The Beach At Last

We arrived in Nha Trang at about six in the morning and promptly found a decent hotel room about 100 meters from the beach! After dumping our bags, we decided to get right to seeing the sights since we had such a pleasant sleep on the night bus. We started out by having breakfast tacos at the Texas BBQ restaurant - it was no Rudy's, but we hadn't had tacos in awhile so it sufficed. At our hotel they were advertising for an all day boat tour that went to some of the surrounding islands leaving at 8:30, so we bought tickets. Apparently, we have been spoiled by riding catamarans around Hawaii, Mexico, and the Cayman Islands over the past couple of years, as we kind of expected the same thing. How naive we were! Here is a boat identical to ours that we were following.





But, we settled in amongst about a hundred locals/Vietnamese tourists and set off to sea.





The weather was really pretty and the scenery quite nice, but the cruise itself wasn't all that. After a couple of uninteresting stops including a lame aquarium and a crappy place to snorkel - the corals were covered in soda cans from the nearby restaurants - we pulled into a little cove and had lunch. We were on the roof by this time and lunch was served family-style to us and our "family" of about 20 Vietnamese. It wasn't very good, but it was included with the cruise and we didn't have any other options. The rice was ok.





Next was the finale of the trip that they had been selling us on all day - we were going to the "floating bar" for free red wine! Needless to say, we were unimpressed when a teenager floated out in the water and announced that he was, indeed, the floating bar:





Despite our reluctance, we jumped in the water to have some of the wine and came to a happy realization - Vietnamese(for the most part) don't like swimming, nor being in the sun! We had the "bar" to ourselves with about five other westerners and a small group of Chinese, and we weren't leaving until all the wine was gone! The locals watched from the boat in envy, but besides a couple of brave souls, they couldn't bring themselves to participate. Their loss, our gain!











After the lame-but-kind-of-cool floating bar, we rode on the roof all the way back, got some good sun, and retired to our hotel for the day.











The next day we bought tickets for another night bus to head to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, as it was renamed after the war. Night buses are great for travel, but they leave you kind of homeless for the day. We left our bags with our hotel and figured the best way to spend the day was to relax on the beach. This turned out to be a great idea, as, since we mentioned previously, the locals aren't fans of the sun. So, here we are sitting on this huge beach(miles long) in the middle of a really big city, and there aren't more than a hundred people out here - incredible!





It was sunny, near 90 degrees, the water was warm and the beach itself was great. If it were in southern Europe or California you wouldn't be able to find a spot to sit, and here it was deserted. There were a few chairs set up so we rented a pair for the day and took it easy.





Of course, there was no lack of vendors, and a couple of them were selling fresh seafood. We bought a huge lobster, crab, and shrimp and they went off to cook it for us. It looked really good, but we didn't expect very much from the cooks - we were wrong! Best lobster ever!











The lobster and crab were about a kilo each, but I think we could have eaten twice as much - it was so good. With full bellies and the sun going down, we decided to go wait for our bus and say goodbye to the beach - for now!

This night bus wasn't quite what we were expecting after our last one, but that's another story for another posting!

-Mattie and Julian

Location:Nha Trang, Vietnam