Nha Trang

Barely awake we stumbled off our overnight bus from Hoi An into the early morning light of Nha Trang to collect our bags from the hold. By now my faith in the repair job I had carried out on my broken backpack strap, now reinforced with layers of duck tape, was much higher so I was less concerned about the aggressive unloading of the baggage by the driver. The majority of our travel in between towns has been arranged through one company, The Sinh Tourist, as we know in advance where we will be dropped off, however touts and hawkers are also very aware of this.

Nha Trang is a well known beach town and offers almost zero historical or cultural attractions merely miles of white sandy beaches and watersports so we planned to take the opportunity to relax for two days. We found the hotel soon after leaving the horde of touts but made the mistake of crashing onto the bed on arrival in our room and failed to get up for a couple of hours. Eventually, slightly more awake, we packed a bag and headed for the beach where for about £1 we could reserve a sun bed for the day right next to the tiki-bar. The worst thing you can do the night before a day on a blisteringly hot Vietnamese beach is try to sleep on an overnight bus as you arrive on the beach shattered and very likely to fall asleep. This happened to brutal consequences we were unaware of until later.

Before falling asleep in the 30^oC sun I enjoyed a very refreshing coconut milk served directly out of the shell while overlooking the South China Sea across to Vinpearl Island on the other side of the bay. This scene was however slightly ruined in two ways. Firstly by a questionable chicken and chips we got from the tiki-bar but secondly, and more significantly, by a strange gathering of middle-aged and barely clothed men a short distance in front of us who soon joined in with a game of volleyball with a couple of very young local boys. Something didn't seem right.

Struggling with the sun but enjoying a coconut

When sunburn concerns started to mount we headed back to the hotel conveniently in time to catch the majority of the Malaysian Grand Prix on television in our room. In China I downloaded a game called Tiny Wings on my iPod, but it seems that it wasn’t until Nha Trang that we became addicted to it, so Linz spent the time during the F1 demolishing my high score.

In the early evening we headed outside to the road just up from our hotel where we found restaurants and bars all competing for the attention of the tourists using a combination of neon lights and leaflet waving reps. The scene resembled a slightly watered down version of what you would expect to find on a Mediterranean tourist island. Having wandered by a few restaurants and turned down a number of happy hours, we chose Lanterns which was a Vietnamese restaurant you had to access over a tiny stone bridge seeing as it had its own river in the doorway. I couldn’t help but think the river was in fact a moat separating the rather elegant looking restaurant from the drunks that would probably be passing by later that evening. Here we went really local and opted for a shared Hotpot seeing as it was a Vietnamese classic. The waitress brought over a stove as well as raw beef, noodles and vegetables and then gave us a quick lesson on how to cook it all as we would be doing the rest ourselves. This was one of our favourite meals as not only did it taste good but it was fun to prepare. In addition, if you don’t manage to eat it all its very easy to hide the excess food in the water remaining in the pot.

The hotpot before being devoured

We chose to eat early so we could head over to one of the towns leading attractions; Vinpearl Land. Vinpearl Island sits opposite Nha Trang beach and is reached using a cable car which, as well as an upmarket resort, has a theme park and water park. Apparently you can spend a whole day at either of the parks but we thought a couple of hours to go on a few of the best rides would be enough. Having initially shut our entry tickets in the lockers, much to the annoyance of the keeper of the keys, we made it onto the cable car and onto the island. At first it looked like a good decision to come to Vinpearl Land as we enjoyed a few, albeit fairly tame, rides including a rollercoaster but twenty minutes in it changed. We realised very soon after arriving that we had in fact done every ride except two as Linz feared out about one and the other was too young for us. They were an upside-down spinning, swinging contraption and the flying elephant ride. You decide which Linz was too worried about. However, we did find an arcade which offered about 20 free retro arcade machines including a classic football game with just a joystick and a few buttons. It pains me to say it but despite following football almost all my life and owning most football games that have come out since I was about ten, Linz beat me. Twice. I didn't even mange to score a goal.

Rather than join the extensive queue for the cable car we killed some time hoping it would go down by going to the 4D cinema. Vietnamese people don’t know how to queue so we ended up letting half a dozen in front of us rather than deal with them slowly pushing us along. Needless to say we missed the next showing by exactly half a dozen people. Eventually we got in and, despite the presence of children, claimed a front row seat. The animated film appeared to be a blatant copy of the classic scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where they ride uncontrollably down a series of mine shafts in a cart. The difference here being the presence of a creepy prospector and the occasional gust of wind in our face. We left mainly amused by how entertaining the locals found it all. The queue for the cable car had shorted so we joined and eventually made it back to the mainland. Conveniently the bar at the end of our road was playing the Newcastle v Aston Villa match so, for the mere price of paying for Linz’s drinks for 90 minutes, I could sit and watch the match. Unfortunately we lost as Newcastle appeared to have a similar ability at scoring goals as I had earlier.

The following day confirmed our suspicions that we had been thoroughly ravaged by the sun the previous day as my back and Linz’s front were horrifically red. We had no intention of hoisting a heavy bag on to our shoulders, which both of us had burnt, and instead decided to stay an extra day in the hotel and not even venture outside. At one point we had to however, to by our bus tickets for the next day, but having reached the road the pain was too much for Linz so she had to return to the safety of the room and the bottle of after sun we had bought. Among various other things on TV we watched Terminator 1 which turns out to be a much better film than I remember, and somehow I convinced Linz to watch Jackass 3 which she surprisingly quite liked. More than the Chinese locals at Guilin train station at least.

That evening we went to a restaurant called Why Not? Bar where we could confirm that the Vietnamese are not bothered if they serve one customer on a table before the other seeing as my meal didn't arrive until Linz had finished hers. My curry was worth the wait though. We returned to the hotel for an early night as our bus to Dalat was early the next morning, stopping only to claim a couple of ice creams for desert at the place next door we had been to on our first day.

Nha Trang at night taken just after being offered various services by very shady characters

This time our intercity travel was on a standard seater coach as the trip up the mountains to Dalat was only four hours. To begin with the trip was nothing special however as we began to climb the scenery became quite spectacular, but I was left frustrated by the locals as they all must have been used to the view as they all closed their curtains. This meant, from my aisle seat, I could only see out of the one window next to Linz. The biggest issue with the bus was still to come as it seems that even though the locals may be used to the view they certainly weren’t used to the bumpy ride as people started being sick everywhere around us. Conveniently sick bags had been provided but they don’t prevent us hearing it, or more importantly, smelling it. Arriving in Dalat couldn’t come soon enough and we left the coach having to pass by various bulging sick bags. As soon as my feet hit the pavement I found myself truly understanding why people like that fresh mountain air so much.