St. Patricks Guesthouse Nha Trang

Felt a lot better today, so went for breakfast to lemongrass. Took a wander round the shops and down the beach - its so nice to be out of mental cities and away from the fumes! No sunbathing though, its too cloudy! went to this cool place called the Sailing club (quite posh by backpacking standards)!

Went back to the guesthouse and sat with the receptionist for the afternoon. we learnt loads of vietnamese - a lot of ...

... we had power cuts every hour so it was a nightmare we ended finding a cafe that did beers for 25p! a bottle of wine for 2 quid, and 20 ciggerettes for 50p need i tell you how the night ended haha! it was good fun as the whole bar sat with candle round us as we had no power!

Hoi an was a really nice place unfortunatly it didnt stop raining the river burst its banks and it was really flooded, if you want i suit making this is the place to go there are hundreds ...

... Nha Trang harbor. The visibility was about 4 meters so not great. We completed all the tasks with flying colours, Leah managed to take her mask off and swim a few meters and put it back on, with no trouble.

Then we went for some fun swimming, where we went down to 12 meters and swam around looking at the coral and fish. There were loads of beautiful coloured fish, my favourite being the Long fin banana fish, the colours are so bright and detailed. We also saw, multicolored wrasse ...

... but it was a bit of a shock when it was boiling!! Luckily there was another cooler pool with a jaccussi. We went back to the hotel and to the pearl shop- I got a necklace, earrings and a ring for about a fiver or something! We spent the rest of the afternoon in the hotel lobby waiting for our bus to train station and watching the cutest kid ever run in to windows and get his arm stuck in our pringles tube!

The train station ...

... but we didn't find one of these either. So the mystery remains, i still don't know where i was born and like any good mystery, the answer may lie with an unsuspecting source: Dust in the Wind, aka Dust of Life (or Eugene, my brother-in-law). Dusty took some photos 4 years ago of the alleged hospital, where my sister Elyse was also born. Right now, we're wondering if he actually got THE hospital or A hospital, is he just full of wind ...

... drop his seat head down onto my feet! Hell... maybe he just had a foot fetish or something!
Anyway Tanya fell asleep in a few minutes as she is prone to do snuggled up between me and two German girls, and I followed a few hours later, I thought it was great till I woke up with dozens of bites on my feet! The but must have had mossies or something. Perhaps the foot fetish man had fleas and wants to spread the love!
Nha Trang, Vietnam flash101

... the millions of honking motorbikes that are omnipresent everywhere else in Vietnam.

We went downtown the 2nd night and visited some amazing buddhist temples and pagodas. Their religious monuments are pretty impressive and typically feature massive statues of Buddha either seated or laying down on his side (reclining Buddha). It got me thinking about why you never see statues or photos of Jesus laying down and taking a ...

... see our belongings again, apart from the smallest bag with all the camera gear and our passports we’d left everything tied to the bikes. Unsure whether we’d just fallen for some scam we sat quietly for about fifteen minutes, the only communication we had with the locals was eye contact, each new passenger examining us carefully as they boarded. The next stop we reached we decided we should get off, but a local woman looked at us and shook her head, her English being about ...

... I’m come to realize too that when I get a room I’ll either get a semi-comfortable bed with a hard pillow or a semi-comfortable pillow with a rock hard bed. Thank God I only have to sleep here. Nha Trang is a busy tiny city filled 50% locals and close to 50% tourists. The reason why so many come here is for the beach (which is ok) and scuba diving. The walk to the beach from my hotel is closer than the drive to Jones Beach ...

... zip lock bags...but I digress.
The owner, a lovely lady with a low cut top unlike anything I've seen a local wearing...ever, was sweet and friendly, she offered me some free papaya shakes and stuff. I invited her to do karaoke with me and Craig that night. She seemed keen but it didn't work out.

I wandered about the town that first day, Nha Trang is like Vietnam's 'Surfer's Paradise'. It's a long stretch of beach, big hotels, lotsa tourists. There's even a ...