Advanced Scuba Diving

Another crazy, honking, swerving, death defying bus driver. Luckily valium helped us sleep(again)and the oreos I had thoughtfully bought for a snack kept us going after missing dinner on acccount of the early bus. My knee had decided that sprinting on it without warming up was a bad idea and it swelled up for a few days. This made me feel old - very old! We were dropped in the morning outside a frenzy of motorbike and cylco drivers all pawing at us, "Where you go?" We knew we could walk for free and this would hopefully get rid of the valium hangover. We walked to the tourist area and found many hotels - the place was pretty hip with loads of cool looking restaurants/cafes. The 4 of us shared a nice room with a dangerous mini bar: there was chocolate in the fridge. Chocolate - in my room, just sitting there, getting refilled daily. Recipe for disaster!!! Our hotel did a nice breakfast of a banana pancake (now a staple in my diet), a plate of mixed fruit and coffee for $1, we just brought the condensed milk (now a staple in my diet) and it was a feast. Our goal in Nha Trang was either some serious beach time or go up a level in diving. After spending the day quizzing almost every dive shop in town, Ben and I decided to get our advanced diving card. We got it for $160 (special price) which gave us 2 compulsory dives, 3 dives of our choice and a fun dive. Our instructor was an Aussie who at first seemed a bit arrogant (I think that's quite normal from the instructors I've met), but turned out to be flirtatious and funny and really nice. We also dove with another really nice Aussie who was just getting the travel bug.

1 Our Advanced Scuba course gang

The visibility in Vietnam isn't as good as Thailand, but we were there to learn and perfect some skills so it was fine. We did a navigation dive, a buoyancy control dive, a deep dive (which took us to 25 mtrs). When you dive to a certain depth you can get a feeling of drunkness which is called getting narked. Most people get it at around 28 mtrs or more. At 25 mtrs I felt it a little. You have skills tested (like math) under water to see just how narked you are. We did a photography dive (in which our photos were OK, but not brilliant) and foregoing the night dive we wanted to do (bad conditions) we did a drift dive. It was the first time Ben and I had dived together. Nir and James also dived off the same boat. We did see lots of cool things despite the visibility. Drew - our instructor - got me stoked to Dive in Byron Bay so any QLD/NSW that don't know how to dive better get certified so I have a buddy when I get home!

2. Getting ready to do our first deep dive

We spent our night time exhausted, studying, looking for a place to eat and drinking. We found a great place recommended to us by Drew for the cheap Bia Hoi. This time it was effective!!! We also frequented the posh Sailing Club which had good drink specials and walked along the beach at night. I got robbed one night as we watched lanterns being lit and let off into the sky. The crowd moved violently because someone had fought off a person robbing them and everyone moved around them. In this mess I had my money taken too. Luckily it was only the equivalent of about $6.

One lunch Ben and I ate at a noodle place on the footpath. We watched as the lady running it took the top off a sewer and sharpened a meat knife on the rounded edge of the sewer hole. Yummy!!!!! On our final day in Nha Trang Ben & Nir went on a booze cruise while I walked around looking at a gallery owned by Vietnam's most famous photographer(whose name eludes me) and a pagoda on a hill. The booze cruise took the boys around to a few of the outlying Islands that weren't part of the protected Government Park. They were served red wine which no one wanted to drink so they drank it all. When they got back they were really drunk and I found out how obnoxious Ben had been all day.

4 Free red wine

(This is Ben) I must add little more to the story. In order to go on the booze cruise we first had to get the lady at the front desk to open the hotel safe so we could get Nir's open bus ticket which was with his money. Chelise needed his ticket so she could book us on a bus for the next day while we were gone. Since the lady running the guesthouse was full-on crazy she thought we were gong to skip out on our bill and would not open the safe. To complicate matters further she wanted us to pay right then while the guy from the booze cruise was furiously honking his horn outside. Long story short, after 30 minutes and 100 explanations that we were not trying to skip out on our bill and 2 phone call to someone that supposedly spoke english, we were able to get the ticket out of the safe. The 5 other tourists eating breakfast were watching the spectical unfold were clearly unnerved by the crazy-lady guesthouse owner's antics. Needless to say we missed our ride to the boat. In a last ditch effort we caught a motorcycle taxi to the harbour to try and catch any boat going out. The gamble paid off and we just barely made the last boat pulling out - it was literally just sailing off. Since this is a long entry I will make this short: we snorkeled; we watched a boyband; we drank loads of red wine; visted 4 islands and got pissed (that means drunk to all you american swine).

Booze Cruise

Booze cruise

Round boats