NHA TRANG

27/09/07 - 29/09/07 Haang Ha (Yellow River) Hotel $6 p/rm

As we were still suffering with the big city blues we decided to begin our trek up north. We booked an open ticket with a company called An Phu Travel which gave us a sort of "hop on - hop off" tour of Vietnam. We set off around 8 and stopped off in a beautiful town called Muine for lunch. Muine is soooo beatiful that in hindsight I'd have definitely made sure we got to stay for few days. It has gorgeous beaches and looks like some sort of honeymoon destination. We also managed (for once) to have some bright sunshine... so we forgot any thoughts of eaching lunch in favour of lounging around on the sand for a while... fantastic!

The bus travelled along the coast, next to the mountains which gave us some awesome views and made the hefty around 10hr journey slip by more quickly... unfortunately by the end of the journey we had managed to land in the middle of (another) tropical thunderstorm with sheet lightening that quite literally lit up the landscape for miles around. Cool, but scary!

Drove through the centre of Nha Trang which was completely flooded (think Newland Ave earlier this year) so got dropped at a hotel a bit further away from the centre where we didn't have to swim!

An Phu, as with most other travel companies) tend to drop you off at some affiliated hotel... telling you it's their office, then once they have you through the doors they try and bully you into staying there. Luckily us english are particularly tight and me and Mel are on a super strict budget, so we just headed a couple of doors down the road and managed to get a much nicer hotel for around half the price... great! This place also had three super friendly guys working there who told us anything we needed to know and recommended us somewhere good to eat!

Turns out that Nha Trang, despite looking gorgeous in photo's isn't really that great. It's a pretty unfriendly place, where tourists are told on no account to carry a bag around after dark, or go anywhere alone. The beach is made up of scratchy sand and is chocca-block with beach sellers. There are a lot of day trips you could do, but the most popular appeared to be ones where you go and see monkeys dressed in sailor boy outfits doing a dance.... sounds abit like cruelty to me! So instead we had a few beers and chilled on the beach for a day before catching a night bus oughtta there. Muine 10 - Nha Trang 0.

We tooka night bus from Nha Trang at around 7pm and as we drove through the town to do some pick ups things seemed to be getting going... but it just looked like a load of drunk tourists to me so I don't think we really missed out.... hopefully the further north you travel the better!

The night bus itself wasn't that much fun (is an 11 hour bus journey ever?) as our last bus had been pretty quite we decided to sit separetly in the hope of getting a seat to ourselves and a more comfy journey. I managed to keep a seat to myself, however the guy opposite me wasn't content with one set of seats to his self and decided he would use mine as a footrest for his stinky feet. I tried my best to be polite, but eventually it got ridiculous so after I kicked his feet off a couple of times he got the hint. Meanwhile Hazel had some guys who's hands wandered onto her thigh everytime he fell asleep and Mel had a loopy old lady who thought we were at her stop everytime we stopped for traffic lights or a toll booth. Add to this the usual crazy driving over here and it wasn't a great journey, but it got us from A to B cheaply which is the main thing!