Day 11 - Nha Trang

Just a little note about leaving Hoi An, it's just another thing to add to our stuff that we've missed. Hoi An is a beautiful town untouched by time and on the 15th of every month they have a lantern festival whereby all the shops and houses have lit lanterns outside to remember the dead. We left 5 days before this festival....great ! Anyway, loved Hoi An, and Carol is my Tailor :)

It was up early today, for another tour, this time round Nha Trang. This place, like Hoi An, is where a lot of the locals come for holiday as there is a great beach and lots of islands dotted around. Our tour today was a boating/island hopping one. The first island we went to was, err, can't remember the name but it was nice. The boat anchored up in the harbor and a load of ladies in their basket boats (yes it's a boat that's like a basket) turned up to ferry us to the village. You have to jump into the center of these boats as getting in normally will upturn them. After getting to the village we had a local guide that showed us how those boats were made(bamboo, cowpoo and tar), squid drying in the sun (sun dried squid is a delicacy here), lots of kids about saying "hello". Andrea, scornfully asked the guide why the kids aren't in school, he just replied "'cause it's Saturday"....hehehehe. We then ended up at this giant aquarium which looked like something from the Pirates of the Caribbean films, It was quite good. They had some stone fish, turtles, sharks, and giant moray eels.

Hopping onto our boat, which had come round to the other side of the island, we headed off to do a bit of snorkeling in the ocean. The first time in the water though, we had to jump off the roof of the boat with the skipper, it was only me, Roll and the captain that did it as the ladies were scared. We all then went in and had a great time swimming about near the rocks, apart from the usual fish you see there was some long things that looked like sea snakes but probably weren't.

We then had some lunch prepared for us by the crew. It was a Vietnamese meal which meant lots of nice dishes that i can't pronounce, oh, except spring rolls and rice - no noodle today ;) It was then a short trip to a neighboring island for an afternoon on the beach. Andrea and I had a good book each in toe, the others settled for sleeping/reading/parasailing/jetskiing. We left here and then headed back to the pool in the hotel to catch the rest of the sun and prepare for the evening meal.

It was just a few of us going out tonight to a Italian/Indian restaurant (yes you read it right) that was perfect for us as Andrea had a curry and I had a pizza. We then had a drink at a local bar where Vietnam was playing some other team at football, they were very passionate about it. Carmel spent the night trying to find a rich Vietnamese to marry. The walk there consisted of us walking past a big pile of rubbish that was left in the dark street, getting closer you could see it was moving with loads of rats, closer still and they'd scatter all over the shop. They'd run for cover under the metal fence but was stop just underneath with their bums showing to you, it was as if "If i can't see you, you can't see me" mentality going on with them.

After getting back to the hotel the others went to bed as it was 9pm after all, we were having none of it and decided to hit the town on our own. We came across the a club which ended up being full, so we moved to the very classily named "007 Discotheque". Outside we were greeted by a lovely Vietnamese girl in traditional dress who told us it was great in side and we should go in, as we never knew any other clubs we did. I say that "we were told", but according to Andrea the girl completely blanked her. Inside the club it was full of locals and waitresses, a few westerners came in shortly after. We just sat at a table an watched people and listened to the music go from Karaoke to europop to techno and to nam-house(?!?) During the europop phase the two western girls were up on podiums, pole dancing, much to the locals delight...they must of been from the UK. Anyway, littered about the club were these guys(/pimps) that were looking after these scantily clad ladies. The ladies were not going off with the locals but making them talk and getting them to spend there money on drink and stuff. The girl from the door kept coming in occasionally to check up on us and that we were ok. Unless you're in a "lock in" in Vietnam, everything closes by midnight as it's the law here, so we left the place on our latest night out yet in Vietnam!