Blogs from Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa, South Central Coast, Vietnam, Asia - page 3

The bottle-nosed Russian on my right started pulling on my arm, seeking my undivided attention. We're sitting in a Vietnamese sports bar on a Sunday night watching the Olympic 4-man bobsled finals because there isn't anything else to do in Nha Trang at night, especially for a dry drunk like myself. The girls are cooling their mitts with bottles of Tiger beer. So we're watching the winter Olympics from a balmy tropical shore and the fully-occupied bar stools are groaning with Russian bottoms and this guy sitting at my right starts pulling on my arm so that he can give me, in slurred Russian, what his observations are with regard to the technical merits of the run we have just watched. Russians are very touchy, feely people. They have no concept of body space. This goes ... read more

I'll admit it. At home I'm considered short. Though I keep telling people that if you average out heights around the world I am definitely average, I still have to navigate a world built for giants. Every chair I encounter calls for a decision: perch on the edge so my feet touch the ground or lean back all the way to have back support and let my feet dangle. In our last house I needed a foot stool just so I could cook in my own kitchen. So imagine my pleasure, no my euphoria, at discovering that the Vietnamese plan their cities and homes around people who are a reasonable height. Chairs in restaurants and cafes are downright comfortable and stairs easier to climb, hand rails are at the appropriate height. I feel as if I've ... read more

When I was reading about Nha Trang before, I wasn’t exactly sure whether to include it in my itinerary or not as it simply looked like a party place. With a nice beach that is… Some people were even comparing it to Koh Phangan and the full moon party, with this difference that these kind of parties were taking place here on a daily basis apparently. Since Koh Phangan turned out to be nothing close to a party place – we really enjoyed our stay there and thought of it as a very relaxing and beautiful place actually (maybe because we escaped it just before the full moon? Naaaah… We just stayed away from all the craziness… ;)), we decided to give Nha Trang a try as well. If only to break down the journey south ... read more

The rain greeted us in Nha Trang. We jumped into a taxi to take us to the guesthouse that Poppy was staying at. As it was only about 7am and couldn't check in, we sat in the computer room and had a bit of a snooze. Poppy came down a couple of hours later and we moved into a 3 bed dorm. I bumped into Lawrence (who I had met in Ko Phi Phi, Thailand) before going out wandering the streets of Nha Trang along with Christina and a couple of other girls we met. We went to Long Thanh photography gallery, a photographer known for his images of Vietnam. After a spot of street food for lunch (some weird white soft textured gel in cups served with sweet chilli sauce) we made our way back ... read more