Nha Trang is by the sea and I didn't stray far from the path between my hotel and the beach - this part of town was beautiful, relaxed, colourful and packed with cheap restaurants and bars. Everything looked very new, clean and tidy. The beach was glorious and not too busy because it was low season. Even the hawkers there were relatively few, more friendly and less peristent and than I had experienced elsewhere. On the beach it was possible to do paragliding and suchlike so a couple of the girls had a go.

After a long day of sunning ourselves we had a great dinner and then headed for 'Ladies Night' at the swanky Sailing Club bar by the beach. An hour of free cocktails served by the barman from Blackpool were followed by an impressive fire show on the beach. We danced until they closed at 3am and then went to the Why Not Bar which stayed open til 4am. Claire and I continued on until the early hours with some Americans that we'd met but it came to an abrupt end when she hit her head against the wall so we headed back to patch her up and grab a few hours sleep.

We spent the next afternoon recuperating at the nearby mud baths - after a shower in special mineral water, a bunch of us hopped into a vat of liquid mud. When we came out we sat on hot stones to let the mud dry, which was followed by another mineral shower, hot and cold mineral water jets, a hot mineral water bath and then hot mineral water swimming pools and waterfalls. It was a slightly bizarre experience but genuinely relaxing and invigorating. Vietnamese women generally wear t-shirts and shorts to go swimming so the sight of a bunch of pale-skinned foreigners in bikinis attracted a lot of stares.

Thankfully the traffic was much calmer in Nha Trang than it had been in Ho Chi Minh City but they found a new way to be annoying - when vehicles reversed, they loudly played the tune of Happy Birthday!