Nha Trang

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Sleeping bus. Horrible.
Gem was short enough to fit in the seat properly, for the rest of us it was agony. the layout of the coach is 3 seats wide, 2 aisles, top and bottom bunks, and 1 toilet. you have to take your shoes off when you get on the bus. we were right down the back (away from the horn, but right over the wheels). lucky for me somebody had kicked in the little shoe locker at the end of my foot space, so i had a little bit more leg room, but there was a sharp high strip of metal where the divider used to be attached. i was SORT of comfortable, but not really. (saw one guy sleeping on the floor in the middle of the night. thats the way to do it). Anyway your lying there, trying to sleep, and the bus is hooning along tooting and swerving etc. i swear he hit every pothole on the way. some real monsters too! i woke up a few times coz i was getting air in my seat! We wont be catching another sleeping bus.

So we were just walking around Nha Trang on that first morning and there are dive shops everywhere. absolutely everywhere. we were just going to go snorkelling for a day out at one of the reefs and i thought, flag that, im going to do my open water! so i did, over the next 3 days i completed my padi open water diving course. sweet as! Gem wasnt keen so she did some other stuff. Diving Nha Trang is AWESOME. So much cooler stuff than looking for Paua! I saw lion fish, stone fish, scorpion fish, clown fish, pipe fish(like a straight seahorse), sea snakes, schools of angel fish, schools of trumpet fish, fish fish fish all sorts of tropical fish! and corals, all sorts of corals, the big ones that look like tables, the cartoon pipe ones like in spongebob, the soft ones, the fan ones, all sorts of anenomes complete with finding nemo, lots of slugs theyre actually called nudibranches, they get pretty colorful, and the list goes on. divings the bomb everyone should do it. Gems super jealous now after hearing me ranting and raving about it every night.

So i was fully occupied by that everyday.

-Gem-Chris did his open water dive cert, that was over 3 days. He really enjoyed it, sounds like he saw some choice things! I just spent the first day wandering Nha Trang, it was so flippen hot! 2nd day I went on a boat trip to some islands and went snorkling, there were about 30 of us, most were asian and only about 6 of us were english speaking. The tour guides were hilarious, their names were Monkey boy and Lady boy. Had lunch on the boat and the crew made up the "boy band" which was hilarious, two singing, one on a plastic bottle thing as a drum and a cymbol, and another on a tamborine. This asian woman got up and danced by herself, so cute! Then her husband joined her, it reminded me of you guys mum and dad! I'm sure it was mostly rock n roll moves 😊 After that the boy band made us all get up and dance, I hadn't had enough beer but everyone was getting into it, so had to be done! After that we anchored up and set up a floating bar, the drink was free but it was some awful red sweet stuff from Da Lat... was free though so was all good! Ladyboy must love his job, sitting in a big tyre, plying everyone around him in life rings (and himself) with drink. Met an Aussie couple who we had dinner with that night, and also a couple from the UK who were going on the sleeping bus to Saigon that night. Poor things!

The next day I read on the beach in the morning, the sun is so strong I was under shade the whole time. I think I got a bit burnt crossing the road back to our hotel, which is a 5 min walk! So many girls were just baking in the sun, kinda grossed me out as they're going to be wrinkled as! The beach wasn't the nicest to swim at though, it was pretty brown from the rain the previous night. Also doesn't look that clean. And youre sitting there trying to read your book and get interupted every 10 min "you want to buy something" "you help me" blah blah. Gets annoying!



After my last day diving, finished at about 2, we decided to go to these mud baths. missed the bus, so we thought lets hire a motorbike and drive ourselves. all good hire motorbike for $6, jump on away we go. it was absolutely harrowing! people swerving, bikes, buses, cars, all jostling for position with you. nah it actually wasnt that bad. once your in the traffic flow you just go with it and move a little bit if you need to turn, pretty easy. bit of a white knuckle ride on the way back though as it was starting to get dark. but still fine, just go with the flow.
The mud baths were great. go in there for $8, and this guy shows you to an empty pool. once you jump in, he flicks a tap and warm liquidy mineral mud starts flowing through a pipe and filling your bath. then you use a bucket to pour it all over yourself. nice. had enough? go wash it off with a super hard shower, then walk through a tunnel with hundreds of jets of steaming water, emerge on the other side and get shown into another empty bath, which the guard fills up with hot mineral water. pretty blissful treatment.

Now we're in Da Lat a mountain town. this place is the centre of extreme sports in vietnam. tomorrow we're going canyoning. Sweet.

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