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Published: October 20th 2009
Good Morning, Good Afternoon and Good Night Blog Fans,
Photos comments are a little mixed, but i'm sure you get the idea....
Previously on Lost……….oh no…… previously on the Blog: Kate and I were about to head off to Hoi An which was a mere 4 hours on the bus. We got to Hoi An and found a hotel which ticked all of the boxes i.e. it had air con and no cockroaches. In fact, to be fair, it had the biggest bed ever, a bath in the bedroom as well as a shower room, a balcony and an outdoor swimming pool, so it ticked more than just a few of the boxes and all this for just £13 a night. We explored Hoi An, walking through the old streets which were full of tailor shops, tourist shops and restaurants which were all set in the old town area which is very old style French looking. Within a few hours we stumbled across the Cargo restaurant, which turned out to be a great find. The first evening we ate at a restaurant named “Morning Glory” where all the food is cooked in the middle of the restaurant, the food
was good and certainly set a high standard for the rest of our time in Hoi An. Every morning we made our way to Cargo (previously mentioned) where they offered a unrivalled selection on pastries, of which Kate and I could not resist, particularly as the pain au chocolates came in at 20p (I loved it more than Kate to be honest, every 5 minutes I must of mentioned how good these things were and tried to tactfully walk past and pop in again).
We hired bikes in the day time ($1 per day) and cycled to the beach which is 4k outside Hoi an. (my chain came off en route so I was somewhat oily when I arrived). We were greeted at the beach by a number of Vietnamese ladies dressed as though they we were in a ski resort, each offering us one of their sun loungers on their section of the beach. How do you choose which one to take up on their offer? Well, one very good sales women cleverly enticed us with her call of “free parking”, I mean we were only on push bikes and the others wanted to charge us? So, with
that, we decided to sit with this particular lady. I asked her why she was wearing woolly gloves, a hat, a face mask, socks and 3 layers, I mean, it was 30 degrees. Apparently they are seen to be poor if they have dark skin so they cover every inch of skin in order to reduce the chance of tanning very different to us Brits! The beach in Hoi An was very quiet with few people there, in fact most people there were selling something or other, mainly nuts, fruits or drinks. Stopped for a drink on the way home at a bar on stilts on the river very peaceful (see pic).
In the Evening we went out for a meal in an open air restaurant and ran into our favourite Irish couple, Paddy and Deidre (Dee) and 3 Swiss girls we met on the Ha Long bay trip (Ha long bay trip on previous entry) and Chris our new Australian friend from Adelaide. We had a few drinks with “the gang” and all of a sudden the heavens opened and it started to rain cats and dogs, well not cats and dogs they were on the menu, but
it certainly rained very heavily! As the rain started and as we were all sitting in an open air restaurant we started to get a little wet, but as by magic lots of old women appeared holding rain ponchos trying to sell them to all the diners, we bought 2 for $1 a piece (I ripped a hole in my poncho as I opened the packaging ) classic!
Got bikes again the next day and cycled around the shops looking for some “bargains”. I know everything in Vietnam is a bargain in our terms, but we wanted a bargain in Vietnamese terms. I bought 3 really touristy t-shirts, these really help the hawkers see that I’m a real sucker for touristy things so they now are all over me like a rash. Kate was on the hunt for some dresses so we cycled for miles and miles looking for the perfect dress for Kate. We found a shop that had a good array of dresses so Kate proceeded to try some on. Eventually we found 2 dresses that looked great and fitted well ($5 a dress) happy days!
Met up with the gang in the evening a had
a lively night in a bar, I mean how can it not be lively in a pub with the Irish. It was a late one in Vietnamese terms as we found ourselves wondering the deserted streets at 1:30 in the morning. It was quite spooky walking around the dark street but knew I had Kate there to protect me…..
The next day we just took it easy and had breakfast at the pain au chocolate place and then we had lunch there too before we took to the road again.
We had pre arranged our transport to our next destination, Nha Trang. We took a 12 hour sleeper bus journey on a coach which had about 40/50 beds on (see pic). I’m not to sure why they call it a sleeper bus as I did not get much sleep. But we got to Nha Trang without any problems and found our Hotel for the next few nights. The Tulip Guest House, $14 a night. The beach here is amazing, with great sun loungers and palm leaf parasols . For those who don’t like the sea or the sand there are also resort areas spread along the beach,
they are basically restaurants/bars that have a pool and loungers where you can stay all day for £1 (See pics), it is like a 5 star resort with waiter service - loving it and definitely not feeling like a “traveller” yet.
Whilst on the beach we again ran into our favourite Irish couple, Paddy and Dee (randomly sat next to them). We all decided that we would like to go diving whilst we are here so we all booked to dive the following day at 8:00am. So the next day we headed off to the Octopus dive centre to meet our group for the dive. There were 3 Americans, 2 Australians, 2 Irish, 2 Dutch and us 2 on the trip. The weather was great again with the temp up into the 30’s. We all got into a mini bus and drove 5 minutes to the harbour where we boarded the boat. I got on the boat and listened to the safety briefing and the equipment explanation, however I then started to get a little sea sick and insisted that no one spoke to me until we got to the reef , as questions like “are you still feeling
sick” and “try to focus on the horizon” really don‘t help when all you want to do is be back on dry land. The boat journey only took 30 minutes but by the time we arrived at the reef I was not feeling good at all and most of the other passengers had noticed as I had lost any signs of a tan and was more of a pale green colour. We were asked to put on our wetsuits and get our dive kit on, but due to the sickness I did not participate in the dive and instead became designated cameraman for the day. Kate put the diving gear on, dived down with a dive instructors and swam around the reef. Kate said the colour of the fish were amazing and the variety was unbelievable. Each dive (2 dives) took around 35 minutes in two separate locations off the coast of Nha Trang. Whilst Kate and the others were diving I just had a quiet lye down on my own, trying to work out exactly how long I would be on this boat and if I would be ok. Kate really enjoyed the experience which was the main thing
and maybe we will find somewhere else on our travels that does not require a boat journey to be able to dive!
Today we have been to the beach enjoying the sun as it has been very hot (34 degrees). We had lunch on the beach whilst we watched “our” beach security guard warn off hawkers from our area. We are heading to the mud spa’s tomorrow just out side Nha Trang which will be some real fun I’m sure.
Most common things said to us so far:
1) You Buy Something from me?
2) Where you from?
3) Happy hour, happy hour!!!
4) Motorbike?
5) Come in, Come in
6) Another Beer?
7) You Married?
8) You Handsome
9) You Beautiful
10) I do you good price
Next Stop Mui Ne………….
Matt & Kate
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John Wheeler
non-member comment
another week, another epic----, looks beautiful, sounds very interesting, food seems very important, great to be meeting fellow travellors, that is probably as memorable as anything, we look forward to the next instalment. Love John, Margy and Charlotte and Gramps. Harvey and Bruno are not impressed about the rainfall.