Apparently it has taken only a year for the transformation to take place, but Nha Trang is now a tourist destination with a heavy Russian bias. All the signage is now in Russian and their happy smiling faces can be seen everywhere. Many restaurants have changed their names to Mockba. Happy Hour has now been changed to miserable hour (just kidding). I have just learned, however, that it is seen as a sign of weakness in Russia to smile all of the time. Light bulb moment! After precisely two minutes walking from the bus to our hotel, we had decided that this place was not for us. We had spent a day here in 2010 as part of a cruise and we could hardly recognise it. This resort might be in Spain or Greece, not Vietnam. It has just lost its charm! Priorities dictated that we would book our train tickets as soon as, so day one started with a trip to the train station. We have booked a hard sleeper to Da Nang for our next stop Hoi An. Sleeper train - that's another adventure in the making! Once we had got our bearings, we headed to the Po Nagar Cham temples. The walk took an hour. Wow it was busy, when we were last here it was raining and there was a handful of people there. I sat in the shade while Paul did his thing. I soon got chatting to a Vietnamese family sitting next to me. One of them had moved to Australia and so was able to translate for me. A teenage girl practiced her English and I practised my basic Vietnamese. The tourists were wearing long tunics, none of them apparently aware of the cultural insensitivity of wearing bikinis and shorts when visiting a temple. They were given the tunics to cover up. The temples were originally hindu and are dated around 781AD. See photos. We walked back to the hotel along the coast road and beach front. Paul stopped to have his haircut - 20,000 VND - 60p, even better value than mine! The beach is lovely with a constant refreshing breeze. Desparate to get away from Benidormski, we had a look at Google maps to see if the beautiful landscape that we had seen on the bus ride in was walkable. It was too far! The ride from Da Lat took us through misty, moody mountains and out to the sunlit rice paddy field plains. Google maps revealed an interesting looking place south west of Nha Trang with a river and rice paddy fields stretching out to the mountains. There were some amazing photos on Google maps too! It took about an hour walking out through the nicer, less touristy parts of Nha Trang. On the outskirts of town there is a lot of development. We were worried that the area we had seen on Google Maps had now been built upon - thankfully not! We were soon able to look across paddy fields to the mountains. Just minutes outside of town were the most beautiful views. Rice farmers, wearing their conical hats (Non La), were tending to their fields. As they were at some distant from us, I suggested Paul needed to follow the path between the paddies to get some better shots. Soon the pair of us were negotiating the narrow levee through the fields. The women farmers shouted hello to us. We now had to get back to a road, which involved a bit of jumping, log bridge running and generally slipping and falling about (by me). Back on a dusty, dirt road we headed out towards the mountains. At the end of the dirt road was, what looked like an eatery, there was a beer advert outside and we were thirsty! We followed the path which led to a stilted walkway over a lake to a stilted hut. It looked like someone's home, so I was reluctant to go in. Paul was not so shy and asked if we could buy some beer. Soon we had two ice cold Tiger beers. Several other stitled walkways radiated out into the lake to little thatched huts. We headed out across one of them further into the lake to our own private shaded hut. We sat on our mini plastic garden chairs and realised the view was identical to the photo on Google maps that we got excited about. The hut overlooked a stretch of water, with white wading birds. There were trees in the water ahead and mountains beyond. Wow - see pics and vids. Another walkway led out to a hut nearby, where a Vietnamese family were having one hell of a picnic. A young guy from the family came over to our hut and showed us a video of the place at around 5pm when the wading birds came back to their nests in the trees beyond. He then talked about the food on offer at the eatery - he generously gave us a plate of seafood to try. Two skewers of grilled shrimp and a crab with a wasabi sauce - fantastic, and so kind. We decided to order some grilled shrimp (fished from the lake) and another couple of beers. Awesome, we could have stayed there all day, we were so smug at our idyllic hideaway hut. The reviews on Tripadvisor of Nha Trang's other attractions put us off, animal cruelty on monkey island, overpriced, oversubscribed tours and generally poor service. We just enjoyed a walk along the beach, a little picnic and a beer on the prom on our last day. The pretty town of Hoi An next!