Indochine Hotel Nha Trang

... made a new plan as we wanted to go to Hanoi by train. We always looked forward to this part of the trip, as the train goes by the whole coast of Vietnam. We booked our tickets that night for the following day, to leave at 6.15 in the morning. To Hanoi, 2 sleeper beds and 35 hours of train in front of us!! That night the electricity went out around 4 am. We hardly noticed as we got up at 5 am. Packed the bags and said goodbye to Mr Grumpy Son as he still had some night ...

... wearing dark pants, otherwise I'm sure I would've had an attractive butt print on my behind! Luckily there was good crowd on board - English speakers - yay!

Made it to Nha Trang, Vietnam's most popular beachside town, six hours later. Town was rather quiet and sleepy when I arrived. Kinda nice to be able to walk freely without having to contemplate a strategic plan of attack to cross the streets ...

... with it at the front desk, but our memory of the town proved correct and we found it right where we remembered it. We had a fantastic and uber-filling dinner then headed back to the hotel to make the most of the wide screen TVs in our rooms.

After a most delicious sleep in our double king-sized beds, we stopped to grab some of Nha Trang's special baguettes, and then gathered on the beach. The beach in ...

... old town stopping for a few drinks and snacks here & there. Checked out the clothing etc and generally just took in the local atmosphere. Booked the trip to ‘My Son’ holyland, temple ruins of Champa civilisation. Coach turned up about half an hour late so the visit round the ruins ended up being a bit more rushed than it should have been. Took the coach there and opted for the river cruise boat trip back for the return journey.

On the return we stopped ...

... we were quickly targeted and harassed by the local motorcycle taxi drivers. We chose to walk in the general direction of some cheap hotels and found ourselves a deal at $7 per night including air con. It was on our first night that our culinary adventure began. Looking for something both cheap... and different from the norm we hiked around town looking for any kind of food that would be just right... and we stumbled upon a teeny tiny kebab ...

... losing it and calling herself all sorts of bad names. I calmed her done and we ran to the bus company’s office and retrieved it. We were pretty fortunate that the bus driver cleared the bus before leaving town. Anyways, Sarah may proceed with her recounting of Nha Trang. (Back to Sarah)

We spent almost a full day lounging in tubs of mud (yay), immersing ourselves in boiling hot water (seriously, like 40 degrees centigrade), and dunking in various fake waterfalls ...

The bus ride to Nha Trang was a nightmare. Fortunately, we shelled out a couple extra bucks ($6 each) to upgrade to sleeper seats for the 11hr journey. UNfortunately, it was still a difficult trip. I think the road isn't as well paved as it is between other destinations and the driver still goes at the same (breakneck) speed so we were bumping and bouncing all over the place in our bus-beds ...

What a fun day it turned out to be! So, we got up early and caught our taxi to the Danang aiport where we were flying to Nha Trang early in the morning, so that we wouldnt lose a day traveling over land. Our Taxi drivers name was Tri, and he was the fuinniest man I have met in quite some time. He spoke decent english and everytime he would say yes he would jump into like a high note, and his laugh was really amusing as well, but he was a really ...

Got sunburnt on my first day. Having learnt from my mistakes in Beijing I decided to have a nice chiled out day and lounge around on the beach. Beijing really does seem like a million miles away now. Its stggeringly hot, the sun is shining, the beach is beautiful, like being somewhere tropical. Of course the food hasen't massively changed, fried noodles and chicken galore. But the atmosphere is so much more vibrant and chaotic, I love it! Everyone's ...

This morning was an absolute shocker, up at 4:30am for the alleged "5am" bus to the Cham ruins at My Son, as in "go on my son!"

CLEARLY that must be earlier than most of you slackers got up today?! ;)

As was horribly predictable, we sat and waited for the bus for ages. In fact ...