Nha Trang

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7th- 11th May

There are only a couple of things I can really talk about when it comes to our time in Nha Trang, this is because we spent 80% of the time underwater Scuba diving.

We really enjoyed our Open Water course in Koh Tao (Thailand) so decided to do the Advanced course in Nha Trang with a company called CoCo Divers. The dive site in Nha Trang is Hon Mun National Park, which is where you find the coral reef and some pretty cool swim-through caves with loads of fish. This course consisted of 6 dives in 3 days and included skills such as buoyancy control, deep dive (30m), navigation, computer diving and photography. Our instructor was a really nice German guy called Jens and as it was only us two on the course we got some really good training and felt that our diving skills improved to a more confident level. The photography also gave us the opportunity to share some of our experiences on the blog.

The other main thing to talk about in Nha Trang is our first experience of mixing with the local Vietnamese to enjoy Bia (beer) and Tram Pham Tram, this is shouted in most local bars and translates to “down in one” or “100%”. As English tourists we caused quite the stir, no one spoke any English but everyone wanted to shake our hands and pass us their beer to down in one. One important thing to remember is that it’s rude to not drink to anyone who raises a glass to say cheers, not a bad rule. We met a few new friends and spent the evenings enjoying beers and limited conversation. But it’s didn’t seem to matter as we all had a great time naming football teams and players from the UK, where local knowledge is vast, with the exception of anything related to Notts Forest. We compared driving licenses to discuss how old we are and used the art of mime to describe what we did for a job, and by the way it’s a lot easier to mime Taxi driver or Computer Engineer compared with Risk Manager.

It’s probably worth mentioning a little bit about the food in Vietnam, ok we had already seen beetles on a stick in Laos but some of the food here is pretty weird. For example 90% of Vietnamese love Dog it’s suppose to be very delicious apparently, other menu favorites include Rat, Field Mouse, Bird, (not chicken, but not sure what bird?) Sea Snake, Snake, (including drinking the blood in a shot glass mixed with rice wine) Turtle and finally Birds Nest Soup. This is the strangest I’ve heard of and consists of a type of Swallow that makes its nest from regurgitated spit and sick. Historically the birds nest used to be eaten by an emperor in the Nguyen Dynasty and is therefore an extravagant delicacy worth $2000-$3000 US per kg. These Swallows nest on an island near Hon Mon National Park and the cliffs are guarded by armed guard who fire warning shots to anyone who comes too close.

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Comments

[JOHN MAGGIE]

DIVING ETC
ANOTHER GREAT REPORT - WE ARE SAT ON BOAT AFTER JUST GETTING BACK FROM A WALK ROUND CORFU - OFF TO ATHENS NEXT DAY. YOU ARE OFF TO SINGAPORE NEXT AND THEN ON TO SYDNEY. MISS YOU BOTH HAVE GREAT TIME - PICTURES ACE. SPEAK TO YOU SOON WHEN YOU IN AUS!!!!