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Published: April 11th 2010
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March 21st - March 26th I’m not sure how other western travellers get about in Cambodia and Vietnam but we only came across a handful while travelling on the buses and trains. Maybe they all fly? Anyway we were something of a novelty on the train from Saigon to Nha Trang and were openly stared at for most of the journey by a woman who looked to be about 107 years old. The people are all friendly though and quick to return smiles and help out when we look lost. However there are some dubious habits that we will never be able to get used to such as spitting on the floor (it’s slippery stuff too), eating the most foul-smelling things ever in the form of dried squid, not having any concept of personal space and finding it acceptable to push people out of the way.
The train was nowhere near as clean or as new as the one we travelled on in Thailand but was comfy enough. We had chosen seats in the soft seat air con carriage over the hard seat carriage. What a relief too because we saw the hard seat carriage with wooden benches and
grilles over the windows that looked like it was taking prisoners to Auschwitz.
Nha Trang is a delightful coastal city with a population of around 200,000 and plenty of choice in terms of accommodation, restaurants and bars for all budgets. We stayed in a great little apartment at HQ Apartments and Café run by an Aussie and his very pregnant and very lovely Vietnamese wife. Our two bed apartment was massive with a separate lounge complete with TV and internet enabled computer as well as a huge fridge which came in very handy. All this for only $49 between the four of us - bargain!
The beach at Nha Trang was much nicer than that at Sihanoukville with stacks of loungers. Of course there are the hawkers on every beach and we were asked numerous times if we wanted a massage, fruit, lobster, jewellery, books etc etc. I can think of nothing worse than being massaged on the beach when you’re all hot and sweaty. Gross.
Aside from sunbathing and looking around the very lovely clothes shops we ate some amazing Vietnamese food at
Lanterns, great Italian at Fernando’s and yummy seafood at the very fancy
Sailing Club, which wouldn’t look out of place in the south of France.
We also enjoyed a marvellous snorkelling trip for just $12 that took us out to Hon Mun island where we saw the most amazing coral, certainly on a par with the Great Barrier Reef if not even better, and a vast assortment of colourful fish. Unfortunately the water was also teeming with jellyfish and we all got loads of stings. It was very painful but we didn't bother weeing on each other. Thankfully the next snorkel site was jellyfish-free and we saw so many beautiful fish and with the visibility being so great and the sun shining the colours looked so vivid. It was magical.
Happy birthday Simon
Simon turned 35 while we were in Nha Trang and for his birthday treat I took him for a couple’s treatment at a spa. I always find the best presents are those you can enjoy too! I did buy him a hat too but he decided it didn’t suit him so I had to keep that. We went to SuSpa which is rather fancy and started off in the steam room. Unfortunately we could only endure this for 15
minutes of the 30 as we thought we may die of heat exhaustion. Then we had an aromatherapy massage which was very thorough followed by a long soak in a rose petal strewn bath. It was all very relaxing and between each treatment we were served ice cold ginger tea and afterwards were given a delicious panna cotta dessert.
The lovely people at HQ arranged for a birthday cake so Simon got to blow out some candles (they didn’t bother with the full 35 as it would’ve been a fire risk) and we headed out to eat at
Louisiane Brew House before hitting the Why Not bar for a few buckets. We had run into Ronan, a guy from our Africa trip, earlier in the day and he and his girlfriend Dee joined us for drinks. It was great to catch up and we ended up staying out until we were kicked out of the bar at 4am. Needless to say Simon wasn’t feeling too flash the next day and spent the majority of it in bed.
After a blissful five nights in Nha Trang we got on another train, this time for 10 hours, to head north for a
spot of culture in Hoi An.
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