After a relaxing few days in the beautiful Hoi An we had to get back on the night bus (Thankfully the last overnight bus!) to get to Dalat. After getting to the bus stop at 5pm, the bus finally came for us at about 6.30pm. This gave us some time to make some friends though which is always good, especially before a long journey! We worked out a strategy between the five of us to get the best seats. This kind of worked. Mike had wanted to sit on the bottom bunk after the experiences swinging around on top. However when a drunk Vietnamese man decided he was going to sleep in the walkway and proceed to cough and splutter over Mike for the next 10 hours between drinking we decided the top bunks are definitely better. On all the night buses the drivers will let on locals when ever they are waiting at the side of the road no matter how many are on board. This means that once the beds are all taken, the walkways fill up with people sleeping and sitting which isn't great.

Anyway, after a couple of hours it seemed like this driver was even crazier than the others. The bus was rocking all over the place and felt like I was going to be catapulted out of the top bunk. At one point something at the back of the bus went and it then sounded like it was dragging along the road. We pulled over and the driver checked the tires, etc, then got back on so we assumed all was fine. A little later we then pulled in to what turned out to be a garage. when one of the drivers hung up his hammock and pulled over the cover we realised that this wasn't going to be a short stop. Stephanie (one of our new friends) got off to ask what was going on and how long it would take. Eventually they told her that a tyre was flat and it should take about an hour. At the point it was 3am. After another hour and a lot of noise I got off to see what was going on. The back axel had snapped so they had taken off the wheel and a guy was led under the bus trying to weld it back together while a couple other guys held things in place. While about 30 people sat/slept on board. There was also something leaking down the other side of the bus. Hopefully it was the aircon, but we'll never know. We did get to see the sunrise while we waited though which was pretty nice. After a total of 4 hours the driver got fed up of passengers yelling at him for information while he pretended he couldn't speak English, got the engineer to put the wheel back on and started up the engine. Again, not ideal.

After another 3 hours on the broken bus we reached Nha Trang. We had missed are connecting bus to Dalat due to the bus problems, and even if we hadn't neither of us had any intention of getting back on a bus that day. The weather was amazing so we decided to stay in Nha Trang for the night and joined Stephanie at her hotel which she had pre booked.

After a quick shower we went off to see the Cham temple in Nha rang. It was pretty cool as it wasn't like the other pagodas and temples we had seen in Vietnam before due to the Hindu influence. We wandered around it for a while the headed for the beach to catch up on some sleep and make the most of the sunshine. the beach was pretty nice (Mike didn't agree but he's pretty hard to impress when it comes to beaches) and it was nice to have a swim and relax after the hectic night! We also had some really great food in the evening with fresh spring rolls and lemongrass chilli chicken.

Nha Trang itself didn't have much to offer, and it's a shame we didn't reach Dalat but we did get to see a beautiful sunrise and spend a Monday morning on the beach, so you win some you lose some!