5 - 8 March

Nha Trang was the start of a very painful journey for me. This is the first of many places that I visited with my old boyfriend Mark within a two year period.

One of the main reasons we have come away, if not the main reason is for me to get better. I am not going to paint a sorrowful picture of myself, about how bad things have been for me. People have been through a lot worse. What I will say is I have suffered greatly the last few years and especially within the last year. Two years of hiding my emotions deep within myself because of wanting to prove to my friends and family that I could carry on as normal and denying that I needed any professional help after the shock death of my first love Mark three years ago did not work out very well for me at all. In May last year, the day that would have been his 25th birthday, I pretty much began to mentally break down, suffering from a form of post traumatic stress. I became obsessed with death and my own mortality and forgot about life and the living. Simple situations like going out in public became increasingly difficult and often led to hysteria and panic attacks. I became a broken person, a bag a nerves.

During these difficult times, I felt like no one could help me and sank into a dark depression. During these difficult times, I had and still have the best support I could ever wish for and I don't know what I would have done without him. Adam, my boyfriend of just over a year and friend of over eight years, has been my rock throughout. He has been incredibly understanding and has helped me through some of the darkest periods of my life. He has ensured that now ten months from my breakdown I am on the road to recovery.

Without him I don't think I would have ever believed in myself enough to get out of the hole of misery I had created for myself. To make him happy keeps me on track, I want to get better for him and I know to do that I need to be happy myself and live life instead of wasting it the way I have been doing. I love him so much, I hate to see what my emotions do to him. He means the world to me.

Giving up my job, my life and heading off travelling was all thanks to his persuasion. He sold his his pride and joy, his car, and bought our tickets to finalize that we were really going to do it. Without his constant enthusiasm I don't think we would have gone and I would still be in a mess.

He knew that travel would be the best remedy for me, the perfect chance to relax and think about what great things the future had in store for us on our travels and when we got home to our friends and family, who we both miss dearly. Another one of the reasons to go away was for me to revisit old painful memories and turn in them into happy ones again, ones that I can reflect upon for years to come. Instead of them making me cry, they need to make me smile again.

I have been to Nha Trang before with Mark, so going here of course was very hard for me. I reflected on my old memories and created fabulous new ones with Adam.

One the first day we went to the beach, went to a few bars and I had a good cry letting out some of my steam.

The next day we went to the spa and had a mud bath and a mineral bath, which was so relaxing and then the final day we went on a boat trip snorkelling round the islands, half the coral was dead though. On the trip we drank wine from a floating bar in the sea during a storm it was the most surreal experience, but so much fun!

Nha Trang had changed a lot since I last went, but my memories hadn't they were still as real as ever and they always will be.