The Free Day

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25th January
We slept for most of the 10h bus ride and when we woke up at 6amwe found ourselves in a beautiful sea-side town, Nha Trang. Of course the moment we got off the bus we had people pestering us with offers of their hotels...'cheap cheap, you look look, you no like like, you no buy buy'. But we decided to have a look look and a walk walk on the beach by ourselves. After finding a hotel and settling in the free stuff began to roll on...a fre motorbike ride on a Harley Davidson to the 'easy rider cafe' for fre coffee and fre tea. Obviously all of it was just another way of convincing us to take a five day tour through the mountains to Hoi An. (Which did sound amazing but after consideration we decided it was out of our budget and time span) Therefore we booked another over-night bus for the folowing day; this time it was to take 15hrs and we'd end up in Hoi An. The rest of that day was spent on the beach, we were free with nothing to do but read, rest and relax. We also made friends with a Chinese family (one of whom's birthday it was) and they gave us free cake and beers. In the evening we did a little sight seeing tour around Nha Trang where we were particularly impressed by a 10m high carved stone Bhudda in a spectacular pagoda.
The next day we spent mainly on the beach resting before our long journey that night. Unfourtunately the sky was quite cloudy so we didn't fel like swimming however at some point an old guy from Norway came to us asking for help with releasing 3 turtles. He had bought them at the market andwanted to save them from the dinner table. It was a great experience to swim them out although after a while it became very tyring as the waves were big and the tide on it's way in. This meant that the confused turtles were ending up back on the beach where the local Vietnamese people awaited them - knife and fork in one hand, salt and pepper in the other...whilst licking their lips. After several attempts Rob managed to swim them all to safety, far enough from the shore so they didn't get washed back...luckily we never saw them again.
At 7pm we boarded the bus and regreted the lateness of our booking...we had the worst possible seats at the back, cramped, no lights and five people all next to eachother like sardines in a tin. Fourtunately it only took 11hrs not 15 as we had been informed.

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