Morning,

Here its 8am at home I thinks about 2am. We are currently in nha trang vietnam. Its a huge beach area and we are enjoying a few days soaking up the rays and chilling out (more). I haven't taken the camer out as I don't want to leave it on the beach while we go swimming so I have no pictures. But please use google images to look up nha trang - you will be sooo jealous!!!

So we left Saigon two days ago and thank god. Our last day there we went round the reunification palace. It was ok. Pretty much it is exactly the same as it was when built in the 60s but with a couple of tanks parked on the lawn with plaques explaining these were the same models as the ones that stormed the palace in the 70s at the end of the vietnam war. Inside there was a video and no other explainations about what the builidng was used for or its limited history so we followed a college group round and listened to their teacher for a while - but most of what he was covering was on the deicor so we left them and jsut ambled.

We had started taken the malarone the day before so we were really sleepy that day - so much so that claire nodded off in the 30 minute history movie and I struggled hard to stay awake (it was about 3pm by then)

So afterwards we decided to wander back to our hotel get some food and wait for the bus. On the way back we passed through the market, but we were both soo tired we didn't really take much notice other than to observe that it was indoors and the stalls mussed have been a good twelve foot high with about a 3 foot space between them - so very crowded.

We eventually got on our sleeper bus about 8pm with 6 other westerners and about 40 locals. It was cramped as expected (luckily I am only a few inches taller than you average vietnamese woe betide anyone over 6ft).The aircon also decided to pack up about 11pm so the bus driver spent most the night driving with the door open - which helped but not enough. I would hate to have been on that bus during the day.

We arrived in Nha Trang about 6am and wandered through the usual crowd of people offering taxis and cheap places to stay to our next hostel. Again its quite large, in need of a good dusting and thankfully has working aircon. Luckily this is not the busy season so they have rooms free at this hour. We decided to have a shower and get some sleep.

About 11 we go out and find some breakfast/lunch - three courses and a beer for 5pounds you can't go wrong. Then we see the beach - wow, wow, wow. I may never leave. Sod holidays to the costa brava come to Vietnam! The beach is huge, white sand, almost no rubbish (most of it is washed in not dropped), literally 30 people in sight, snorkelling, kayaking, etc for 20quid, beer for 20p a pint and dinner for a fiver.

So we lay on the beech, paddled in the sea and wandered along the promonade (that is a bit lacking but we did find two nice bars one with a swimming pool).

Finally the monsoon hit - it is that season so what do you expect. It rained hard (and warm) for a couple of hours by then it was dark so we lay in our room watch bad movies. About 8pm we went out loooking for dinner, all the bars were in full swing by then, rammed with western tourists (yeah at max 10 people in a bar). It was the first time we found it hard to find somewhere to eat. Up until now we had looked for the crowd and followed them now there we're now crowds so it was pot luck time.

Dinner was nice, followed by another 20p beer then bed. Today we both had two three course meals, 4 pints and a lot of water for less than 20quid. Not good for the diet but good for the budget.

Today more time on the beach - maybe photos, maybe. Google Nha Trang.

Team P