After four excellent days enjoying the Hoi An high life we had just a few hours spare before the long, overnight bus journey south to Nha Trang, the next stop on our Vietnamese adventure. Before then we made the most of our last few hours in this charasmatic and beautiful little place. After spending virtually the whole day wondering the streets, stalls and shops we finally tore off the spending shackles and bought enough local produce to rival any of the local busnisses. Sticking to our daily budget has, at times, been a bit of a struggle but despite buying a stack full of items we even managed to stay within budget, which probably tells you more about our tightness than it does about the local prices. To be fair to the two of us though, we have become clinical barterers. It's going to be strange, when that day finally comes along again, when we have to buy milk and bread from the local Co-Op without the ability to knock a few pence off. I guess we could give it a try but I think the special employees may get a tad confused.
After buying quality chop-sticks, some much needed vests, a few pictures, another tacky magnet and Shell's replacement 'travelling' engagement ring we were done, glad to retire to another great (and cheap!) restaurant to fill up before our long journey. We ate at a place called Morning Glory, which despite the name, did yet more amazing food without a male waiter in sight. You never know, they could have taken thier employers name literally! The food was delicious, yet again, but we decided that the service wasn't up to scratch, not enough smiles. It's amazing how you start to pick up on things now! From there we seemingly did a 'food crawl' and went over the road for dessert. A place that had cake portions the size and shape of a breeze block, I opted for Tiramisu and Shell the Mango cheesecake and within a milisecond several pounds had been added, and I don't mean the bill. As we sat finishing our coffees we noticed an old boy walking down the street holding a big set of weighing scales. He went up to the nearest female he could find and threw it at her feet demanding she step on. It just never get's any less surprising to me, the enterprising spirit of this nation. It's as if the whole country wakes up in the morning at 6am, looks around the room and thinks 'how do I pay for my scooter petrol and cigarettes today?'.
Back at the hotel and waiting for the bus we were startled by two guys in helmets on two motorbikes. They got off and beckoned us to get on, with all of our bags. Now I honestly can't remember ever being on a motorbike before and I know Shell certainly hasn't, so this proved to be a bit of a challenege. Turns out, these guys would be giving us a lift to the bus which was waiting downtown. So on we got, both of us with our big rucksacks on our backs, the smaller bags on our front, I was carrying a bag of two 2 litre bottles of water in one hand and, embarrasingly, two small quiches balanced in the other that we had bought for the bus journey, all while hanging on to old Valentino Rossi for dear life. You really can't make this stuff up, a real British wally.
After being the last two people to get on the bus, we were ingloriously pummelled into the last two remaining berths, one in one section of the bus and one in the other. We were on a similar bus before, with three rows of beds, but this even had people sleeping in the exceedingly small corridors between the beds too. So in my section there were four people sleeping pretty much side by side all the way, for 12 hours! The bus also, amazingly, played really really shit Vietnamese pop music really loudly until at least 2am, at which time an old German guy had obviously had enough and went absolutely mental, I think threatening to eat the driver if he dared to turn it up a notch again. At that point we had turned into wrecks after being pummelled all through the night by a dual nightmare of both poor roads and terrible driving.I guess the only salvation of the bus trip was meeting another English couple, Mark and Luara, who we instantly got along with. Upon reaching Nha Trang we exchanged email addresses and planned to meet up the following night. Just as long as we could stop looking and feeling like relatively tanned zombies.
After checking into our hotel, Le Suisse, we plonked down our bags and managed to get a couple of hours sleep in before we woke, took one look at the Blackpool-esque weather outside and decided to take a long breakfast upstairs. The breakfast bar, on the tenth floor, is pretty special, it has amazing views of the mountains to our back and ocean to our front, interspersed with hotel high-risers, something which is all over this town, a kind of laid-back and overall better version of somewhere on the Costa Del Sol. Not that it looked anything like holiday weather outside. Despite this, we finished our breakfast and headed out to explore our new surroundings. That night we met up with Mark and Laura, after a marathon skype session with friends and family and headed to one of the local bars for drinks. They're situation is scarily like ours after getting engaged just before they came away too. Unlike us though, they have everything planned and will be getting married soon after they arrive back in the UK next summer, good on them though, really nice guys. I doubt we will be that organised. My role in this wedding thing has alrready been and gone! Well apart from demanding a hog roast and real ale stall. I don't want much...
The next morning the weather had changed and so had our impressions of Nha Trang, transferring instantly from shitty Northern beach resort to tropical paradise. Maybe the latter is a tad flattering but we both love the beach and Nha Trang supplements that with a bay that curves around, dotted in places with little islands. The beach itself is good, apart from the absolute incessant hawkers who try to sell you anything from sunglasses and bracelets to books and flat, dry pancakes. In any one day I think the average, 'no thankyou' count stands at around fifty, truthfully. The sea itself it majorly rough, but apparently this only happens in late October-early November, the rest of the year it is furtively calm. Nice. After seeing Mark and Laura down on the beach we planned to meet up later that night again and head out for curry, one of the guidebooks reccomendations. It turned out to be as good as they suggested in the book and an absolutre steal for around £3.50 each!
From there we got hustled into one of the bars with promises of a about a million drinks for free. I don't know if it is like this usually but I have got absolutely no idea in the world how this place makes any money whatsoever! Between the four of us, beacause of various drinks deals, we had two bottles of Tiger beer and either a Gin and Tonic or a Mojito between us and it cost 20,000 VD each, (55p!!). Absolutely insane.
For our final day in Nha Trang we essentially read our books and sat on the beach, batting back the constant array of sellers and planning our next moves down towards Saigon. We are well on our way now! What a life this is. We are certainly not taking it for granted. Tomorrow we take a bus south for around 4 hours to a mountain town called Dalat, a place where strawberries and flowers are grown widely instead of the usual rice, a climate that may mean we don two layers, no way!
Much love, Tommo xxxx
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