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Published: August 6th 2007
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Nha Trang We arrived in Nha Trang at 6 in the morning after a sleepless overnight bus journey and unfortunately picked the most confusing hotel possible to try and stay in!After an hour and half of being shuffled from room to room in our tired and grumpy state we’d had enough of the completely useless staff so decided to look elsewhere. Thankfully we came upon a nice family-run hotel quickly and crashed out for a few hours.
After a good breakfast we went for a walk on the beach and picked ourselves a spot amongst the hundreds of Vietnamese holiday-makers for an afternoon of reading and snoozing- little did we know this was to be our last dry day for a while!! The town itself was quite nice although the beach quite touristy, unlike the picture-perfect beach at Hoi An. We were spoiled for choice of where to eat in the evening and eventually found ourselves munching on the best lasange (I know we should be eating Vietnamese food but we had a major cheese craving). A little more expensive than we’d usually spend but we could have eaten it again and again t was soooo yummy….and with a free
pagoda
this guy inside the pagoda banged the bell once a minute for who knows how long... beer…can’t be bad!
We pulled back the curtains the following day in shock at the very English-esque drizzle. But we were determined not to let it ruin our day so visited a few of the city’s sights. First stop was Po Nagar Cham towers, a collection of Hindu temples dating back to the 8th century which were very impressive. Next stop was the White Buddha and accompanying pagoda which gave some great views over the city. There were the usual hawkers here, including kids selling postcards of the city. A young girl and her baby brother posed for a picture with chris, were fascinated by the picture on the camera, and consequently asked for some money. We only had some big notes with us and made the mistake of giving them one of the cookies we had….well that was it - every kid in sight came running over and soon we were surrounded! We tried to get a cyclo back o the hotel but there were none around so we braved the back of a moped each which turned out to be much fun:-)
The next day we’d booked ourselves onto a boat trip to the four small
beach at Nha Trang
just imagine it with sunshine - nice
islands lying offshore, which included snorkeling, bamboo boats, a trip to a fishing village, swimming, and much more…..
Well…..The trip commenced with a 30 minute wait on the rocking boat in a diesel filled harbour followed by a 45 minute journey to the first island with Celine Dion’s titanic and ‘we all live in a yellow submarine’ blaring out at us at high volumes. There were only enough snorkels for half the group; those that did get them couldn’t see because the mask leaked and the few that did see saw the murky depths of the dirty tissue-filled bay that we’d moored in, a dead fish from the pollution and not much coral!!! We never saw a fishing village or bamboo boat or the two of the four islands …instead…..we were treated to a performance by the crew (or ‘boyband’ as they call themselves) of the boat. This mainly comprised of our tour guide murdering classic songs but singing them very loudly through a load speaker in a not-so-tuneful voice! This then turned into karoke and dancing with a very enthusiastic Russian lady (bearing in mind this is all at about 10am on a rocky boat in the pouring rain) who was not scared to show her bra to everyone on board! The Vietnamese people genuinely loved the ‘boybands’ performance which culminated in our tour guide turning his back to the audience and caressing his back with his own hands pretending it was his girlfriend…it was enough to make us voluntarily throw ourselves overboard! The afternoon improved slightly with a trip to an aquarium, some pretty good food (for 30 people, cooked in the space of a cupboard) and a stop-off at a nice beach, though still in the rain!
Back in Nha Trang we decided that we may as well move on further down the coast the next day because of the rubbish weather…but we had one last thing we had to do! We ran down to the beach before it got too dark, handed over 400,000 dong to a guy on the beach, zipped up in a lifejacket, stepped into a harness and then ran towards the sea attached to a speedboat before soaring into the sky with a parachute on our back - woooohooooooo! It was super fun, especially letting go of the ropes and pretending to fly like superman. The speedboat slowed down half way, dunking us in the water before dragging us out again and back up into the air like a rocket. Great stuff - definitely needs to be done again.
Mui Ne Next day we caught the early bus down the coast to a small town called Mui Ne - hoping for some sunshine in a quieter, very beautiful seaside resort. I’m sure it is, when you can see any of it - as it is the rain’s pouring harder than before, the wind’s blowing a gale and even the kite-surfers have gone back in their holes. In the blazing sunshine I’m sure we would have stayed here for days-sand dune surfing, windsurfing and sunbathing on pristine sands etc…but unfortunately this is not the case! It sounds like the whole southern coast is similar so we’ve booked ourselves on tomorrow’s bus to Saigon where we’ll stay for a day or two before moving on to, what we’ve heard, ‘sunny’ Cambodia .
pictures to come...
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