Blog : Nha Trang

We caught the worlds s***test over night bus from Hoi An to Nha Trang. It was massively over crowded, with people having to sit on the floor in the aisles, smelt horrendously of cheesy feet and was disgustingly dirty. I got inside my silky liner immediately and didn't want to move. It was also a long journey, 11 hours at least and it had no toilet on board, joy! The bus was wiggling all over the road and so trying to sleep and balance on the top bunk was pretty hairy and needless to say, when we arrived in the morning it was one of the worst grumps I'd been in for a good week or so! Nha Trang at a first impression was not how I had expected, it was a high rise city full of Russians, rather than the nice, maybe French looking beach town I was expecting! It was also pretty bloody hot, even at six am. We shouldered up our backpacks and walked off to try and find the hotel we'd booked on the Internet for us all. It was down a little side alley which meant finding it was hard, but in the end we managed, flopping down in reception before fearing up to explain that although we'd booked three twin rooms for us five girls we actually only wanted two, with an extra bed in one. It was not an argument we won and in the end we gave up and said we'd just pay for the extra room for one night. Al and I were roomies and KV was going to take the double room alone for the night, with Helen and Christa taking the third, but we couldn't check in until 2pm anyway, 2pm!! We were there at six thirty in the morning!! In the end the hotel agreed we could all leave our bags in the lobby and would have a room ready at 8:30am for us to shower in etc. So in the mean time we went out in search of breakfast and anything that half resembled a bed, for a lie down! We past a dazed looking Hatem on our walk, who had just gotten off a separate bus so he tagged along with us for brekky as well. We found exactly what we were looking for in the Sailing Club, a pretty swanky place on the beach that had shaded, massive double bed loungers, was open and served breakfast. It was expensive but we were prepared to pay - flashpackers again! I ordered a passion fruit juice which was freshly squeezed and very nice, three times the price of the exact same thing outside at a street vendor though, but we really didn't care! We hung out there, dozing and chilling and using the wifi until almost midday, when it really did become too hot and sweaty to be in our warm bus clothes and we headed back to the hotel - Thang Bom.

Having been given the key to mine and Als room, immediately I got straight into the shower as I smelt unbelievably bad. After a sweaty bike ride round Hoi An the day before, dashing to the tailors and then to catch the bus, sweating on the bus overnight and also pissing all over my feet and down my legs at the multiple side of the road wee stops we had, I felt disgustingggg! A shower perked me right up and after Al had had one as well we got our stuff together and headed to the beach. We made a massive long line of all eight of us sunbathing and it was a nice afternoon, going in and out of the sea and listening to my audio book on my iPod. We had all said we'd go to lunch around 1:30 but from about one we had all fallen fast asleep, with mouths wide open and probably valuables everywhere for a good two hours. We all felt quite crispy bacon faced and had rosy chests! Obviously noone slept that well on the bus, it was not just me wide awake all night! We had lunch in a place nearby that the Lonely planet recommended as good for cheap Vietnamese eats, I ended up having a pesto pitta! The restaurant was full of westerners who had also clearly read the lonely planet page on where to eat in Nha Trang! It was alright though and not too expensive, £2.50 for sandwich and a drink and it filled the hole, having all had breakfast so early in the morning!

