Simon's despatch: Na Trang
We headed to the famous beach town of Na Trang to give me one last chance at kite surfing and to break up the journey from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC formerly Saigon).
We were only staying one night so first off we needed to book ourselves onto the bus for the next leg of our open ticket from Na Trang to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Disaster the night bus was full! We either had to leave at 8am or get marooned in Na Trang for an extra precious day. Not happy with either option we tried our luck with the night train but not with much hope as we'd tried many times before and it'd always been full.
Success! There were a pair of returned tickets so we stumped up the cash and high fived - no more night bus, yeah! :)
Unfortunately the wind didn't want to play ball, being a little too light on the first day for kitesurfing, so we just chilled out on the beach & enjoyed our last encounter with a warm sea.
Day 2, also being our last day, suffered the same light winds. So we fell back to plan b - a massive splurge on sea based fun activities!
First off was jet skiing which neither of us had tried before. It was fun feeling the acceleration and skimming across the waves with the spray in your face, but 15mins was long enough as there's not a lot else to do but speed up and down.
Next I went windsurfing which I'd not done for over 15 years. This was probably more fun for Beth than me as she got to watch me fall in repeatedly. Then as the wind dropped and changed direction, I got marooned and had to swim the board back into shore and walk it back up the beach - all good exercise though!
Finally with the clock ticking as we had to check out by midday we went parasailing. Now as we'd both piloted para-gliders before I thought it might seem a little tame to just dangle from a parachute dragged around by a boat. So with Beth's blessing I asked the crew to "make it exciting".
They took to this request with enthusiasm! First dragging us sideways off the beach into the sea before we started to climb into the air. The view was fantastic as you reach an altitude of about 50m. Then at the corners, the speed boat pilot deliberately took them slowly before accelerating away, meaning we plummeted into the sea, were dragged across the waves, before rising once more.
It was a fairly rough ride but exhilarating! Unfortunately at the first corner Beth's calf got smashed into some part of me (suspected knee) that gave her an extremely painful dead leg for the rest of the day. This was a problem a) because it really hurt and b) because we only had 30mins to get back to the hotel, shower, pack and old grannies were overtaking her slow limp!
After giving her a piggy back part of the way we decided I should run back to the hotel, explain the delay, shower and start the packing. It turned out we needn't have worried about penalty charges for late checkout, as the lovely receptionist was really nice and even gave Beth some tingly green liquid to rub on her calf.
The rest of the day was injury limited, so we went for an awesome meal at a restaurant Neville (Hoi An food tour) recommended. Full of locals and your table has it's own mini BBQ to cook your beef/vegetables on, which was fun & tasty.
We then whiled away the afternoon in a little 3d cinema where you get to choose which movie you want to watch. In keeping with our Asian travels we chose 'Kung Fu Panda' which was surprisingly good if not an accurate portrayal of life in China.
Finally we ended up on the night train. Ah the luxury! I could lie flat with my legs straight... bliss! The only downside to the night train was the schedule - leave at 19:30 and arrive into HCMC at 4am? Could they not just go slower?!?!