Nha Trang

I'm sitting here in Crazy Kim's, a popular backpackers restaurant/bar, eating some fried rice and drinking REAL cocacola from a bottle as I type this. Randy and I just got back from another Sinh Cafe tour, this time an islands tour which goes to about four different islands surrounding Nha Trang. He's back at the beach resting before we get on a sleeper bus to head to Hoi An in a few hours (apparently it's a 10-12 hour bus ride).

Yesterday we arrived in Nha Trang around 2 pm. Goodness gracious, what a ride. First, we were in a small bus with around 20 passengers total, riding along a pretty-much one lane windy road going through the mountains. It was seriously beautiful, with many roadside waterfalls and forested mountains along the way. After we took a pit stop at a cafe, we continued along this road (sometimes paved, sometimes rocky) until we stopped behind a train of trucks due to road maintenance. As we see a tour bus pass us as we waited, we looked on to see when we would get to move forward in the queue. About a minute later, we noticed that same tour bus that passed us had gotten stuck in deep mud, with its wheels spinning. Karma is a b-i-t-c-h! ...But at the same time, we were now stuck behind this huge bus that is blocking the entire road! I suppose it seemed more epic to us, as some of the tour bus folks started having mini freak outs about being stuck in this random town, and not in Nha Trang as planned. I just sat back and worked on some crossword puzzles, with music on my iPod :) Anyway, we arrived in Nha Trang maybe about 30 minutes past schedule and were on our way. We found a hotel in the guide book that was popular with backpackers and got a room with two double beds and a/c for $10USD.



Here's a pic of the beach, unfortunately it has been overcast for much of our time here...



I think I would recommend Mui Ne over Nha Trang for beach towns, as Nha Trang is more city-like. Mui Ne is a definite small beach town, and although they are both the most foreigner-populated towns we've visited, it still has a really laid-back atmosphere. The beach here in Nha Trang is about 20 yards long and is adjacent to a very busy street. Also, lots of peddlers come by trying to sell goods and services...if one stops, they all flock to you:



After the beach, we went to Indian food, and then went back to the hotel to rest. We were sort of planning to go out, as Nha Trang is known as a party town, however I apparently was exhausted and passed out in bed around 7:30 (haha!).

So the island tour...was pretty awesome. Too bad it wasn't sunny out, because the water was absolutely crystal clear and gorgeous! First stop, this janky aquarium...I knew it was going to kind of blow, but it's okay...the building was this huge concrete ship which was kind of Gaudi-esque:











Got some pretty cool vistas from the top of the boat:





Oh yea, and I went PARASAILING!!!! OMG best $20 EVERRRRRR, it was so much fun!! Wasn't able to capture any really epic shots, due to zoom functionality and what not, but Randy got a sweet sweet video of the take off that I will upload at some point:



Our little boat tour ended at a really nice secluded beach where we ate a pretty darned good seafood lunch, listened to our tour guides play some La Bamba and Viet classics, and after just sunbathed and swam:











So that's it for now! Tonight we go to Hoi An, so more pics and updates to come! We are skipping Hue (or rather, spending 4 hours there) as we are most interested in spending more days in Ha Long Bay...