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Bye Bye Liver
Entry 40 of 149 | show all | print this entry |
Turns out we arrived in Nha Trang the day that a festival, held once every two years, was going to start. Consequently we had a nightmare finding rooms and prices were skyhigh, as seemingly all of Vietnam had come here for this shitty festival. We eventually found a hotel that had a room for Taylor and Louise (well, i say room, it was pretty much just a door that opened onto a double bed) and a single room for Adriana. Now you may have noticed that nowhere did i mention a room for me... well thats because there wasn't one. The solution to this was that they offered to put a fold up bed in Adrianas room and i could sleep on that. Now adrianas room was only slightly bigger than Taylors, so naturally she wasn't too pleased about this, but she agreed as shes that sort of person (i.e very nice), and would never put anyone else out if she could help it. Everyone else spent the whole day sleeping, as the bus ride from Hoi An was officially the worst bus ride any of us have ever done, and we all had had absolutely no sleep. I spent the day trawling the streets of Nha Trang in a daze.
Nha Trang is an interesting place, a beach city popular with foreigners and Vietnamese tourists alike. Its known for its party atmosphere and consists of an overdeveloped yet beautiful beach front backed by hotel after hotel, dive operators and travel agents. The beach resorts are fantastic though, you can lie on a sunlounger all day being brought food drinks and can even get a massage there too. Plus ladies walk up and down the beach carrying portable barbeques, which which they'll barbeque up a fantastic range of seafood dirt cheap for you. Put simply, Nha Trang is a place to chill on the beach by day, then drink away your braincells by night, courtesy of the numerous bars competing for your business and their stupidly cheap cocktail buckets.
Once the others awoke from their slumber, we chilled out on the beach for the remainder of the day, then in the eveing we went to the red apple bar, as Louise knew a few of the girls who were working there, and proceeded to get rather drunk off long island ice tea buckets. Emma was absolutely plastered and was stumbling all over the place (consequently she doesn't remember much of it). Bumped into Matt and Isabelle (though they went home as they were off the next morning) and then the others went onto another bar/club, however i felt suitably drunk and was content to call it a night there, and emma agreed to do the same. A cyclo guy accosted me on the way home and i ended up cycling the bike while him and Emma sat in the chair on the front. Good way to end the night.
Got back to our guesthouse and there was a couple on the floor sleeping; they hadn't been able to find a room anywhere so the owners had let them sleep on the floor. Knowing how Adriana felt about us sharing a room (it really was too small) i joined them and collapsed on the floor.
I was woken up early the next morning and transferred to the fourth floor, where i continued my slumber on the floor in the guesthouse owners room, whilst he slept next to me! Woke up properly about 11 and went for breakky with emma, moved into her guesthouse and talked about the plan for the day. After the night before, Taylor and Emma were rather hung over, so weren't up for our devised plan of renting motorbikes and seeing the sites and chose to sleep the whole day. Me and Emma weren't gonna let that stop us, so despite neither of us ever having done any driving in our lives, we rented an automatic and off we went!
Its amazing the things you'll do travelling that you'd never even consider doing back home, i mean im pretty skeptical of motorbikes full stop, and in England i'd never get on the back of a motorbike of a moto cycle taxi driver, who i've only just met, and go whizzing around town, without a helmet! In Asia however, no problem! Likewise i would never rent a bike out for myself and go swerving and darting in and out of the masses of traffic on the streets if i was in England, and especially not without leathers and a helmet! Oh well.
I loved riding the bike, and im fairly certain i was riding around with a grin on my face like a giddy schoolgirl for the best part of the whole day. I had a few excursions up into curbs whilst practising, but i quickly got the hang of it.
Having sorted out our transport, we made our way to the Po Nagar Cham towers, further examples of Cham architecture. These were constructed between the 7th and 12th centuries, and of the eight original structures, only 4 still remain. It is also still a site of active worship and there were several vietnamese visiting for that purpose.
I also witnessed further proof of the fact that as you travel south through Vietnam, the people seemingly get friendlier and friendler. I bought a mango and was sitting outside the towers trying to cut the skin off with my penknife, when a vietnamese woman came up to me, took the mango and knife out of my hands, motioned to me that i was doing it all wrong, then proceeded to peel the mango for me then hand it back. Legend. In Hanoi she'd probably have stolen it off me, or hit me with it!
