Hello again!

To continue our blog, we arrived in Nha Trang very early on Easter Sunday. We checked in to our hotel and literally got straight in to bed and had a few more hours sleep before heading in to town and getting our bearings. Nha Trang is such a lovely place, it's quite a small coastal town and really not what we expected from Vietnam! The beach is relatively quiet and there are more local people there than tourists which is nice to see. The town itself is like Thailand 10 years ago - there are places to go, but it's not completely overrun with nightclubs and western bars which is one of the things that we didn't enjoy about Thailand. The weather is very similar to the weather that we were enjoying in Thailand and we prefer being on the coast so much because of the lovely breeze. It gets pretty hot inland as we discovered in Bangkok and Saigon!

One of the first things that we did was sign up with a scuba school to enrol in our Advanced Open Water course. After our wonderful diving experience on Koh Tao in Thailand we couldn't stop thinking about diving and wanted to progress and learn more. To our delight, it was cheaper to do it in Nha Trang so we were feeling extremely smug that we waited and it's great to dive in a new location as well. The guy that took our course is actually a Course Instructor which is the highest level you can get to so we were really lucky to have him teach us. His name is Mike, he's from Texas and basically left his life back home to travel the world diving and teaching. What a fantastic thing to do: a real inspiration. The Advanced course is over 2 days and you need to do a total of 5 speciality dives which you can choose.

On our first day of diving we took the boat to the first dive site very early in the morning and did a navigation dive. It was really fun as we each got a compass and had to try and navigate ourselves underwater - we were both pretty hopeless and it was quite funny trying to argue with each other underwater, but we did our best and passed the test so were quite happy. We then did a buoyancy test which was all about controlling our buoyancy underwater and our breathing which was really good as it is helping us to control where we are in the water when we dive (because as a new diver you tend to float up and down all over the place). The second day was even better, we did our first 'deep dive' to 30 metres which was incredible (Holly's ears were fine, she has learnt a tactic to stop them from hurting) and we also dove through these giant rocks which was so scary but fun too. Then we had a break on the boat and went down a second time to do our photography which we absolutely loved. We have taken some really brilliant photos of the coral and fish (mostly Matt, he has a talent) which we will put up on the blog when we can find a computer that lets us do it. With only one dive to go we were almost there and the last dive was a very scary 'night dive' which we really didn't want to do! We got all kitted up at about 6.30pm when it was getting dark and had to walk from the scuba school down to the beach in all of our scuba gear (including the heavy tank!) much to the amusement of everyone that saw us. We did our first water entry from the beach which was pretty easy (usually we jump off a boat), but it was so weird doing it all in the dark! A group of Vietnamese kids were all watching us from the shore and clapping and shouting at us as we went under which was funny - we would have preferred to have stayed with them than go under, but we did it and we're proud we did it now! The dive was only 45 minutes but felt like 45 hours and we didn't really see very much. It was really eerie having to hold a torch and not being able to see all around us and trying to keep up with our instructor (not Mike, some crazy Chinese guy who did everything wrong and seemed more interested in having his own fun than keeping an eye on us!). We saw a ray in the distance and lots of starfish and fish hiding in the sand, but other than that there really wasn't much to see in the dark and we have decided it's not something we would really like to do again. After the night dive we had completed our Advanced Open Water course and were so proud of ourselves and excited - it was fantastic!

The following day we just enjoyed being on the beach (our tans are coming along nicely) and relaxed. We met up with our dive school that evening and went for a traditional Vietnamese dinner out of the main area in town. We would never have found it or even considered going in if it hadn't have been for our new friends. The place was almost like someone's back garden full of plastic chairs and tables and as we entered about 30 Vietnamese faces turned to stare at us. We were literally the only western people there!! We were given a little BBQ to cook our food on, and they just bought plates of raw meat and bread to cook on the BBQ. Matt enjoyed frogs legs (that were still beating when he put them on the BBQ), beef in a honey sauce, loads of seafood and chicken. Holly just ate a really nice salad and bread soaked in a honey sauce and cooked on the BBQ - the meat was a bit much!! Washed down with some lovely local beer it was easily one of the best meals we have had since being away and we were so glad that we went. We finished our evening with meeting up with some friends from our China trip that we happened to bump in to (we were walking along the street and suddenly heard "Holly!" as they ran out of a restaurant!), so it was nice to catch up and share travelling stories. Matt stayed up to watch the football at 2am (crazy boy) but it put him in a good mood as Man United won (phew).

Today it rained and rained and rained so we've run out of things to do! Luckily we are getting the night train this evening to our next destination 'Hoi An' which is further north so the weather should be a bit cooler than it has been here in Nha Trang. We absolutely loved Nha Trang, it's very relaxed and friendly here and we could really see ourselves staying longer. Some of the people we met have committed to spend a few months out here learning how to dive and doing their 'Dive Master' qualification which is the next step after the Advanced course but we can't afford it and we have already booked our flights to Australia so it's time to move on! We will try and upload some photos when we get to our next destination so you can see us diving and the beautiful beach of Nha Trang. Until then... goodbye! Holly & Matt xxxx