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Published: June 13th 2009
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We sadly left Hoi An on our first overnight sleeper bus in Vietnam to the coastal city of Nha Trang. The sleeper bus was luxury compared to our Indian sleeper buses - but still a sleeper bus none the less. The seats were very narrow, you could not be a large person and even fathom fitting in the seat - it was slightly more narrow than an economy airplane seat.
The seats were lie down seats with a 6 foot length so Kat snuggled in fine but poor Ed had to do some fancy work to get his body fit into the narrow and short compartment. We arrived in Nha Trang at about 6am, checked into our hotel, run by a Canadian fellow, and as per usual went to bed for a few hours. The hotel was ok, but a tad expensive for what you got - $20 for a very average yet clean room - shower head exposed over toilet with A/C and TV - however the big thing for us now is if breakfast isnt included in the price then its a no go. Cafes end up costing us $6 for breakfast which just adds to our daily
bill - we haven't adopted the pho (noodle soup) for breakfast thing - so we decided to move to a hotel that was cheaper so we could still have a reasonable breakfast.
Most people come to Nha Trang to spend a few days on the beach - which is what we were planning to do - however on our first day we walked past a dive shop run by a group of French expats and before we knew it we were signed up to get certified starting at 7am the next morning! We decided to go for our SDI (Scuba Divers International) certification instead of PADI (the universal 'top' diving certification) because firstly it was much cheaper and secondly there was no 3-hour exam at the end.
We were picked up by a bus the next morning and met another couple who had been living in London for the past 5-years and were en-route back home to South Africa - they were lovely and a great pair to spend a few days with. We got to our boat which had a crew of about 10 people on it and headed out onto the water. We were assigned an
instructor, Chris, and a junior instructor, Mel, who began discussing the fundamentals of diving to us.
We should note there were no safety wavers signed, not many questions asked it was just like 'ok let's do this'. We should note however that the amount of attention and assistance we got was amazing, every person basically had their own instructor plus 2 crew people to help with all the gear. We were told in Thailand you're generally lucky to have an instructor per 5 people when getting certified.
We suited up into our wet suits, weight belts, fins, masks and were assisted in hoisting the huge O2 tanks onto our backs. Chris jumped into the water and we soon followed. Our first activities were working on our buoyancy so we could houver in the water without damaging coral, marine life etc - this was not as easy as it seemed as most of its controlled with the inhilation/exhalation of your breathing.
Ed spent most of this exercise floating to the surface, coming back down, floating.....we then had a fun dive and explored around Madonna Rock for about 45 minutes. After a few dives it was apparent that Ed
was using a twice as much air as anyone else in the groups (men included)- as well as not being able to get his buoyancy right he was always popping off to look at things on the way, and perhaps his earlier asthma is also a factor.
Our days consisted of 2-dives per day with about an hours rest in between so our body's could release some of the built up nitrogen levels. For one of the dives we worked on skills: flooding and clearing masks, bouyancy, emergency assents, removing BCD's under water, buddy breathing etc then the second dive was always a fun dive where we explored different diving spots. We spent around an hour under water for each dive, Ed at little less as he used up his oxygen at a rapid rate, so he and an instructor would always surface a bit before the rest of the group.
We saw some amazing fish, coral and a few caves (which Kat didnt go in - the whole dark enclosed spaces thing). We also saw a water snake which are very venemous - if you are bitten once you have to get anti-venom very quickly and can
never dive where water snakes are again because if you're bitten a second time you will apparantly die before you even make it to the surface! Good thing we didnt know this until after the dive...we didnt see any sharks (thank God) as they mainly are found in the deeper, colder water. Kat is very freaked out of sharks having seen Jaws a few too many times...
We didnt do a whole heck of a lot else in Nha Trang as we were exhuasted by the end of the day. We were literally falling asleep when we were eating dinner at 7pm. We had a few nice meals there: a nice french one at Le Petite Bistro, a mexican one at Coyotes, and a great one at a Vietnamese institution (cant remember the name) where you cook your own food on a coal bbq at your table - AMAZING.
Our certification went so quickly, we couldnt believe we had already completed 6 dives + night time class room instruction and were being handed our cards and t-shirts already! We are really looking forward to some diving in Koh Tao - one of the dive meccas of Thailand. We
also met a really cool guy named Pratic from New York who completed his open water dive on one of our days who we're going to meet up with in Koh Tao.
We had also been toying with the idea of taking a road trip on the back of motorcycles down to Saigon and were going to look into a group called 'The Easy Riders' when we got to Dalat. However, one guy named Danh approached Kat saying he was an easy rider and had a huge bike (looked like a Harley Davidson- but on closer inspection it was a Chinese reproduction!) and said he could take us to Dalat then onto Saigon in 3-days. So, again, before we knew it we were signed up for a 3-day road trip by motorcycle trip down the coast of Vietnam leaving the next morning!
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