Kate, Helen and I went for a little walk along the beach after lunch, just to let it settle and as the sun was beginning to get lost behind all the huge buildings on the beach front. We went back to the room and chilled for a bit, napping and getting our Skype calls in to home, before heading out to meet Al, Tom and Sebastian for dinner at an Italian place round the corner from our hotel, called Olivia's. They did excellent pizza and I ends up having the veggie one with broccoli and carrot on it, an interesting combo, but it seemed to work! It was. The cheapest place but we decided to have a cheeky cocktail anyway as well and I had a zombie, which reminded me of being in Koh Lanta with B, as that was his fave! Once we'd finished dinner we walked back to our hotel via a corner shop and we picked up some vodka, pop and beers to take up the the roof lounge of the hotel, which sounds a lot swankier than what it was, just a room with lots of windows at the top of the building, set out ready for free breakfast the next morning! We got some tunes on and had a few drinks before going to the once monthly beach party at the Sailing club, that we'd discovered that morning. We ended up not even leaving Thang Bom until close to midnight and everyone wanted to go to a backpacker bar before going to the swanky Sailing club where no doubt we wouldn't be able to afford a water, let alone anything else! So we went to the why not bar instead. After a little walk around the obvious strip area we noted that there really weren't that many people about; that those that were, were a bit deformed and weird looking and that everyone was Russian! As a joke Christa suggested we should get the why not bucket to share between us all that said it had about five bottles of different alcohol in it, al t with fruit punch and before we knew it, a cold box sized thing was dumped on our table, full of fruit punch and a super strong alcoholic mix. I was planning on ordering a fruit juice or something so it wasn't really what I felt like but was counted in the numbers for paying and so for £4 figured I should at least have a few drinks. I did spoon a whole cup full of ice I to my glass first so that everything got diluted (the ice melted really quick as it was still warm even at that time of night) and I found that it was alright to drink when it was really watered down! We must have been in the why not bar with everyone (apart from Sebastian, as he had an early morning scuba dive) until about 1:30am and I thought we wouldn't even make it to the beach party as the bucket was still half full! But we did, we all took one last cup full for the road and thought we'd try and sneak I to the beach party from the beach side and avoid paying the astronomical cover charge for the 30 or so minutes left of the party. We got caught obviously as everyone's subtlety wasn't so great after a couple of drinks and I think probably the red cups in our had looked quite out of place compared to the martini glasses and jugs that were being served at the beach bar there. We were escorted round to the front of the sailing club and somehow we were let in for free on the condition that we left our drinks outside. It was quite a random next hour with Helen wrestling a Russian man to the ground, dancing to dubstep and hip hop style music n such a sophisticated beach club, with no shoes on and being surrounded by so many shiny Eastern European shell suits and euro trash women with huge t*** and tiny arses! We all stumbled home and into bed and slept well that night after a long and busy couple of days!

We had planned to get up early and go to Vimpearl, a waterpark, amusement arcade, aquarium and mini theme park on an island just off the coast that day but by the time we'd checked out and moved a couple of numbers down the side alley to a new hotel which was cheaper and had a three bedroom room for us it was mid day! Everyone was really feeling the hangover and so we deduced that going to That Ba, a natural hot springs and mud bath spa would be a fun and relaxing thing to do and lonely planet recommended it. So we booked through a travel agent for six of us to go, Hatem wasn't interested and poor Sebastian was holed up in bed with food poisoning, and get pampered! It was completely not what I had expected though, it was like a centre parks spa with loads of Asians and Russians. There didnt seem to be anything natural about it... I was expecting a muddy desert type thing with holes cut into the earth that you got in, covered with thick mud and then ran through squirting hot springs like you used to a sprinkler in the garden when you were younger. Instead we put all of our things into a locker, had a quick shower in salt water and then all sat for fifteen minutes in essentially a hot tub full of thin grey/green mud that was gritty and full of short black hairs which was absolutely disgusting. Some of the girls put it on their face but all I could think about was this disgusting mud getting all up in my bits and how on earth I could wash it all out in the very open and communal showers! We were told to sunbathe next to dry the mud, which sort of just went a bit crusty and we were sat right by the showers and were transfixed (and horrified I should say) and the fattest fat Russian women I have ever seen, showering, lifting up flaps of saggy belly skin to clear our more congealed green mud and shoving their hands down their pants, revealing full minge, presumably to clean up. It was a hideous sight and poor old Tom had to go and stand facing a wall when right in front of him another brute of a Russian flopped his c*** out to scrub gunk off it - bleurghh! We all said we felt like Kate Moss clones that day in comparison to the size of the other bodies on display! After our shower, which was actually surprising difficult to maintain modesty in, whist trying not to encourage thrush down below, we all went to the next stage on the spa conveyer belt, communal bathing. We all sat in another tub with dark hairs floating around in it with warm water running through, this was meant to be enriched with minerals good for the skin but really we all just looked a bit poorly and green tinged! After that it was more showering - aka 'dry-your-skin-out-and-loose-your-tan-ing' and then to the swimming pool. We sat and sunbathes for a little while and some people ordered a bit of lunch - I wasn't hungry as I had gobbled a whole mango on the minibus to the spa. But the tiny little flies everywhere finally got the better of us and we went to the front of the spa complex to Q for our minibus back to the hotel. We got dropped off right outside Ganesh, another version of the Indian restaurant we'd stuffed ourselves silly at in Hoi An and as we were booking a table for later that evening, half the group plonked down, really to have an early 5:30 dinner! It was absolutely delish again, I had a spicy veg curry which had cauliflower, chick peas and paneer cheese in it and a peshwari naan, which sadly wasn't my favourite, although obviously I demolished the lot! We had a pretty quiet evening and I took advantage of the computers in the hotel reception to back up all my camera photos onto our snapfish account, which took forever(!) so I busied myself looking at flats at home to rent its the boy. We had agreed to go to Vimpearl the next day so we all tried to go to bed at a reasonable time so we could be up early and make a day of it!

