We had our first experience of a sleeper bus from Saigon to Nha Trang which was a 10 hour trip. We caught the bus at 8pm and got on to find rows of beds. When I say beds I do mean that they are for people who are about 5 feet tall and the width of a stick!! We got assigned beds for the trip and I was on the top bunk right in the middle of the bus. There was nowhere to put our bags so they just had to sit by our feet! We set off on the journey and luckily the bus wasn’t full so we managed to spread our belongings out across several beds and I moved to a bunk which was on the bottom bunk to avoid the risk of falling out!! I actually didn’t find the experience too bad. It took a while to get used to the size of the bed but once you’d positioned yourself with your legs out the side and kind of slumped as low as you could get I did manage to get some sleep. The only reeeeeaalllly annoying this is that your sleep is interrupted by the sound of the horn on the bus about every 10 minutes!! They can’t just press it once either, they press and hold the horn which is so incredibly loud!! I think I just managed to incorporate it into my dreams in the end!! I had more sleep than Beth though; she was on the top bunk and didn’t find the trip very comfy at all!!

We arrived in Nha Trang at around 6am, and it was Beth’s birthday! Luckily Dan had reserved us a room for when we got there as he got there a day before us again. He’d also booked us onto a boat trip to celebrate Beth’s birthday! So we showered and changed and were picked up from the hotel at 8.45am! Quick turnaround!

Dan had told us that it was going to be a party boat but when we got on the bus we weren’t so sure! It was full of older people! There were no groups of young people at all! Luckily we picked up a few but we were a bit dubious as to how much of a party it was going to be!

The boat picked us up from the dock and took us to 4 different islands. The first one we went to the worst aquarium I have ever seen! There were about 5 tanks and they were so small! It was ironic being just next to the sea as well!! The second island we went to we did some snorkeling, I didn’t get on very well with my equipment and managed to drop my snorkel on the bottom of the sea, but our guide just laughed at me so I guessed it was ok to leave it there! It was way too deep for me to go and get it! The third place we stopped, the crew on the boat brought out a makeshift drum kit and proceeded to sing for us! It was hilarious! They pulled Beth up on the stage to sing Yellow Submarine and we all sang happy birthday to her too! They also put on a massive spread for us of really lovely food! I’m quite liking the Vietnamese food!

After the singing, we had a floating bar in the sea! It was actually one of the crew members sitting in a rubber ring dishing out red wine to everyone else floating around him in rubber rings but it was lovely! We were in such lovely surroundings and the sea was so clear! The final island we just stopped for a beach stop. Beth managed to get us in with the locals though and we sat with a group of about 10 of them who were partying and eating fish that they’d caught and cooked themselves. They gave us free beer too!! So all in all, the party boat turned out to be exactly that!

We met some more people in one of the bars in the evening and 5 of us decided to go to a spa the next day! 3 guys made up that 5 too so they got rid of their masculinity for one day!! They seemed to really enjoy it! We had a mud bath to start which was so funny! We’re not quite sure where the mud came from but it was so funny just smothering yourself in it and putting it all in your hair and face! We were then told to sunbathe in it to get the full effects of the minerals! It acted as a giant face mask really and went solid before we washed it off. It did leave our skin and hair feeling really soft though! We then had some hydro showers and an extremely hot bath which I think came from the springs underground! That wasn’t good on the sunburn we’d all got the day before! They showed us to a swimming pool which we thought would be really refreshing after all the hot springs. One of the guys dove straight in and then realized the water was 38 degrees!!! So incredibly hot!!

After the spa, we crossed the sea in a cable car to an island called “Vinpearl” which is Vietnam’s answer to Disney Land! They even have really crap Minnie’s and little mermaid’s around the place! I think they have about 6 rides and an indoor arcade! It was quite a random day but we all had a good time! It wasn’t great going on some of the rides with a hangover though and I even wimped out of going on the last one, which is so unlike me!!