We had heard a few stories about the buses not being great and soon found out for our self's they are true. At least they had 'sleeper' seats, a leather bed that just doesn't quite lie flat. When we got on the bus there were hardly any seats left luckily Mel managed to grab two seats next to each other, the bus was well and truly rammed. The beds themselves wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the mentalist that was driving! I'm sure buses aren't built to go that fast. Then we pulled over and picked up more people but there were no more seats so the bus attendant proceeded to put mats and bits of cardboard in the aisle for them to sleep on! So a very over loaded bus with people asleep in the aisles which we were told would take 12hrs 6pm-6am. After picking us up an hour late the driver some how managed to get us into Nah Trang 2hrs early! So we were wandering the streets at 4am in the morning looking for somewhere to stay. Everywhere we had been before we had booked a room but everyone kept telling us that is dead easy to walk into a hotel and get a room without booking and it sometimes works out cheaper. So this time we thought we would just find a room when we got there. Only problem was TET! And it seems the whole of Vietnam goes to Nah Trang for their Tet holiday! So we walked around for ages trying to find a room. We must have tried 30 places and they were all full. So we gave up and sat on the beach for a while and watched the sunrise. There was a unusual amount of people on the beach for half 5 in the morning, it seems the Vietnamese love to get up at the crack of dawn and do Yoga and Tia Chi on the beach? The beach was full of them stretching and lunging so we just sat down with all our bags and watched, then some guy comes over wanting 30,000 dong for us to sit on the sun beds. It was half 5 in the morning we had all our bags, no where to stay and hardly had any sleep. Needless to say he got a few choice words and left us alone. After an hour or so on the beach we went for some breakfast and there happened to be free wifi there so I managed to book us into a guesthouse for two nights, the only problem was finding it! Turns out after an hour of looking and asking around it was down the next alleyway to where we had had breakfast.
It was a nice day with the sun shining for a change so we hit the beach. We were doing a spot of sunbathing minding our own business when I spotted a women with two kids heading straight for us. Thinking she would want to sell us something I gave Mel the heads up bit we weren't expecting what happened. She came over picked up her kids and sat them ether side of Mel and without saying a word took a picture on her phone and walked off! We just looked at each other and burst out laughing, I mean who does that!! The next day was nice again so after some confusion over the room we went back to the beach and met up with Poppy and Jamie: some friends we had made along the way and kept bumping into. They were thinking of booking on a booze cruse the next day so we decided we would stay an extra night and join them.
We got up early for the cruise, looked outside and it was pissing down! Thankfully we were able to change the trip so that we went the day after. Again the weather wasn't to great but we went on the cruise, with the promise of free booze so who cares what the weathers like. The day consisted of a visit to an island with an aquarium on it, snorkeling which we gave up on due to the amount of jelly fish that were around, a stop off for some lunch and some entertainment, they set up a drum kit and a full band sung us songs for each nationality on the boat, the main singer was a man dressed as a women with coconuts for boobs? Ours national song is apparently Wonder Wall by Oasis! Then it was happy hour so they threw a floating bar over board and gave out cocktails to us while we floated around on rubber rings. Shame about the weather but it was a good day none the less. Next stop was Saigon this involved another mad bus ride only 10 hours this time or at least that's what they told us.