Entry tickets to Vimpearl, including the ride across the water on the worlds longest over sea cable car, were pretty expensive in relative terms, half a million dong, which usually covers about four nights in an alright hotel or hostel! But the Liverpool lot had told us we had to do it and that it had been one of their best days in Vietnam. We were on Vinpearl island by 10am and climbing onto our first ride shortly afterwards - a spinny-roundy-upsidedowny with two harnesses and a cage thing that was so f***ing scary that after my initial terrified screaming, I couldn't even draw breath, was trembling, clinging to the safety bar and Christa and praying for my life. I literally ran off it the second my feet touched the floor and it must have taken an hour to fully regain my colour! Later in the day I saw the ride going again, I hadn't opened my eyes at all whilst I was on it so I didn't know what we'd actually done but we had been housed completely upside down and span around upside down for about 2 minutes before being slowly brought back round the right way up, whilst still manically spinning. The second time I saw the ride I noticed how much of a gypsy fairground ride it looked! After the ordeal on spiny-roundy-upsidedowny we headed to the coasterbob (imagine Sergei the meerkat saying that and you'll have an idea of what all the Russians I. The Q in front of us sounded like!) It was one of those luge things where you have a little gokart on the tracks down a hill and through lots of trees and wilderness and you can control your own speed sort of thing. It felt quite Austrian. I liked this one as it didn't go to fast, even without any breaking, and we zoomed around pulling silly poses for the action shot cameras! It was such a hot day though and the second were standing or moving in the sun we were all sweating like animals so we headed away from the theme parky bit and through the amusement scare, where we went on the dodgems which were hilarious, although Al got whiplash :( and on a load of free slot machines and played the reaction games. After a quick ice cream stop for the boys we continued to the water park, the bit we'd all been most excited for and the first slide we went on was a coloured six lane one that was on all the Vinpearl posters. We all raced on foam mats that you lied on your belly on and went pretty fast, it was really fun until the end where I hit my throat on the top of the foam mat, which was actually quite hard as I came to the bottom and slowed in the deeper water bit, which was pretty painful. Helen did exactly the same so we were walking around flexing our jaws and swallowing all day to try and loosen the bruising! We then went on another ride called tsunami, which is where you got launched into a water half pipe in a rubber ring which was quite scary but fun! KV and I went in a double which was fun as we went super fast and high with our combined weight. We had lunch next in a bit of a naff restaurant, where noodles or spinach were the only things we could feasibly afford and then dashed straight back to the slides, Qing at the family rapids slide for a giant six man rubber ring. We nearly went off the edge several times on that ride as we came quizzing round corners at lightning speed! It was great though and the boys went on a couple of the other flumes that were the closed in ones, which I don't like because they make me feel claustrophobia and I always catch my back on the joins between the plastic :( We had another couple of goes on the six lane slide and the tsunami and I was brave enough to go on it in a single ring, which was so scary!! Late afternoon we began heading back towards the cable car, but we went via the aquarium, which was amazing, we must have spent a good hour or so inside looking at all of the sharks and turtles and stingrays and millions of fish. I think it was the first aquarium I've ever been to and I was amazed standing on the conveyer belt as I was transported under a domes glass roof with sharks and everything swimming above us all. Before we left we Qed up to do the luge coasterbob one more time and we also went on the pirate ship just as it was getting dark. We had had such a good time, running around like big kids and spent a full day there, which we thought at least was our money's worth!

I think we had dinner again in Olivia's that night and I remember being a bit disappointed at the carrot and broccoli pizza second time round! Although we did have a nice bottle of Vietnamese wine between us which felt quite civilised! We went to Why bit bar again as well after dinner for a drink and some chilled shisha, which tasted like plastic - strawberry is a s*** flavour! I didn't come home too late that night as I was knackered and we had another early morning the following day for our Vietnamese cookery class.