After the towers we stopped a nice looking pagoda and a cathedral, then congratulated ourselves on our biking effort with lunch. The evening was a quiet one at a mexican restaurant then a couple of drinks, due to roughness being felt by all as the aftermath of the night before.
Chill out day on the beach followed the next day (oh how taxing travelling is) for me, though was very amused to get there and find out that taylor had actually stayed out the night before, got absolutely plastered again, had about 4 hours sleep, then hit the booze again in the morning, so by about midday he was hammered still. Sound effort there. Had a seafood barbeque in the restaurant with emma in the evening, then went and met Boudi and Sune, who turned up today, in the red apple bar. Whilst there i also met the danish girls, who then escorted me to the y not bar after several drinks. By this stage i was already quite drunk, as i had been given several free vodka red bulls by way of apology from a group sitting next to me (one of them had had their birthday that day, so much cake was thrown around:- most of it onto me. Tasted good though), but i went anyway. Bar Y not just reminded me of a few facts that i already knew but had seemingly forgotten (1) that i don't like clubs and (2)that i will only dance when extremely extremely pissed.
Final full day in Nha Trang was certainly an eventful one. In the morning we were picked up from our hotels for the boat tour we had booked. This consisted of a trip to 4 of the surrounding islands, Mun island being the only one i can remember, some snorkelling, some food and drinking at a 'floating bar'. I knew the quality of the tour was not gonna bbe good as soon as i saw the van arrive to pick us up:- a falling apart heap of scrap metal, complete with broken seats and the finest rusted interior available.
Arriving at the harbour, i was pleased to see that the standard of the tour was consistant, hundrers of tiny little shitty wooden boats, with rock hard benches for seats, being overloaded with foreign and vietnamese tourists. In case you hadn't noticed, this is pretty much the definition of a 'tour' in south east asia, minimalistic and overcrowded.
Having said all that, the snorkelling stop was surprisingly good, though this was probably only my opinion as i have never done any snorkelling before. Numerous fish were sited, Many of them from the cast of finding nemo (i saw Dorri and the yellow one with the chunk missing from his fin), though our time snorkelling was decidedly short. Next was lunch and 'entertainment' on the boat:- they folded down all the benches to make one huge table in the middle of the boat, taking up all the room and we were all then huddled around it to eat. After our meal the entertainment came, Mama Linhs (the boat co) shitty boy band (maybe not their official title). They had a drumkit made of random assorted plastic pots, and one steel one (ooh, luxury), accompanied by a guitarist sporting an impressive beer gut and some hideous goggles/shades and a lead singer who quite clearly fancied himself. After introduction, they then proceeded to ask people off the boat where they were from, then butchered a song from that persons home country in a cheesy camp cabaret style, where each song sounded the same as the one before. Money well spent!
The 'floating bar' was a bit of a letdown too, we were given a rancid tasting glass of red wine whilst we floated around in a plastic life ring and they played shocking tunes in the background.
I skipped the 'aquarium' that was on one of the other islands and instead chose to stay on the boat, where i caught the spectacle of a danish couple puking up after overdoing it on the free red wine. This was the highlight of the trip, seriously.
Had a wicked meal for tea, then went for a drink with emma, where we met pauline and kal and played several games of jenga. I left emma with the others and went to bed, as we'd both agreed that it was gonna only be a couple of drinks.
You may be wondering why exactly i said that this was an eventful day, as from what i've written so far you'd be forgiven for thinking 'thats actually a pretty boring day actually ben, you dick!' Well the interesting part was yet to come
About half four in the morning, i hear a load of drunken voices and banging on the door. 'oh great, emmas brought back loads of drunken twats' goes through my head.
'its open' i moaned several times in a half asleep mumble. The door opened and three people stumbled through the door, none of which i recognised. Emma then collapsed through the doorway, absolutely plastered and dripping blood everywhere. Bugger, gonna be a long night, especially as i was supposed to be getting on a bus at 7am.
Turns out Emma got absolutely plastered, went onto y not bar (that place is bad news, itell ya) and we believe that she cut her hand on broken glass somewhere. We don't actually know as she was too plastered to remember how it happened, and these guys who brought her home didn't know her, they just saw her wandering around dripping blood. Thank god (for emmas sake) that generally people you meet travelling are as nice as these three were and go out of their way to help people out (though one of the guys was trying to hit on Emma as we put her to sleep).
Missed my bus the next day as i wanted to make sure emma was ok, so chilled out for another day then went to dalat the following day.
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