Nha Trang

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Nha Trang was exhausting and not really the greatest city we've been too. We both agreed that the place was very touristy, and that if it didnt have a beach it wouldnt even rate a mention on the tourist map. Bianca and I enrolled into a four day Open Water diver course at one of the many dive centres there. The course pretty much consisted of 2 days of classroom style learning (watching instructional/propaganda videos) and then diving in a Navy pool in the afternoons. Following those two days were two more days consisting of 2 dives per day out in the ocean.

Bianca:
When we arrived at the dive centre on the first morning and met our instructor...i wouldn't have chosen that dive centre had i known that she would be our instructor as i felt i got a cold reception from the very beginning. That afternoon in the pool this went from bad to worse for me. By the end of the day i had decided that there was no way i wanted to continue the course with her in charge...so left scott to continue without me. I did one dive (to 12m) in the ocean...which wasnt half as good as i had expected...the site we were at didnt have much marine life which was a let down. Still I'm happy i decided to do the one dive, but that was enough for me. The next three times Scott went diving I chose to snorkel with the Vietnamese boat staff (one on one)...which i enjoyed much more and got to see heaps of really pretty fish (because the locals dont seem to have a problem with touching coral, picking up sea snails and star fish and chasing fish out!!

Scott:
I had a much different experience to Bianca diving, luckily I didnt feel any animosity between the instructor and I (I think maybe because im male?) and we got on ok. The first day of pool diving was a really weird experience. The actual underwater process was pretty different to how i had imagined it, and it took a bit of getting used to. By the second day of pool diving i felt more comfortable with it all and was looking forward to a change of scenery.
The first day of sea diving was...odd! For one it was my birthday, and secondly i woke up feeling sick, i think from my malaria medication, and this combined with a birthday breakfast of an omelete resulted in one sick Scott getting into a small boat for a 45 minute journey to the dive site. By the time I was in the water for my first dive i was feeling pretty queasy, and decided to feed the fish...like a mummy bird!! After that i felt a little better and managed to actually notice that i was 12 metres under the ocean, breathing from a tin can! The first two dives that day werent that great because they were more skill dives, with our buddy we had to practise the skills we'd learnt in the pool.
The final day of diving, we had our last two dives. The first dive was pretty much the same as the first two - more skills stuff, but the final dive was pretty much a free for all. My buddy and I left our instructor and went out with one of the local guys, who like Bianca said was...pretty much open to anything and wasnt going to win any conservation awards! This turned out to be really fun as he knew where all the good fish were and would chase them out with his air. The last dive was definately worth it and was a lot more like what i expected diving to be.

Bianca:
Our final day in Nha Trang was the best...the morning was spent out on the boat snorkelling and diving until about 2pm. After lunch (at a yummy indian, italian and vietnamese place with the best chicken samosa's ever) we set out to find somewhere to go parasailing! This proved harder than we thought as by then it was about 4:30...the first place either couldnt be bothered to get the boat out or was honest when he said they weren't doing it until tomorrow....so we walked along further to the Ana Mandara resort (wow....beach front bungalow...for about 460US a night!) and did a bit of a cash in hand deal with the boat guys. Scott and I sat on the sand for about 20minutes while between 3 - 8 Vietnamese guys pushed the boat along the sand and into the water...by hand....we felt like rich snobs watching do all this manual labour so we could have about 5 minutes each in the air..! I went first...by the time they had the boat in the water the sun was setting...which looked really beautiful. I flew up past the city center and back again and landed beautifully on the sand. Scott was not quite so fortunate...after his tour of the bay, the boat driver must have also been struck by the beauty of the sunset as he drove past where he was supposed to let scott down...and only realised he'd gone too far when the guys on the beach were yelling and waving their hands around frantically. What happened next was the funniest thing i've seen the whole trip...it had me laughing the whole 15minute walk back to our hotel. Scott came down - oh so gracefully - on his butt, in the water, managed to stand up...and was then dragged a couple of meters further...face down!! I can still see the poor Viet guys faces!! How amusing! Scott said the last thing he saw before smashing into the sea was a HUGE dead fish...it would have been even funnier if he had landed on that too...but sadly he missed it. We walked back along the beach, me in hysterics, and scott quite grateful that i had convinced him to wear his boardshorts (just in case he was to land in the sea...) to indulge ourselves a little. For 100,000dong each - about 8AUD we got a one and a half hour massage with between one and three staff massaging us at any one time...tough to put up with...but someone has to do it!!

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