We had to be at Lanterns at 9am, ready for a day of cooking. The lonely planet had recommended this restaurant as the best place to do a cookery class thanks to its commitment to the community and support of many outreach programmes with a percentage of the class costs. So us five girls all head down and we have an ozzy couple in our group too, who were really nice and first things first were introduced to Nam ("like Vietnam but only the end bit") who bless her was tiny and the cutest thing, cracking jokes all day and who said she learnt to cook from her mother rather than any fancy smanzy culinary school, so we were learning real authentic Vietnamese :) We all got taken to the market on little cyclos, basically a comfy chair attached to the front of a push bike that crazily old men frantically pedal around down with huge great fat Russians on them, or in our case, the only overweight travellers you would find in SE Asia! We went round lots of different stalls where Nam told us things like how to judge the sweetness of a carrot by the size of its core and how to select perfectly ripe mangos. We went with her to buy all of the local ingredients we would need for the three dishes we'd be learning later in the day and also, every time we saw or commented on so etching we liked the look of, should would buy a little piece, so we could try it. We were all given little pastiche bags of freshly pressed sugar cane juice as well (in Asia they even put drinks into plastic bags that they rubber band fasten around a straw - so much more economical than all our polystyrene cups and non recyclable plastic lids yada yada. We saw lots of unusual things like duck embryo eggs, pregnant fish, live frogs, pigs ear and again like in Sapa, dog :( this market was a lot cleaner though than the Sapa one and didn't make me want to vomit anywhere near as much, with no blood on the floor and most vendors serving from clean ish looking work surfaces. Back at Lantetns after another cyclo ride Nam began by showing us how to prepare a clay pot and get the meat marinating. Al and I both made tofu clay pots instead of using the pork or chicken though. It was lots of thin veggie chopping and mixing of sauces and flavours but the bit that surprised me the most was the addition of food colouring ("for making the foods more attractive for eating" said Nam) We were to turn the colour of our stew essentially red instead of its natural white/creamy colour. We also used powered knorr stock instead of the restaurant making their own which I thought was a little bit lazy! The vegetarian stock was mushroom and seaweed, but tasted of neither! We then went on to learn the technique for fresh spring rolls which were absolutely delicious and definitely a recipe il be adopting back home for lunch boxes and/or healthy snacks to keep in the fridge!

After we'd demolished our spring rolls, I had prawn and veggie (tofu and egg) we each had a little paragon stove set up on from of us to cook our hog pot, which tasted incredible! We were given done rice and spinach to eat with it and I couldn't even finish the whole lot! For pudding, not that any of us needed it, we made flambéd fruit, pineapple, mango or banana and it was fun frying with such a huge flame made from the banana rum used to flambé. The pudding was quite sweet and I was actually horrified at how much butter and sugar went into it - I'd probably gave ordered that thinking as its fruit, it'd be healthy! I had to put half my tofu clay pot plus rice into a takeaway box as I couldn't eat it all and later I had it for dinner. We went for a drink again that evening, but only for a little while as once again the tiredness had really caught up with me!

On Kate and I's last day in Nha Trang we headed straight to the beach to try and catch some last minute rays before heading inland to Da Lat for a couple of days. Al and Christa were going to stay until the weekend in Nha Trang to see one of Als friends and Helen was going straight to HCMC to sort out her Indian visa. We managed to get some colour from the beach and where if been a bit haphazard with the sun cream i managed to burn one side of my nose. Kate had funny tan lines all over her though! We had a light lunch in a lovely kitsch little Greek restaurant we found - my Greek salad was amazing and they have us a free sharing plate of pudding which was like chocolate fridge cake or wet granddad cake - ssooooo good! We sunbathed until we completely lost the sun and then headed back to the hotel with KVs Vietnamese frond Ashley, who she went to Halong bay with, who recommended trying a Vietnamese hair wash, for 80p or something so we were all keen and Helen and Christa sat down to go first in this clapped out and very local looking hair salon. After some seriously vigerous rubbing and pounding, both girls got up from the washing chairs with giant birds nests for hair. The two Vietnamese hairdressers had completely matted their locks, to the point where Christa couldn't even bare to let the girl comb it out for her and the second Helen got back to the room she slathered on mountains of product to try and tame the frizz. Needless to say, Kate and I backed out of having ours done for fear of it turning out the same way and not being able to get the knots out! We went for dinner to Lanterns on our last night together and Helen and I were the only ones slightly disappointed with our food - we both ordered seafood, I fish and she prawns, which just came in a big deep fried, battered mush, which neither of is were quite expecting from such an authentic restaurant :( On the way home we popped into the Russian bar, which looked like full, to share a shisha and fix up our plans on where we would be meeting back up and timings for travelling through Cambodia together. KV and I headed home around midnight as we still had to pack our bags and shower before getting up at the crack of dawn and walking to the bus office, with our backpacks, to catch the early day bus to Da Lat...