4 days at the ocean in Nha Trang!

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Signing back in again. Let me apologize first for my horrible spelling. I am just using wordpad and have no spell checker. Blame it on the barely adequate education system. This is my fourth night in Nha Trang and today has been hard. I have done great this whole trip but this morning I woke up with horrible diarhea and vomiting. I also have some severe body aches that just made moving around today hell. It was bound to happen I just hope I dont have ghiardia and that it goes away tommorrow. I am heading to Cambodia tommorrow and can't imagine feeling like this traveling.

This morning I did come very close to heading to the hospital though. I was getting severely dehydrated as when I would drink a few sips of water I would have to vomit it all back up again. I was getting so thirsty and was picturing an IV in my future. This all started at about 4 this morning but by 10am I was able to take water in that did not come back up though. Still really bad bodyaches and diarhea though. I had to go out today and purchase some passport photos for Cambodia and possibly Laos and I also wanted to see the ancient temples here as well. Was a bad idea though as when I got to the temples I was aching so bad that I could barely walk up the stairs to the temple and the heat was just killing me. I think I had a fever as well. I could barely raise my arm to even take pictures. I tried really hard to get into the spirit of it but I was dying.

I almost headed back to the hotel but at the last minute decided to go to the private beach club that I have been frequenting. I figure if I was going to be sick why not at the beach? After soaking in the cool pool for awhile though I have to admit I felt a bit better. I am still worried about tommorrow though as its evening and I still have the diahrea and body aches. We shall see. I did not eat anything today till dinner when I went to a local restaurant that I had had breakfast at the other day. They make an amazing Pho Bo which is rice noodle soup with beef. Soup sounded perfect and it was. I could not imagine eating anything else.

While there at the restaurant I met 3 retired men from the states who have all retired here in town. One man told me that he does not even come close to spending half his monthly pension here and rents a nice 4 room house a block from the beach for $300 per month. Not bad. I would have liked to have asked more questions but I was not feeling great and headed back here.

Nha Trang has been a nice break from the first part of the trip. Its the beach town here in Vietnam. When people want to go to the beach they come here. Its got miles of white sand beaches and some awesome private beach clubs that you can rent a chair with a cushion for the day for about a dollar and order drinks and food. The one I have been going to has a pool. Its called Lousienne or something like that.

The first afternoon that all I did was head there and lay on the beach. I just read a book and slept the whole time. The next day however, I spent almost the whole day at the Disneyland of Vietnam. On an island maybe a mile from the beach is a large park with a giant gondola going to it. It has rides, aquarium, and a water park. The water park really sounded good to me to be honest. So I motored off to the park. Very strange day. I actually had a pretty good time but was totally alone for most of the time. For long periods of time I was the only patron I could see at the park. I rode a few rides which were very carnival like then worked my way over to the water park. On the way I stopped at the aquarium and was very suprised. It was a gigantic tank with a moving walkway that went through the water all through the tank. I have been to Epcot and to some other aquariums and I have to admit that this was as well done and stocked as any I have been to before. Because I was the only one in the building I actually went in twice and spent several hours total just watching all the varieties of sea life they had swiming over me.

In regards to the water park oh my god. There were several times I questioned what the heck I was doing on some of them as I actually thought I was going to come shooting out of some of the pipes at 100 mph and 80 feet up. I actually skipped some of the slides as I guessed that the issue of my untimely death at a Vietnamese water park was really not something the owners really coould care less about. And boy, You better follow their directions. I went into one slide and the guy up top motioned that I should keep my hands behind my head, my elbows tucked in and my back up and off the slide. As I headed off into total darkness I started to realize the reason for the instructions as layers of my back skin were being grated off at each joint. As the speed picked up I again had no idea what was coming as it was pitch dark but then the slide went vertical and I felt myself falling as if into a dark hole. I shot out into a large round bowl with a hole in the bottom middle of it. Unfortunatly the bowl was not really very wet and as I shot out into it I could feel my shorts building heat as if I was the space shuttle reentering orbit. And with some missing tiles. Right before my pants caught fire i fell upside down through the hole into a pool about only 2 feet deep and was thankful as my shoulders hit the bottom that I had not broke my neck.

Needless to say I never tried that one again and was very cautious from there on out which ones I got on. I finally found my way over to a nice wave pool and every half hour it had some great waves. I pretty much spent the rest of the day there just reading and sleeping and getting in the waves when they showed up. Again, I was all by myself. Very very strange.

After seeing the aquarium I decided that I would scuba dive the next day. There are many dive shops in town and I had brought my PADI card. So I drove into one of the shops and found out that a 2 dive boat dive was only $40 for everything and lunch. Sold. The other thing to recommend to and that sold me was they showed there boat and stated that it was the largest scuba boat in Nha Trang. After getting bused down to the docks he was not kidding. There were dozens of scuba boats all really small with just little benches on them. At the end of the dock however was our boat. It was gigantic. It had showers, toilets, 2 decks with great lounge chairs. For anyone interested its the Cocoa Dive people. And there were only 5 of us going diving so had the whole thing to myself. The boat ride was really nice. The South China Sea is such a brilliant blue color when we got further away from land. Was stunning. We did our 2 dives and the first was nothing really special. Unlike places in the Carribean I have been too the coral was a bit colorless and really very few fish and no big fish at all. Buy hey its diving! Its just fun being down there. and the visibility was actually really good. The 2nd dive was interesting though as we did not go to a coral reef but to a place on the ocean floor with gigantic square shaped limestone rocks and towers. It was like at some time in the past a side of a mountain had just fell into the sea. Because everything was just piled up it created dozens of cavelike passages and routes. We swam through many of them and thats when I found out where all the fish were. There were thousands of fish piled up in these passages and it was surreal to swim through them.

We were back by 1 and off to lounge on the beach again. That brings us to today which I have already described above. I have my fingers crossed that I will be feeling better by tommorrow. Its off to Siem Reap tommorrow and I am thinking about just skipping Saigon all together. There is a meeting at 5:30pm there with the brothers and I am doing everything to be there on time. So getting there a day ahead of schedule. I am hoping that I will be able to meet some of the local brothers or sisters who might be interested in letting me hire them for tours too. We shall see. Its non english so not sure what to expect. Will keep you informed.

I talked to Sara from Ireland via emal and was impressed with her description of Laos and getting with the elephants. I am thinking instead of heading back to Saigon I will head up there instead. Alot depends on flights and schedules however so I will see in the next few days. I have booked 5 nights in Siem Reap at the Kool Hotel and figure that will give me some time to figure it out.

Signing off for now to hit the bathroom. Again.

Dave

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Photos

7th century temple
People sill use these to go into pray. I was aching too much I just could not go in.

Site of our 2nd dive
The small huts on the side of the rock are where gaurds live to gaurd the swallows nests from people who sell them

Kind of creepy
I just pictured taking a shower in this things snot

Comments

[Tammy Peterson]

wow!
Hi Dave, Foster gave me the link to your blog. What an amazing trip!