from the beach and it only cost around £21 for the both of us for 3 nights which wasn't too bad seeing how we were in the more touristy part of town this time.

This part of Vietnam is well known amongst Russians as the place to come on holiday.....and at the time it seemed like the Russians far outnumbered the Vietnamese people who lived here! It was still a fairly nice place though although there isn't a whole lot to keep yourselves busy apart from lazing around on the beach all day (We've got a tough life haven’t we!!) although when we did go down to the beach on one of the days we found it to just be full of Russian men in the smallest speedos ever....all doing the same pose of standing there with their hands on their hips (this became quite disturbing after a while as everyone seemed to do it and you can’t help but stare and wonder why they all do this). Anyway we still can't complain really as everywhere we have been so far the weather has more or less been amazing with us missing pretty bad weather only a few days before we have arrived so we have both been able to get out and enjoy our time where ever we have been.

There still seemed to be a fair amount of backpackers in the area aswel, as our hostel was always full and our 6 bed dorm always seemed to have British backpackers in there which was actually quite nice for a change! As for the majority of our time in Vietnam we've still been hit and miss weather we manage to find somewhere with good food.....but all of this was about to change!! I think i myself was nearly at breaking point after our latest meal of mystery meat and hard noodles but we were then told by another girl in our dorm about a really nice place just down the road from our hostel itself which was really cheap and had good food, we didn't want to get our hopes up, but off we went the next day and found the small restaurant which looked way too posh for us but we went for it anyway and the food was beyond amazing!! And it was also very cheap. I think from this point we both decided to stick with fish from now on as you know what you're getting and it's all fresh and we seem to also be on a roll as every place we have been to since, the food has been really good so fingers crossed this could be the end of our food issues!

With it being the end of October it was Halloween time! We had heard that a bar close by which was run by some Expats was throwing a kind of Halloween party but we didn’t think too much of it and just decided to maybe go and have a drink after we had dinner.....which then somehow ended up seeing us drinking all night and finishing off at a beach party. When we had gone to this small bar we had heard about it turned out that it was actually a really big thing, the place was heaving with Westerners all in fancy dress with the surrounding street slowly filling up with curious Vietnamese locals who seemed to have never seen this kind of thing before, and before i knew it i myself had been grabbed by a small Vietnamese woman who worked at the bar and through me into a chair and began painting my face for Halloween......to this day i'm still not sure what i was meant to be but the locals seemed to like it. As the evening moved on, so many locals had gathered outside of this bar that the Police eventually came to move the locals on. We also ended up getting talking to one of the guys from our dorm and we ended up in a small group, we met another 3 girls from the UK Backpacking over this way and soon we had started our own little bar crawl through Nha Trang (not that there’s a lot of bars there) soon we had had enough of the bars and decided to go down to the beach, where the Vietnamese had actually put on a mini kind of festival, with a large stage and there were obviously some well-known bands on stage as the locals were going crazy.

On hearing this we all decided to sneak into the party, past the stern looking Communist Police and before we knew it Jade and a few other girls had been thrown off the stage 3 times! In the end the Policeman who kept kicking them off had enough i think as for the rest of the night he just stood on the stage and stared at us the whole time (never annoy communist Policeman, it probably wasn't the best of moves!) It did turn out to be a really good night however and was probably one of the best Halloweens we had both ever had!

With the last day now here and both suffering from the previous night, we still wanted to get out and do something on out last day, so we persevered and rented out bicycles for the afternoon and decided to cycle out of the main town to a Spa which Jade had found and convinced me to go along with her......now i'm not the kind who goes to Spas but this was a really well known one in Vietnam for mud baths, and as it was something different i thought i had to give it a go, if anyone reading this is over this way it is definitely worth a visit, it's called Thap Ba Spa and easy enough to get to.....it's really worth the money aswel, for around £3 each we got a mud bath, host mineral bath, a hot and a warm mineral swimming pool and jukuzee so you definitely get more out of it for the amount you put in. We then headed for some old ruins which were just down the road from the Spa, the Po Nagar Cham Towers which were quite cool to look around, it's just a small temple but it’s also a good place to go for views out over Nha Trang. Soon the hangovers were gone and we were once again ready to move on again to our new destination the next day.

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Photos

Jade, Charlie, Sarah
Halloween Beach Party