Tuesday 19th March
We have now got to Vietnam and are back in very hot, sunny weather. Our ship anchored off the Port of Nha Trang so we had to get a tender and then a shuttle bus to take us into the centre of town. Nha Trang is much bigger than we had imagined it to be. It has a long sandy beach with a lovely shady promenade. Most local people seem to travel by bike mostly ones with an engine but also push bikes. They don't take much notice of traffic lights and nobody seemed to signal where they were going - you had to be careful when you crossed the road!
We went in a taxi to see the main sights in Nha Trang. The taxi was very comfortable and took us first to a place called Hon Chong where we heard a local legend about the granite rock formation and heard some music played on some traditional instruments. We then drove to the Po Nagar Cham Towers. These towers were built between the 8th and 12th centuries and inside the main chamber is a shrine to the goddess Uma with her ten arms. From the towers there was a good view down to fishing boats in the harbour.
After this we went on to the Long Son Pagoda. This is a Buddhist temple and behind the pagoda buildings and up over 150 steps is the huge white Buddha that is in the picture. We then visited Nha Trang cathedral to end our taxi tour.We had a stroll along the promenade to finish our visit to this lovely town.
When our ship sailed out the sun was setting and it looked beautiful. We sailed past lots of islands and small fishing boats. Each of these boats has a light, many of them quite bright and all evening when we have looked out to sea there have been loads of these little lights from fishing boats.